Voting heavy at early polling sites across Kansas; Douglas County on track to set record

photo by: Nick Krug

A steady flow of early voters file through the old Douglas County Courthouse on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016.

Wichita ? Nearly twice as many Kansas voters are now casting ballots at early polling sites across the state, compared to the last presidential election, according to the secretary of state’s office.

As of 8 a.m. Thursday, 67,211 people voted in person — almost double the 33,832 who did so at that point in the 2014 election. Mail-in ballots are going out at roughly the same pace, with 173,893 mail-in ballots sent out since Oct. 19 across Kansas. Some 49,568 mail-in ballots have been returned.

Both the Republicans and Democrats are finding something to cheer about as the parties analyze the daily lists they each receive showing who has voted so far.

In the deep red state of Kansas, it is not surprising that 51 percent of the people who have voted in person as of Thursday have been registered Republicans. Registered Democrats account for 34 percent of those early in-person voters, said Kelly Arnold, chairman of the Kansas Republican Party.

Half of the mail-in ballots sent out went to registered Republicans, compared to 32 percent for Democrats, he said.

“Typically Democrats have always held an advantage in the early voting part … we are not seeing them crushing the numbers like they normally do,” Arnold said, adding that Republicans in the state tend to be Election Day voters.

Clay Barker, executive director of Kansas Republican Party, said early voting so far shows “no bad surprises for us.”

But the GOP’s own analysis of early voter lists also shows that Kansas Democrats are doing a slightly better job of getting their party’s unlikely voters out early to cast a ballot: 12 percent of the Democrats who have voted so far were unlikely voters, compared to 8 percent of Republicans who fell in that category.

Cheyenne Davis, field director for the Kansas Democratic Party, contended party affiliation is an “antiquated way” to look at voting in Kansas because so many people in the state register as Republicans in order to be able to vote in contested GOP primaries, but then don’t necessarily vote Republican in the general election.

“We are optimistic, we look at it on a day-to-day basis,” Davis said. “We know a lot of Democrats are out there voting and we are excited about that.”

In Johnson County, the state’s most populous county, early voting has broken all-time records for the first three days of in-person voting, said Election Commissioner Ronnie Metsker.

More than 34,000 residents had voted as of Thursday in Johnson County, which has six early polling sites now open. There has been a constant stream of cars looking for a place to park, and wait times in some early voting lines have reached as long as 21 minutes.

In Johnson County, the “onslaught” from early voting comes at the same time election workers are trying to process a backlog of 9,700 voter registrations, many that came in just two days before the Oct. 18 voter registration deadline, Metsker said.

“We will get caught up, but we had an enormous swell,” he said. “It is like a tsunami that hit us.”

Douglas County on track to set early voting record

Early voting in Douglas County is on track to top figures from the 2008 presidential election, which was the county’s record year, according to County Clerk Jamie Shew.

As of Wednesday, Shew said about 3,350 people had come in person to vote early. That’s significantly more than that same date in 2008, when about 1,900 had done so.

“I think our advanced turnout is going to be much larger than we’ve ever experienced before,” Shew said.

However, Shew said he doesn’t necessarily expect overall turnout to be much higher, as most of those choosing to vote early have not been first-time voters. While the county does not do exit polling, Shew said that anecdotally, a lot of voters have said they are choosing to vote early because they are ready to get the election over with.

“This election has been going on for a very long time, probably one of the longest presidential we’ve had,” Shew said. “A lot of people have said, ‘Nothing is going to change my mind in the next couple weeks.'”

Kansas voters don’t need to provide a reason to vote early, and voters can find locations to vote early on the Douglas County election’s website: www.douglascountyks.org/depts/voting-and-elections.

— Rochelle Valverde