After lines, miscues at polling sites, what can Sedgwick County voters expect Nov. 8?

More Election Day lines are likely for Sedgwick County voters, some of whom waited up to three hours to cast a ballot on Aug. 2 amid record-setting voter turnout.

A heat map on the election office’s website predicts that voters on Nov. 8 could face wait times at more than half of the county’s 81 polling stations, including most Wichita precincts.

“If everybody shows up on Election Day rather than some people voting early, there will definitely be lines in some places,” Election Commissioner Angela Caudillo told The Eagle.

“If you live in one of those areas in red, the polling place you’re assigned to, we expect over 2,000 voters to physically walk through those doors on Election Day. At some, we’re expecting closer to 3,000.”

But Caudillo says her office is working to prevent a repeat of August, when high turnout and staffing issues triggered multi-hour waits in Wichita and an election worker’s mistake kept a number of suburban residents from voting.

Caudillo, who replaced Tabitha Lehman as the county’s top election official in July 2021, told county commissioners before the primary that her office was expecting 50% voter turnout and preparing for as much as 65%.

The actual turnout of 43% — a record driven by the failed Value Them Both abortion amendment — proved to stretch the election office to its limits. The last voter at the Linwood Recreation Center precinct cast her ballot at 9:45 p.m. after standing in line for more than two hours and 45 minutes.

The most glaring miscue came roughly 20 minutes before polls closed at the Maize Recreation Commission precinct, where two poll workers told as many as 150 people standing in line to leave and vote at another precinct.

Caudillo said that decision was made unilaterally without her approval. She’s since spoken directly with the workers involved and says her office has emphasized in its training that anyone in line at 7 p.m. is allowed to cast a ballot.

“It was unfortunate that the way that it was said was, ‘You can go somewhere else and here’s how long you have to get there,’” Caudillo said. “You know, I heard it a couple of different ways but the intent, I know, was not to turn people away.”

She said she’s confident there won’t be a repeat of the Maize incident this fall.

Asked if Secretary of State Scott Schwab still has confidence in his appointee, Caudillo, a representative for his office gave a general response.

“Our election officials do an excellent job of administering safe and secure elections,” Whitney Tempel said in an email.

Beating the election crowd

Early voting runs through Nov. 7 at the election office and from Nov. 1-5 at 16 satellite locations across the county.

Jane Rhoads of Wichita stood in line for about half an hour to cast her ballot Friday morning at the county election office, where a line of roughly 50 people snaked through the halls of the historic courthouse.

“When I voted on the abortion amendment, the lines were really long. But I was very surprised on this one,” Rhoads said.

“I thought, being a Friday morning at 11, there wouldn’t be many people. And I was wrong.”

Want to vote early in Sedgwick County? Here’s all 16 satellite sites on a map

Caudillo said a long-term solution for voter wait times would be to open additional polling stations across the county. But that’s not in the cards for her cash-strapped department this year.

“We’re going to look at our opportunities for 2023 and 2024 and see what we need to do — if we need to add some locations,” Caudillo said.

“It would be helpful if Sedgwick County would fund the office at similar levels of other large counties,” said Tempel, the secretary of state spokesperson.

The election office has previously staffed as many as 208 polling places, cutting back to 62 in 2006 when former Election Commissioner Bill Gale began sending out advance by mail ballots to all registered voters.

In August, Caudillo blamed multi-hour wait times on the unusually high number of would-be poll workers who called in sick. She couldn’t say exactly how many people called in but said most absences were due to COVID-19 exposure.

Her office has so far hired 630 Election Day workers — 70 more than in August — and is still accepting applications. Election clerks and supervising judges make $7.50 and $10 an hour, respectively. The commission has approved $1 pay increases for both positions in 2023.

Poll workers are expected to arrive at precincts at 4:45 a.m. and stay to clean up after the last voter in line at 7 p.m. casts their ballot.

“If somebody wants to do their part but doesn’t want to do an entire day, we have roles for individuals to go out and lock the drop box slots at 7 p.m. on election night,” Caudillo said. Bipartisan teams of two go together to lock the drop boxes.

‘All paper ballots’

Several instances of minor voting machine malfunctions also held up lines in August. Caudillo said she’s confident the technology is in good working condition ahead of Nov. 8.

“We have this equipment and it’s great equipment but it’s still mechanical,” Caudillo said. “Our ExpressVote ballot-marking devices — basically they’re a big touch screen printer.”

The malfunctions in August amounted to printer jams, she said.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Kansas City threw out a lawsuit attempting to stop the use of electronic voting machines and ballot drop boxes in the 2022 midterms. Both have become central to numerous election fraud conspiracy theories.

Caudillo said there’s a reliable paper trail for every ballot cast in Sedgwick County. Machines print out voted ballots, which are then entered manually into a tabulator.

“These are all paper ballots, and that’s the beauty of the system,” Caudillo said. “They’re paper ballots, so if for some reason they won’t scan there, they’ll still scan here, and if for some reason they won’t still scan here, they can still be counted manually. So there’s always a provision to make sure that those ballots will be counted.”

A Fort Hays State weighted survey analysis published last week found that more than two-thirds of adult Kansas residents have faith in the state’s elections.

“Safeguards like voter ID, voter-verified paper ballots, and post-election audits assure voters their vote was counted,” Tempel said.

This year’s midterm ballot for Sedgwick County’s 330,000 registered voters features the governor’s race and several other statewide contests, a U.S. Senate race, retention votes for six of the seven justices on the Kansas Supreme Court and two proposed constitutional amendments.

Three Sedgwick County commissioners are up for re-election, and Wichita voters will be asked to decide whether or not USD 259 should switch to district-specific school board voting or continue selecting members at-large.

Voters can view a sample ballot and review their polling information online through the secretary of state’s Voter View tool.