A notary associate of mine is in the middle of a project almost more than he can bite and chew. In Kansas, there have been so many notaries doing errors it's pitiful. In the Dillons-Kroger chain in Kansas, they no longer do notary work. The Secretary of State sent them a letter about a year and a half ago detailing their liability. What they were doing was in each location they were providing one stamp and all who worked there used the same stamp!!! Amazing. And I caught an Oklahoma notary closing a loan in Kansas with no Kansas commission. It was a coincidence that my friend discovered and reported that one. Also a notary in Wichita a few years ago stamped with his notary stamp every page of an entire loan doc package and signed nothing. Not only that, he was stamping over printed text in the documents. Another signing agent had to redo that one for the title company.
Back dating and other notarial errors have been a concern for years here. Also new young lawyers have been found to give wrong notary instructions too and that has the SOS attention as well.
All said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. So now guess what he's doing? He put together error examples from register of deeds and other sources redacting person info and submitting a new statute proposal for legislative passage here. My friend has a state senator working with him on this and the only opposition is expected to be from banking and lending organizations.
Further, to get something passed, it will initially be a soft start but allow rules to tighten as things progress.
Here is the basic initial proposal written by me. In Kansas to be (appointed) or Commissioned as a Notary Public, pre-training and pre-testing will be required as prescribed by the Secretary of State's office. Following this then, if the Secretary of State gets a report of 3 infractions within a year of a Notary Public, that Notary Public will be required to retake the training and the testing or give up their commission. They will receive a 30 day notice to comply or be terminated as a Notary Public with prejudice. No second chances if they don't retake the training and testing.
http://www.notarylaw.com/
Take a look at this link. The author of the notary encyclopedia has researched this in all states for years.
It's going to be an interesting journey too, if this gets passed in Kansas. It just might catch on in other states, too.
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