The official margin of defeat for Proposition 1 — the countywide sales tax that would have funded a jail expansion and mental health programs — is 1,554 ballots, according to a final tally conducted Monday.

But the number that may catch more attention is voter turnout ended up at 41 percent. The turnout of 41.6 percent for Proposition 1 was among the best recorded in the last 18 years in Douglas County for elections that had no statewide or national offices on the ballot, Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew said.

The Douglas County Commission on Monday conducted what is called a canvass of the election results, which is required by law. Monday’s process added a few votes to the totals, as several provisional ballots were allowed to be counted.

Final official results show county voters rejected Proposition 1 by a 1,554 margin of 13,811 no votes to 12,257 yes votes, or 53 percent to 47 percent.

The election results are considered official now that the canvass has been completed.

Shew is convinced the convenience of the mail-in ballot made a difference in Proposition 1 voter turnout, estimating a single-day special election for the ballot question would have had a turnout of about 20 percent.

There is a movement in Western states with large sparsely populated counties to move exclusively to mail-in ballots, Shew said. Colorado, Oregon and Washington conduct elections solely through mail-in ballots, and Utah currently leaves the decision to counties. Mail ballot elections are much more efficient in huge counties with populations so small they only have a few polling sites, he said.

County clerks in western Kansas who have as few as two polling sites per county have expressed an interest in moving exclusively to mail ballot election for that same reason, Shew said. The Kansas County Clerks and Elected Officials Association has asked the Kansas Legislation to start the conversation about going to mail ballot elections. Currently only certain types of elections can use a mail-ballot in Kansas. No races involving candidates are allowed to use the vote-by-mail system.

“So far, there hasn’t been any interest in the legislature because of concerns for voter fraud,” he said. “Mail-in ballots are seen as more susceptible to fraud.”

Kansas’ mail-in ballot system does have a provision aimed at preventing fraud. The law requires voters sign return envelopes before returning mail-in ballots.

Shew said every one of those signatures is checked against a signature the clerk’s office has on file.

Although the vast majority of Proposition 1 ballots returned before the deadline were included in the final official totals, signature miscues accounted for 356 returned ballots being thrown out.

According to canvass results, 247 ballots were returned without the required signature on the envelope and another four were placed in a drop box without an envelope. In 42 cases, the wrong partners signed the envelopes on ballots sent to couples. It was found 63 signatures did not match those the clerk’s office had on file.

The clerk’s office began verifying signatures as ballots were received, Shew said. That verification process included the 2,500 ballots that arrived on the May 15 election deadline. While lengthy, that verification process did not slow down the counting of the ballots. Instead, equipment issues played a larger role in how quickly ballots could be counted.

The county’s aging scanner can only tabulate 3,000 ballots per hour under optimal conditions, Shew said. The humidity on May 15 caused ballots to stick together and slowed the per-hour average count to about 2,150 ballots.

“We could have counted the ballots as they came in,” Shew said. “By Kansas law we could have done that, but because of the climate of this election, I decided not to count any of the ballots beforehand.”

Tabulation delays shouldn’t be a concern for the next big mail-in ballot question, whenever that may be. The $677,000 clerk’s office equipment upgrade county commissioners approved earlier this month will include two new central scanners to be used for future mail-ballot elections and to count advance voting for regular elections. Those two new scanners can count 5,000 ballots per hour and are less temperamental to environmental conditions, Shew said.

Providing a safeguard against fraud is the requirement voters sign return envelopes before returning mail-in ballots. Shew said every one of those signatures is checked against one the clerk’s office has on file.

Although the vast majority of Proposition 1 ballots returned before the deadline were included in the final official totals, signature snafus accounted for 356 returned ballots being thrown out (one ballot was received from a voter registered in another county was also discarded). According to canvass results, 247 ballots were returned without the required signature on the envelope and another four were placed in a drop box without an envelope. In 42 cases, the wrong partners signed the envelopes on ballots sent to couples. It was found 63 signatures did not match those the clerk’s office had on file.

The clerk’s office began verifying signature as ballots were received, Shew said, but it did have to verify those on the 2,500 that arrived on the May 15 deadline. That did not slow the tabulation of Proposition 1 results on April 15 because Shew didn’t finish feeding the 25,890 ballots counted that day through a scanner until shortly before 9 p.m. or 12 hours after the process started.

The county’s aging scanner can only tabulate 3,000 ballots per hour under optimal conditions, Shew said. The humidity on May 15 caused ballots to stick together and slowed the per-hour average count to about 2,150 ballots.

“We could have counted the ballots as they came in,” Shew said. “By Kansas law we could have done that, but because of the climate of this election, I decided not to count any of the ballots beforehand.”

Tabulation delays shouldn’t be a concern for the next big mail-in ballot question. The $677,000 clerk’s office equipment upgrade county commissioners approved earlier this month will include two new central scanners to be used for future mail-ballot elections and to count advance voting for regular elections. Those two new scanners can count 5,000 ballots per hour and are less temperamental to environmental conditions, Shew said.