Multiple KCK candidates question primary election tallies but who will investigate?

When Tscher “Cece” Manck, who was a candidate for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City Kansas Board of Commissioners, noticed what she believed to be discrepancies in the Aug. 3 primary election results, she complained to every agency she could think of, from the UG election office to the U.S. Department of Justice. And each one, she said, passed the buck.

Newly appointed Election Commissioner Michael Abbott said nothing was amiss and described Manck as, in essence, a sore loser.

Mayoral candidate and longtime state Sen. Chris Steineger is wondering what happened, too. He’s not sure what did transpire, but is unsatisfied with the answers he has gotten so far about why some of his votes seem to have gone missing.

“There were a number of precincts where I had zero votes, yet I know I had voters there,” Steineger told us. In Ward 9/Precinct 1, Steineger got zero votes, but knew of five strong supporters in that area. When challenged, Abbott and one of his technology staffers found those five votes in that precinct. Their explanation was that the votes had gotten lost in their database.

“If they lost five votes, it makes me wonder if there are other votes that are somehow lost in that database,” Steineger said. Indeed, they recovered another two votes for Steineger in a different precinct.

“What about all the other precincts that I didn’t call attention to?” Steineger said. “They gave their explanation, and it just — it seems very strange. They said, ‘Well, somehow those votes got lost in our database.’ Well, what other votes got lost? What other precincts got lost in your database? What other candidates’ votes got lost in your database?”

Manck, who according to election results received 117 votes in her race for District 8 commissioner, says a list she received from the county that is supposed to include the name and precinct of every person who cast a valid ballot did not include some supporters whom she knows did vote. One such woman took a selfie at the polls, yet her name is not on the list.

Why did vote count not change over 12-hour period?

Daran Duffy, a mayoral candidate in the primary, said that for three election office spreadsheets showing vote totals for each candidate by precinct, “The numbers don’t add up. They should match. They don’t.

“If there was no finagling with the numbers then it is gross negligence,” Duffy said. “It is absolutely abysmal.n There is very clear fraud. I just don’t know what else to call it. If it were one spreadsheet I’d say maybe it was a clerical error.”

Mary Gerlt, who ran for an at-large seat on the Board of Public Utilities, has concerns about the lack of transparency as votes were being tallied. The election office first posted early vote totals as 1% of the precincts reporting. The next post was 100% — and some tallies didn’t change between 1% and 100%, over a 12-hour period.

“We don’t get to see any progression,” Gerlt said. “That should be rectified. There is no way to trust what is going on in that election office. Voters need to feel confident in the voting process. It most definitely warrants an investigation from an outside party.”

With so much attention being paid across the country to repeatedly disproven claims of voter fraud, those responsible for ensuring fair elections should be eager to repair voter confidence by at least reviewing the discrepancies being reported by multiple candidates.

But, so far, nothing of the sort is happening.

“I called everybody except the president of the United States,” said Manck. The AG’s office told me to go to the secretary of state’s office. The secretary of state’s office told me to go to the Wyandotte County DA office and the DA’s office told me to go to the county election office, where I had started.”

The attorney general’s office never confirms or denies any investigation, said a spokesman, John Milburn, but “allegations of suspected crimes would ordinarily be investigated by the local law enforcement agencies.” The DA’s office acknowledged receiving complaints, but shows no sign of looking into them.

Manck and Sandra Duffy, Daran Duffy’s wife, have contested the election in district court.

The county election office has countered with a motion to dismiss. County officials want Manck and the Duffys to go away, but they’ll be back in court Sept. 28 to argue for the right to contest the election.

As evidence of their claim that election officials “predetermined the outcome of the election,” Manck and Duffy point to a 6:56 a.m. Election Day Facebook post that Manck said came from community advocate Louise Lynch. The post appeared to picture an election office document showing, for example, Latorua Chinn with 273 votes, and Eleanor Morales Clark with 233 before the polls opened at 7 a.m. There was a 6:56 a.m. time stamp on the post.

Abbott, the election commissioner, says the post was fabricated.

But the votes shown in that morning post for Chinn, Clark and others did turn out to match their vote totals in an election office vote tally released at 8:45 p.m. that night. Does that mean these candidates received not a single vote over the 12 hours that polls were open?

Lynch said she made the post that evening, not in the morning, after taking a screenshot of results she saw on the county election website. She later deactivated her entire Facebook page, she said, because hateful comments made there “were having a negative effect on my body, my health, because of stress.”

Sandra Duffy also said a document showing the certified election results as of August 19 indicated more total ballots were cast in the election than the official count totals posted on the election website. “They screwed it up and we caught them,” she said.

Manck said she believes there was not only tampering, but not much effort to hide it. “They are used to people not putting up a fight. I think it was more important for them to try and discourage us and embarrass us than for anyone to know they were cheating.”

There might be a reasonable explanation, but these discrepancies do have to be investigated. And nobody is doing that.

County election office can’t investigate itself

In Kansas, the secretary of state’s office has oversight over federal and state races. In local races, the final say is with the board of county commissioners sitting as the board of canvassers.

“These are the same commissioners who are on the ballot, being voted for or against,” Steineger said, “yet they get to have a say on whether or not the results are accurate.”

The Kansas secretary of state’s office was granted legal authority to prosecute election misconduct when then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach, on a quixotic election fraud crusade, decided to devote six attorneys to the office, instead of the traditional one or two.

But that also diverted resources from the office’s many other tasks, including administering elections. Current Secretary of State Scott Schwab chooses instead to act as a resource to law enforcement agencies and local prosecutors looking into any fraud charges.

But is there nothing in between being obsessed by imagined massive election fraud and utterly unable to look into potential local tampering? Nothing in between calling in the Cyber Ninjas and ignoring all complaints?

The temptation to see conspiracy and fraud behind every election outcome one doesn’t like has never been greater, thanks to former President Donald Trump’s phony and highly damaging claims, which have been thoroughly vetted and thoroughly debunked.

Yet we can’t restore confidence in elections if there’s also no way to look into reports of problems. The election office can’t investigate itself and won’t call for an independent review. Commissioners have built-in conflicts, too.

When Schwab appointed Abbott in February, he said, “Mr. Abbott has institutional knowledge of the Wyandotte County Election Office and strong, established relationships with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County.”

Now it’s time for Schwab’s office to appoint some election experts with no relationships with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County to review the primary that his new appointee supervised. If nothing was amiss, the UG should welcome the chance to disprove all claims to the contrary.