photo by: Elvyn Jones

JoAnn Gannon, of Lawrence, waits to receive her general election ballot Monday, Oct. 29, 2018, at the Flory Meeting Hall of the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

Advance voting numbers have convinced Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew that this is not a normal midterm election year.

At the end of Saturday, 4,538 registered county voters had filled out in-person advance ballots and another 12,628 had requested mail-in advance ballots, Shew said Monday. Almost 6,000 of the mail-in ballots have already been returned.

“With the mail-in ballots requested, technically we’ve had 17,000 people indicate they will vote,” he said. “That’s a 21 percent turnout. The most we’ve ever had vote in advance was 22,000 in 2016 in the general election. I think we are on track to pass that.”

Voting turnout records are always set in presidential election years, Shew said. He doesn’t think this year’s total turnout will top the 53,000 county residents who vote in presidential general elections, but he said it was remarkable that advance voting could set a record in this midterm year.

Shew said advance voting enthusiasm was not foreshadowed by a registration wave. The about 80,000 county voters registered this year is consistent with midterm general elections and about 3,000 fewer than the total for presidential election years.

“It’s rare to see a large increase in turnout but not a large increase in registration,” he said. “Usually, they go hand in hand. A lot of the advance voters showing up were new registered voters in 2016, so maybe we already had the wave. This is not a normal midterm election.”

Shew also reviewed this year’s advance voting for what it could mean for Election Day turnout. He said about 30 percent of this year’s advance voters also filled out advance ballots in 2014, but that 25 percent had only voted in presidential elections in the past.

“That number represents a pretty large number of voters who have never voted in a midterm election,” he said.

Shew said total turnout for this midterm could be about 40,000, which would be more than the 38,000 who voted in the 2014 midterm, but considerably fewer than the 53,000 who voted in the 2016 general election.

The Douglas County Clerk’s office at 1100 Massachusetts St. will be open for in-person advance voting from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and from 8 a.m. to noon Monday, Nov. 5.

In addition, the clerk’s office will have in-person advance voting sites open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Friday at the Flory Meeting Hall on the Douglas County Fairgrounds, 2120 Harper St.; the Golf Course Superintendents Association, 1421 Research Park Drive; and KU’s Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center, 1299 Oread Ave. Finally, in-person advance voting will be available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Baldwin City Fire Station, 610 High St.; Eudora City Hall, 4 E. Seventh St.; and Lecompton City Hall, 327 Elmore St.

Mail-in ballots must be returned by 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 6. Ballots can be dropped off at the clerk’s office, in the dropbox in the parking lot south of the Courthouse or at the two Douglas County Treasurer’s satellite offices at 2000 West 31st St., Suite B, and the Dillons Store at 3000 W. Sixth St.