Live updates: Voting finally ends at Wichita polling site where people waited hours

Update 9:45 p.m.: The last voter at the Linwood Recreation Center in south Wichita cast her ballot and left the building after waiting in line for more than two hours and 45 minutes.

Pastor Maurice Evans, supervising judge at the precinct, said he arrived at Linwood at 4:47 a.m. Tuesday. After 17 hours on the job, he said he was beyond exhausted.

“Right now, I feel fine. Check on me tomorrow and see how my mental health is doing,” Evans said with a laugh.

He praised the election workers who diligently worked alongside him.

“They’re the superheroes of the world,” Evans said. “Like, they all deserve a mansion and a Mercedes and one of those limos with a pool in the back.

“You have to understand that nobody does this job for any reason other than love for the community. That’s the only reason anyone would ever do this job.”

Four election workers soldiered through the day at the understaffed precinct before another three were called in around 8 p.m. to help keep the line moving. Many voters had to stand in line for at least two and a half hours throughout the afternoon and evening.

Evans said it’s rewarding to play a role in the democratic process — even when that process is decidedly imperfect.

“I am excited that there are so many people — unaffiliated people, Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans — all coming to make their voices heard in record numbers all around our county,” he said.

Update 9 p.m.: Some voters at the Linwood Recreation Center in south Wichita are still waiting to cast their ballots, two hours after polls closed.

Jane Bell, 76, of Wichita, said she got to the crowded polling location around 4 p.m. She walked out the door after voting at 7:58 p.m. She says although the wait was a long, she appreciated seeing so many people showing up to vote.

“Well, the good part is that there are so many that turned out to vote. This the biggest crowd I’ve seen in a very long time during an election. There were a lot of people, young people all the way up to people my age,” Bell said.

Bell says she voted yes on the abortion amendment.

“Once upon a time I found myself in a position where I was pregnant and didn’t have the means to take care of a child. I gave her up for adoption and it was the smartest thing I ever did in my life,” she said.

The supervising election judge at the polling site, Pastor Maurice Evans, said the site was understaffed. He said the Linwood Recreation Center received three additional election workers shortly after 8 p.m. to help move the line along.

Fran, 36, of Wichita, said she got in line “right at 7 p.m. on the dot.” She was the last person in the line. She did not want her last name to be used. She said she plans to vote no on the abortion amendment.

“What brings me out here today is to vote on a very sensitive topic. I’ve had some life and family experiences in the past that led toward voting the way I am today,” she said.

Update 7 p.m.: Polls have closed in Sedgwick County, but multiple voting centers had lines of 100 or more people and wait times between one and two hours.

Anyone in line by 7 p.m. is allowed to vote.

The long lines could delay results reported by the Sedgwick County Election Office until late into the night.

Voters at Linwood Recreation Center, in south Wichita, are reporting wait times of more than two hours. At Berean Baptist Church, in west Wichita, voters are waiting an average of 1 hour and 15 minutes. A voter at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in north Wichita said she waited three hours to vote and was told some of the voting machines were not working.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab said the wait times in Wichita are because Sedgwick County’s election office is short staffed. He said results from the Wichita area will continue to come in as people continue to vote.

At 7:08 p.m., people at the front of the line said they got in line around 4:45 p.m.

Voters wait in a very long line at the Linwood Recreation Center just before polls closed at 7 p.m.
Voters wait in a very long line at the Linwood Recreation Center just before polls closed at 7 p.m.

Voters at Linwood stand in line for more than two hours

Update 5:10 p.m.: Voters at a south Wichita polling station said they had to stand in line for up to two and a half hours to cast their ballots Tuesday afternoon.

Election Day’s longest wait times so far have come at the Linwood Recreation Center, where voters say a shortage of poll workers is bogging down lines.

“As election sites call and tell us that they need more workers, then we do have the ability to redirect those and we have been deploying to other locations as has been necessary,” Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Angela Caudillo said at a 4 p.m. news briefing.

Caudillo chalked the wait times up to higher-than-usual voter turnout, which is being driven by the proposed constitutional amendment that would remove the right to an abortion from the Kansas Constitution.

Moriah Gillespie, 24, of Wichita said she waited in line at the Linwood polling site for two hours to vote against the proposed amendment. Casting her ballot was well worth the wait, she told The Eagle.

“Sugar and spice and my reproductive rights,” Gillespie said.

Two other voters said they waited two and a half hours.

“With all this turnout, we’re just over the moon that so many people wanted to participate,” Caudillo said. “There have been some lines. People have been waiting. We encourage anyone who’s coming out to make sure you have a bottle of water with you.”

Anyone in line at 7 p.m. will be allowed to cast their ballot, she said.

Caudillo said that as of 3:40 p.m., more than 60,000 registered voters had already cast ballots Tuesday. Another 33,300 people voted early in person, and 18,000 mail-in votes had been received by Monday evening, she said.

Caudillo could not provide an update on voting machines at the Westview Baptist Church site, where two of six machines were out of service earlier Tuesday afternoon.

There was no line at New Life Covenant Church on west Douglas, where Caudillo gave her briefing. She said there isn’t any guesswork when it comes to allocating voting machines and poll workers to different polling sites.

“Our resources are allocated based on a plan setup. Those are very specific setups that we have to review for ADA compliance, and so that is how we decided the resources at each site,” Caudillo said. “Each site has a specific number of voters assigned.”

Wichita voters say abortion amendment drew them to stand in line to vote

Update 4:10 p.m.: About two dozen people stood in line at the Risen Savior Lutheran Church in northeast Wichita waiting to cast their ballot on key statewide races on Tuesday afternoon.

