Area voters say Clinton email having no effect on their votes

Advance voting continued at a strong pace Monday at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, 1421 Research Park Drive. Douglas County voters can also cast advance ballots at the County Courthouse, the Douglas County Fairgrounds and the Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center on the University of Kansas campus.

Advance voting continued at a heavy pace in Lawrence and Topeka on Monday, but many voters said the latest news about Democrat Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state had no impact on their voting decisions.

“Not at all,” said Anne Walters of Lawrence, who cast her ballot Monday.

Nancy Gorton, a Topeka voter, had the same reaction.

“There has been enough, even before (the latest news),” Gorton said. “Plenty. Plenty of history.”

Advance voting continued at a strong pace Monday at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, 1421 Research Park Drive. Douglas County voters can also cast advance ballots at the County Courthouse, the Douglas County Fairgrounds and the Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center on the University of Kansas campus.

Those responses reflect at least one national poll taken in the immediate aftermath of FBI Director James Comey’s announcement Friday that his agency was reopening its investigation after agents discovered numerous emails on a laptop computer shared by her close aide, Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The poll by the political news sites POLITICO and Morning Consult found that Trump had gained 3 percentage points on Clinton in the days before the announcement, but that there was no measurable change in the hours after Comey’s highly publicized announcement.

Of the 1,772 likely voters who took part in the online poll, 89 percent said they had heard about the FBI review of emails that broke on Friday.

Walters did not want to say publicly how she voted in the presidential race. Gorton, who said she normally votes Democratic, had cast her ballot for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, but she said she made that decision long before the news broke Friday.

Alice Weis of Lawrence, who said she voted for Clinton, said the latest email news gave her no reason to hesitate on her vote. And Charles Criqui, a Topeka Democrat who said he voted for Republican Donald Trump, said his mind was made up before the latest news.

“It started way back,” Criqui said.

Clinton has been under fire throughout the campaign for using a private server located in her home to send and receive emails regarding official State Department business. An earlier investigation concluded that although her actions may have been improper, they did not warrant criminal charges.

Democrats and many others have criticized Comey for publicly discussing the new investigation because at the time the FBI did not have a search warrant to examine the emails and it was not known whether any of them were to or from Clinton, or whether any of them contained classified information.

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll taken after Comey’s announcement found Clinton still leading Trump nationally, 42-39 percent.

A survey of Kansas voters released over the weekend that was conducted in September and early October found Trump ahead in the Sunflower State, 47-39 percent.