Kansas Democrats say Wyandotte County is limiting advance voting opportunities
Wabaunsee County, a rural Kansas county of nearly 7,000 residents just east of Manhattan, has twice as many drop off boxes for advance ballots as Wyandotte County, which has more than 20 times the population.
As advance voting gets underway this week, Democrats are decrying the gap between the availability of drop boxes in Wyandotte — a stronghold for the party in the largely conservative state — and other areas.
Democratic concerns over drop boxes, which allow voters to return their completed ballots without mailing them, come amid bipartisan fears that the U.S. Postal Service will have trouble delivering ballots on time. Health concerns from the coronavirus pandemic and intense interest in the election — with key state races in addition to the presidential contest — have produced predictions of a tidal wave of advance voting in the lead-up to Election Day on Nov. 3.
But in Wyandotte County, Democrats worry voters casting ballots in advance are getting short shrift.
In perhaps the most dramatic example of the gap that exists between Wyandotte and some counties, Wabaunsee County requested three ballot drop boxes from the Kansas Secretary of State, which had ordered 180 such boxes to make available to counties that wanted them. Jennifer Savage, the election officer for Wabaunsee County, said a fourth was installed at the courthouse in Alma earlier when the coronavirus pandemic hit. It also takes general mail.
That means there’s at least one ballot drop box for every 1,255 registered voters in Wabaunsee County.
Guidance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a subagency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, says there should be one drop box available for every 15,000 to 20,000 registered voters.
Wyandotte County will have two drop box locations where voters who request advanced ballots can place their completed ballots if they don’t wish to send them in by mail. That works out to one ballot drop box per 44,764 registered voters in Wyandotte County.
The Kansas Democratic Party is calling on Wyandotte County to expand its voting options during this presidential election year in which a high voter turnout is expected. The party also criticized Wyandotte County for having just three in-person early voting locations, each of which do not offer evening hours.
“Wyandotte County Election Officer Bruce Newby is following the same voter suppression tricks as his previous appointer Kris Kobach,” said KDP executive director Ben Meers in a written statement issued Monday. Kobach, the former Republican secretary of state, appointed Newby to the position.
“By limiting ballot drop boxes, early voting locations and operational hours for in-person early voting, Newby’s policies will disenfranchise Wyandotte County residents — many of whom are people of color — by making it more difficult for them to safely cast their ballots,” Meers said.
Newby bristled at KDP’s criticisms, saying he has received the two boxes from the Kansas Secretary of State but that he had to put in a work order to the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, to get them installed and it remains unfulfilled. He added that he had to convince the UG, which funds his office, to spend more than $12,000 to order four more drop boxes from a vendor. Those boxes have not yet arrived.
In response, a spokesman said the UG would have purchased more had they known that more were needed.
“We relied a great deal on the election commissioner to tell us what their needs are and we work extremely hard to make sure those needs are met for our residents,” said David Reno, a UG spokesman, who added that UG crews were preparing to install the two drop boxes.
Newby said his office is on a tight budget and he does not want to staff in-person, early voting locations for extended weekday and weekend hours when, in the past, voters did not vote in large enough numbers during those hours. Newby said it didn’t make economic sense to staff those locations and “pay workers to sit there and twiddle their thumbs.”
“The fact is I have offered evening hours before, extended weekend hours before and nobody shows,” Newby said. “I refuse to be beat up because I’m not doing what the KDP thinks I should be doing. They don’t fund my budget. The Unified Government does.”
Newby added there’s no requirement under the law to provide drop boxes.
Newby’s office received $100,000 in funding from the Kansas Secretary of State’s office through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to assist with this year’s elections. Newby said he paid the Unified Government $25,000 so his staff wouldn’t have to be furloughed and the rest has gone to other costs like personal protective equipment.
The Unified Government, in response to the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic, instituted furloughs across nearly all departments, except public safety.
Johnson County, Kansas’ most populous county, has eight available drop box locations, according to a spokesman. That works out to one drop box for every 42,880 registered voters. Johnson County has 10 in-person early voting sites.
The advance voting season is already off to an aggressive start in Kansas. As of Friday, officials had processed more than 444,392 advanced voting applications, representing nearly 24 percent of all registered voters. In Wyandotte County, 20,367 people had requested an application, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office. Election officials will begin mailing ballots on Wednesday.
Newby expects overall turnout will be some 60,000 voters, meaning that by Election Day, about one-third of voters will have already cast their ballot.
Katie Koupal, spokeswoman for Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, said Schwab’s office offered to order enough ballot drop boxes to provide two to each of Kansas’ 105 counties. They bought 180 boxes at $2,029 apiece. She said 12 counties requested no boxes, another 12 requested just one and 79 requested two. Because some didn’t want any, the secretary of state’s office allowed some counties to have more boxes if they requested more than two.
That’s how Johnson County received seven more and Wabaunsee County three more.
Newby said he didn’t realize there was an opportunity to get more boxes.
“I wish I’d known that or I would have requested them,” he said.
Schwab attended a political rally in Tonganoxie last week for Roger Marshall, the Republican nominee in Kansas for the U.S. Senate, where he broached the topic of early voting.
Schwab implored voters who want to vote early to avoid leaving their ballot with the U.S. Postal Service.
“So my concern is if you put it in the hands of the Post Office, that ballot is not insured,” Schwab said. “So we’re just encouraging everybody, just turn it into the county. A lot of our small counties, they’re right across from the Post Office anyway.”
This story was originally published October 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
