photo by: Associated Press

Ruth Meier, from Silver Lake, Kan, votes at the Prairie Home Cemetery building, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014, in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

TOPEKA – Hotly contested primaries for governor and two congressional seats are expected to drive up voter turnout for the Aug. 7 primaries to a level the state hasn’t seen in a nonpresidential year in at least 12 years, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Thursday.

Kobach said he expected 26 percent of registered voters in Kansas to cast ballots in the primary, which would be slightly higher than the recent high-water mark of 25 percent set in 2010. He attributed that to a highly competitive Republican Primary in the 2nd District congressional race, a competitive Democratic primary in the 3rd District and highly contested primaries in both parties for governor.

As of Thursday morning, with five days remaining in the campaign, Kobach said, there had already been 56,067 advance ballots cast in the primaries. That’s already more than the total number of advance ballots cast in either 2010 or 2014, the last two comparable election years.

He also noted that there are now just over 1.8 million registered voters in Kansas, the highest number ever recorded before a primary. At the same time in 2014, there were 1.735 million registered voters.

Douglas County now has 76,614 registered voters. That’s up from 74,927 four years ago, a 2.2 percent increase.

Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew’s office said that as of about 1 p.m. Thursday, 1,758 advance ballots had been cast, either in person or by mail. That’s slightly higher than the total of 1,734 advance ballot cast in the 2014 primary.

Kobach noted that people who use electronic voting machines will see some changes this year. First, he said, nearly all counties that are using electronic machines use machines that also make a paper recording of each vote, something called a “voter verified paper audit trail.”

In addition, he said, because of the large number of candidates in some races, voters using those machines may have to scroll through two screen pages to see all the candidates. That’s because the machines use a large font size so only six names can appear on the page.

There are seven candidates listed in the Republican primaries for governor and 2nd congressional district.