A near-record number of Lawrence voters are expected at the polls today, election officials said Monday.

Hotly contested races for the Lawrence City Commission, Lawrence school board and a school bond issue already have produced 1,539 advance ballots — easily beating the 967 advance votes in the 2001 spring election.

Douglas County Clerk Patty Jaimes said that trend should continue today.

“I suspect it would be higher than the primary … I’d say about 35 percent,” she said. “That’d be pretty good.”

The previous high for a city-school election was in 1995, she said, when 36.8 percent of voters turned out. In April’s primary election, 25 percent of voters cast ballots.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Voters will settle the following races:

• The three top vote-getters in the City Commission campaign will win terms of office. The candidates are Greg DiVilbiss, Lee Gerhard, Lynn Goodell, Dennis “Boog” Highberger, Mike Rundle and David Schauner.
• Four candidates will win terms on the Lawrence school board. They are Cille King, Mary Loveland, Rich Minder, Scott Morgan, Sue Morgan, Leonard Ortiz, Michael Pomes and Cindy Yulich.
• Voters also will determine whether the Lawrence school district can issue $59 million in bonds to finance construction and renovation projects at 15 schools. Property taxes would repay the debt over 20 years.


Harold Barnes, a maintenance employee for Douglas County, prepares for today's election at Hillcrest School. Lawrence school board and City Commission members will be elected, and a 9 million school bond issue is at stake, too.

Scott Morgan, who is seeking re-election to the school board, said the candidates were eager for the campaign’s end.

“We’re all strung out,” he said. “I can’t even put nouns and verbs together.”

Such exhaustion led most of the City Commission candidates to take Monday off from campaigning.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Gerhard said. “I think I’ve done everything I can do.”

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Also Monday, voters across Lawrence received “get-out-the-vote” calls from the Rundle and DiVilbiss campaigns.

DiVilbiss said his phone calls targeted residents who had voted in recent campaigns — phone numbers, including those from cellular phones, were gleaned from the voter registration lists.

Scott Morgan said the stakes were unusually high in this election.

“In these kinds of elections, it takes five minutes to vote,” he said. “It’s something so important to a community, whether (voters) have kids or not.”

Pomes said folks who didn’t vote on Election Day would have no justification to criticize actions of the board later.

“If you don’t vote, don’t complain,” he said.