Topeka ? It’s official.

The State Board of Canvassers today approved and certified the results of the Nov. 5 general election.

With little fanfare, Gov. Bill Graves, Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh, and Rich Smith, an assistant attorney general, signed in triplicate the papers needed to put the 2002 election into the record books.

The final vote tally showed that 52 percent of registered voters in Kansas, or 840,243 of 1,615,333, voted in the election.

That is down from the 67 percent who voted in the 2000 election, which featured a presidential race, but up slightly from the 50 percent who voted in 1998, the last time a gubernatorial contest was on the ballot.