photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

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

About a week out from election day, Douglas County’s top election official says voter turnout so far is near identical to the last city-school election in 2021 — but that could be seen as a surprise, given some of the key issues surrounding Lawrence’s local races.

Voters in Lawrence will decide on the newest members of the Lawrence City Commission and Lawrence school board in next week’s general election. On Monday, Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew shared some early voting numbers with the Journal-World and talked a bit about the two Lawrence races.

Shew said turnout thus far looks to be trending in “almost exactly” the direction it did in 2021, which ended up with a 22% turnout, good for about 17,000 voters. The county mailed 10,210 advance voting ballots that year, and has mailed slightly more ballots — 10,661 of them — for this year’s election. Shew said there had been 564 in-person advance ballots cast so far as of early Monday afternoon.

Shew said the Elections Office examines early voting numbers on a daily basis to evaluate how best it can allocate its resources, and early indications don’t seem to point to any sudden increases in turnout occurring in any areas of the county. Despite significant community conversation in the past year or so around issues like school closures and the City of Lawrence’s response to homelessness and housing challenges, more voters just aren’t casting a ballot early on.

“Often in an odd-year election, there might be an issue or two that kind of pops up, but this year it feels like there have been some pretty big issues that have been discussed both at the city level and at the school level — not just here in Lawrence, but in Baldwin and Eudora and Lecompton,” Shew said. “I was interested to see if that would kind of increase turnout a little bit.”

It turns out that it hasn’t. Shew said the group that’s already voted or requested an advance ballot, based on past voting history, is filled with people that show up and vote in odd-year elections no matter what. He said he doesn’t anticipate a group of new voters — or voters who tend to only vote in even-year elections, which often have a higher overall turnout since they include either midterm or presidential races — coming out of the woodwork, although he said that could also be because voters are still learning more and making up their minds about candidates.

Shew also said he’s heard that some voters may be running into a bit of confusion with the instructions for individual races. In an even-year election, voters typically select a uniform one candidate per race. But that isn’t the case for odd-year elections, when multiple candidates are often selected to fill seats on local governing bodies.

The problem is, Shew said, that some voters run into trouble differentiating between how many names they’re supposed to select from one race to another. For example, Lawrence voters will be able to select up to three candidates in the City Commission election, and up to four in the school board election. And on top of that, there’s a special school board seat with two candidates running that asks voters to select just one, meaning that a total of five school board seats will be filled next week.

Shew said he’d recommend voters be especially diligent in paying attention to the instructions listed at the top of each race on the ballot, just to be sure of how many candidates they’re able to select.

“We see a lot of people that get confused by that ‘Vote for up to three or up to four’ (instruction),” Shew said. “We get a lot of questions, (like) ‘Do I have to vote for four?’ And you don’t — you can do one, two, three or four. So I think that’s the biggest thing we see in these city-school elections, that each race is different in how many you can vote for.”

The race for three open seats on the Lawrence City Commission is between six candidates, as the Journal-World has reported: incumbents Brad Finkeldei, Amber Sellers and Courtney Shipley, former commissioner Mike Dever, and newcomers Justine Burton and Dustin Stumblingbear. The seats are at-large positions, meaning all six names will appear on ballots throughout the city.

The school board election features a slightly more crowded field of 10 candidates. Eight of the 10 candidates — incumbents Carole Cadue-Blackwood and Ronald “G.R.” Gordon-Ross, and newcomers Anne Costello, Yolanda Franklin, Edward “E.J.” Gonzales, Jody Meyer, Brandon Moore and Rachel Stumblingbear — are vying for a set of four open seats, each with four-year terms. The other two candidates, incumbent Shannon Kimball and newcomer Ariel Miner, are competing for the single two-year term originally vacated when former school board member Andrew Nussbaum resigned in 2021.

The deadline for requesting to be mailed an advance ballot is Tuesday, Oct. 31. Otherwise, advance voting will continue by mail or in person at the Douglas County Elections Office, 711 W. 23rd St. #1, until Monday, Nov. 6 at noon. Advance in-person voting will also be available from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4 at the Elections Office and in various other locations throughout the county — Lecompton City Hall, Eudora City Hall and the Baldwin Fire Station. Shew recommended that folks who plan to mail in a ballot do so “sooner rather than later” so there’s enough time for it to arrive at the Elections Office.

On election day, polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. To find your precinct, visit Douglas County’s website.

“We just encourage people to get out and vote, and take time to be informed on the candidates,” Shew said. “…I’ve said this to a couple of civic groups over the past couple of weeks, (the general election) will have so many people turn out to vote next year, right? The people being elected to these offices, I think, impact your life almost on a daily basis more than, say, the president. Showing up and voting in this election is just as important as showing up and voting a year from now.”