by Mary Rupert
As of 5:30 p.m. Aug. 1, voting in Wyandotte County was at 14.7 percent, according to Election Commissioner Bruce Newby.
Voting for the primary election closes today at 7 p.m. at voters’ regular polling places throughout the county.
Newby said there had been 3,003 ballots returned by mail by today, and there were 8,407 persons who have voted in person.
The in-person vote included 1,397 who voted early in person, during advance voting at the election office and at a satellite location in the west, he said.
Newby said he had been predicting a 15 to 20 percent turnout in the primary, based on past elections.
The state law has changed on advance ballots, and voters are now allowed to drop off advance ballots at any polling place in Wyandotte County or the election office as long as they get it there by 7 p.m. today, Newby said.
That means the advance ballots will come in tonight, and the election office then will tabulate those votes on Friday, he said. Also, voters are allowed to mail a ballot back and get it postmarked by 7 p.m. today for it to count – and those votes also would be counted by Friday if they are received by the election office, he said.
That means there will be an unofficial result tonight, and another figure will be the unofficial final result on Friday, he said.
As many as 1,000 mail ballots have not been received yet that were sent out, and that is about the maximum of the additional votes that may come in, he said.
The Wyandotte County Board of Canvassers will meet on Monday to consider provisional ballots, and then a final official result will be published, Newby said.
Besides a new summer primary election date and new rules for turning in mail ballots, the election office has new voting machines in the polls this year, he said.
There are 150 new touch screens with 80 ballot box scanners, he added. Voters who opt for the touch screen mark a ballot through touching the screen, a ballot card is printed out, and the voter takes the card to a ballot box and inserts it for the count, Newby said.
Now the election office will have a complete paper record of every vote cast in every election, and with the old touch-screen system it did not have the paper record, he said. With the new system, voters may review their ballot before they cast it, he added.
Voters still can use paper ballots, too, which are inserted into a counter.
Turnout at last year’s general election was 20.5 percent. At the primary election four years ago, Wyandotte County had a snowstorm that crippled travel and turnout was only 7.9 percent. That primary figure from four years ago has already been doubled, Newby said.