Instead of welcoming a review, KCK election office answers criticism with falsehoods

Here’s just another example of why many residents of Kansas City, Kansas and Wyandotte County don’t trust their local leadership: A recent Unified Government news release labels our editorial calling for an investigation into apparent discrepancies in the UG’s Aug. 3 primary election results “factually inaccurate” without ever saying what was supposedly inaccurate.

There’s a reason for that: It wasn’t. The UG release implies that we never got their side of the story. Not only did we get it, it’s right there in the editorial.

The targets of our criticism often insist that our claims are baseless when they are not, and we virtually never answer. So why is this time different? By ignoring Wyandotte County for years, this newspaper allowed official wrongdoing there to go unchallenged.

Those days are over.

The UG news release says, “The editorial has taken mere allegations as fact in this matter.”

Again, false. Even the headline refers to “questions” being raised about the election by multiple candidates.

We conducted weeks of interviews with candidates, voters and officials. What we did say, accurately, is that candidates with complaints, after contacting local, state and federal officials about what appeared to be inconsistencies in vote tallies, were passed from office to office without getting answers or confirmation that any agency would investigate their claims.

As a result, Tscher “Cece,” Manck, who ran for a seat on the UG Board of Commissioners, and Sandra Duffy, wife of former mayoral candidate Daran Duffy, have contested the election in district court.

The editorial names the candidates raising questions — Manck, Duffy, Chris Steineger, who also ran for mayor, and Mary Gerlt, who ran for an at-large seat on the Board of Public Utilities. It outlines some of their complaints. And their complaints do deserve more of an answer than that only sore losers ask questions.

Steineger says he initially received zero votes in one precinct where he knew he had at least five votes. When challenged, UG Election Commissioner Michael 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.

Steineger was unsatisfied with the answer he got. He naturally wondered how that happened, and whether other votes he or other candidates didn’t know about had somehow wandered off and gotten lost.

Daran Duffy said of three election office spreadsheets showing vote totals for each candidate by precinct, “The numbers don’t add up.” And they don’t.

He questions whether there may have been “finagling with the numbers,” or “gross negligence.” We don’t know that’s the case.

What we said is that “there might be a reasonable explanation” but “the discrepancies do have to be investigated.”

And they do.

We also contacted the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office, and the Kansas Attorney General’s office about the allegations and the investigative process. Neither would say whether they were investigating the candidates’ claims, or intend to do so.

The UG release said the Legislature provides for an administrative hearing on primary election objections before a board made up of the election commissioner himself, the district attorney and another local elected official “whose position is not involved in the controversy.”

As we said, “the election office can’t investigate itself.” That’s no investigation at all.

In response to our questions about what in our editorial was inaccurate, spokeswoman Ashley Hand answered that there was already a public canvass, and “there is already a process set forth in state law for anyone who wants to challenge the results of a primary election after the canvass has been held. This process, along with any related appeals to the independent judicial branch of government, already provides for the ‘independent review’ suggested in the article. The complainants did not follow the processes as defined by state law and so the suggestion that the Unified Government is somehow eluding review and should welcome it ‘if nothing was amiss’ was unfair.”

The complainants are not lawyers, and if they did not follow the proper protocol, that does not mean their complaints are not valid.

The news release does get one thing right: It says that “misinformation not only creates confusion, it undermines the democratic process.” That’s why we still say the UG should welcome the chance to answer questions raised by these former candidates.

That the office put out a misleading news release instead is not reassuring. It doesn’t mean that there was either “finagling” or “gross negligence,” but it does show how unaccustomed WyCo officials are to valid challenges. To respond as they have is an insult to the voters for whom they work.