photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Douglas County voters fill out ballots for the primary election on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026.

Tuesday’s primary election is expected to have drawn one of the highest voter turnouts in the county’s history for a primary election, according to Douglas County’s top election official.

Almost 41% of the total registered voters in Douglas County voted in this year’s primary election – with 32,775 ballots counted and 80,215 registered voters, according to unofficial election results. The numbers updated at 1 p.m. Wednesday as the Election’s Office counted additional advance ballots collected at polling locations and from drop boxes. County Clerk Jamie Shew said, overall, Election Day went well.

“We ended up with an extremely high turnout,” Shew told the Journal-World. “During the majority of the day, it was steady, and then in the afternoon, it really picked up for the last couple of hours, which really bumped us into (almost) 33,000 voters, which is, I believe the second highest we’ve ever had for an even-year primary.”

“I don’t have this proven, but from what I’ve heard is we had one of the higher turnouts in the state,” Shew said.

Election cycles generally alternate between federal, state, and County Commission races in even-numbered years, while other local races, such as City Commission and school district elections, are held in odd-numbered years. Shew said typically the even years have a larger voter turnout than odd years.

While voter totals were higher than Shew had expected, strong interest in the election was expected because of the constitutional amendment on the ballot. The amendment was to rewrite the state constitution on how Kansas Supreme Court justices would be filled via public election rather than being appointed by the Supreme Court Nominating Commission.

Douglas County voters, as did the state as a whole, overwhelmingly rejected those proposed changes – with 27,107 people voting “NO” and 5,158 people voting “YES.”

The last time a constitutional amendment was on the ballot in a primary election was in 2022. It proposed amending the Kansas Constitution to state that it does not create or secure a right to abortion and that the Kansas Legislature has the authority to regulate abortion, including potentially banning or further restricting it.

Shew said that election attracted the largest voter turnout in a primary election for Douglas County, with about 47,000 voters. “We actually had more people vote in that election than in the general,” Shew said.

With the 2022 primary in mind, Shew said the Election’s Office staffed for a larger election and prepared for it.

“I think the thing that was probably the most surprising is how it took off in the afternoon,” Shew said. “Because we get numbers through the day, so we could see that it was steady and kind of had a feeling of what turnout was going to look like. I think at that time I probably thought that we’d be somewhere in the high 20,000.”

“And then suddenly, we started getting reports and information … and we had a lot of voters those last couple hours,” Shew said.

Now, Election’s Office staff are reviewing and verifying the election results ahead of the primary election canvass on Monday, Aug. 17 at 9 a.m. During the canvass, election officials reconcile the number of ballots cast with the number of voters who participated, review provisional and eligible mail ballots, resolve any discrepancies, and verify vote totals reported by each precinct.

“We have over 400 provisional ballots that have to be processed, and that takes a while because we do the research on each one,” Shew said. “We audit and balance all of the polling places and all of the numbers, and then we do a 1% hand count … So there’s a lot of work that we do between now and then.”

Shew said he was happy to have close to 500 volunteers and poll workers helping with Tuesday’s election.

“It takes a lot of people to make this work, and so that’s always kind of a cool moment when you know that it all worked because all those people showed up and put in their time for it to happen,” Shew said. “And we’re preparing for a big election in November.”

Voters can now register to vote or update their voter registration information for the general election, and the deadline is Oct. 13. The first day of in-person advance voting is Oct. 14, and it will end at noon on Nov. 2. The last day to apply for an advance voting mail ballot is Oct. 27. The general election will be on Nov. 3.