photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Douglas County elections office at 711 W. 23rd St. is pictured Monday, Oct. 31, 2022.

The canvass of Douglas County’s Nov. 8 general election on Monday morning revealed that the official tally of ballots cast was slightly less than the turnout in the August primary.

Douglas County voters cast 47,561 ballots earlier this month, good for 57.9% of the county’s more than 82,000 registered voters. But that number didn’t quite match the record-breaking 47,657 ballots cast in August, which saw Kansas voters turning out in droves to reject a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have eliminated the right to an abortion.

The canvass also confirmed the final margins in a pair of local races: the District 1 Douglas County Commission seat and the county ballot question regarding expanding the County Commission from three members to five. Incumbent District 1 Commissioner Patrick Kelly was ahead by a wide margin with about 70% of precincts reporting on election night, and the final tally has him with just more than 10,000 votes, good for 80.87% of the vote.

The gap wasn’t quite as vast in the vote for expanding the commission, but the measure still passed comfortably on election night. The canvass revealed that nearly 61% of voters, or just more than 27,000 people, voted in favor of adding two commission districts. The county is hosting a town hall meeting on Dec. 1 to share information about that process with community members and gather their feedback regarding what the new districts should look like.