All voters, regardless of party affiliation, can cast a ballot on a proposed amendment that would remove the right to abortion from the state constitution.

Juliana Martinez, 25, has a 2-year-old son. She stood in line with about two dozen other people at Risen Savior Lutheran Church in Wichita.

“I chose to vote no simply because there should not be a restriction set on a woman’s body. Whatever a woman decides to do is between her and her doctor. I do believe there should be more resources to aid the women who are affected by either unwanted, unexpected or high risk pregnancies,” Martinez said.

Angela Jenkins, 72, a retired licensed practical nurse, was standing in line at Hope Church in Wichita. Jenkins said the abortion amendment brought her out to vote yes.

“I just believe life is sacred and I don’t want medicine messing with it,” she said.

“It’s about time something like this gets done,” she said.

Jenkins said the line took longer than expected. An election worker said they had more voters in that location than in the 2020 presidential election , although the worker said COVID could have affected the 2020 turnout.

Malfunctioning machines slow lines at one south Wichita polling place

Update 2:55 p.m.: Malfunctioning equipment has left one south Wichita precinct without two of its six voting machines, stagnating lines of would-be voters at Westview Baptist Church on Meridian.

Richard Harris of Wichita said he had been waiting in line for close to an hour at the church Tuesday afternoon.

“The guy running the place came out and apologized, said we’ve got two voting machines down out of six, and he repeatedly would come out and tell people that,” Harris said.

He was waiting in line with roughly 40 other voters, who he said were being “pretty patient.”

“They seem all pretty resigned to the situation at hand,” Harris said.

Sedgwick County spokesperson Nicole Gibbs said the election office is aware of the issue and has sent out technicians to assess the technical difficulties.

“When the technicians are deployed to a place where the machine is having problems, if they can’t remedy the situation in their scope, then we do have backup machines ready to go to replace those machines that they can’t get fixed,” Gibbs said.

Harris said he’s willing to put up with the hassle of waiting in line to cast his vote.

Election office reports complaints, minor issues with a few voting tabulators

Update 12:15 p.m.: Five complaints have been made in Sedgwick County about postcards and flyers being at two churches that served as polling sites, Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Angel Caudillo said during an 11 a.m. news briefing.

Four of the complaints were about oversized postcards urging people to support the Value Them Both Amendment. Those postcards were at Reliance Community Church, 11910 W. Pawnee. The other side was a list of candidates endorsed by Kansans for Life.

The other complaint was about a Value Them Both lawn sign in a church that never got properly put away, Caudillo said. The sign was in a place that most voters don’t go and it was put away when a supervising judge noticed it, she said.

The Value Them Both amendment, if approved by a majority of voters, would remove the right to an abortion from the Kansas Constitution. Caudillo wouldn’t answer questions about whether or not polling places should not be allowed in churches because of the conflict it created in this case.

“We have a lot of polling sites in the community and there are a lot of regulations for polling sites,” she said.

When asked if there would be any penalty for the churches, she said: “We will definitely look into that.”

There were also problems with tabulators that count the votes at two different locations. Caudillo said she would follow up later with the locations where that happened. She said the tabulators wouldn’t read the paper ballot, so one ballot at each location had to be put in a secured box so it could be counted later.

“With any elections, there is going to be bugs to work at the beginning with new staff,” she said, “so that’s why we have a full staff of technicians to go out and make sure they get them up and running as quickly as possible, if there are any issues get them resolved.”

She said voter turnout in other mid-term elections is around 30%. It was at around 25% at 11 a.m.

“It’s always great to see people get out and vote and have their voices heard,” she said.

The media briefing was at the Catholic Church of the Magdalen, 12626 E. 21st Street N., where a massive line of voters snaked around the room.

An election worker told Caudillo: “This is the longest it’s ever been and it keeps getting worse ... We’re improvising.”

Caudillo said the longest wait she had heard about was around an hour at one polling location.

Polling site at Wichita church removes anti-abortion pamphlets after complaints

Update 10 a.m.: Complaints were made of at least one instance of electioneering at the polls.

A stack of Kansans for Life voter guides were left on the reception desk at the polling place at Reliance Community Church, 11910 W. Pawnee, which voters in line trooped past.

“We did not notice them before the voting started,” said Annette Fuston, the supervising poll judge. At least two people called in to the election office to complain and the stack of cards was removed.

“As soon as I was made aware, I got them pulled,” Fuston said.

One side of the oversize postcards urged voters to support the Value Them Both amendment, which would repeal women’s constitutional right to an abortion in Kansas. The other side was a list of candidates endorsed by Kansans for Life.

The Reliance church has been supporting the amendment with yard signs on its property urging a “yes” vote in the runup to the election.

There were signs at both entrances to the church parking lot, but on Tuesday, someone had knocked them over and they were lying in the grass.

‘Extremely significant’: Wichita voters say abortion vote is biggest they’ve cast

Update 8:45 a.m.: A steady stream of people flowed in and out of Grace Presbyterian Church on Douglas with the main purpose of voting on a constitutional amendment on abortion.

A vote no would maintain the right to an abortion in the Kansas constitution.

A vote yes would remove that right from the constitution and allow the Kansas Legislature to impose new restrictions on abortion.

Statewide, more voters than usual could turn out for a primary election. Secretary of State Scott Schwab told the Kansas Reflector on Monday that 270,000 people had voted in-person or by mail in the primary. That’s three times higher than the advanced ballots cast by Kansas voters in the 2018 primary election, the Kansas Reflector reported.

In Wichita, 33,3000 had cast ballots by Monday.

Early voting ended Monday. Tuesday is the last day to vote. Polls will be open until 7 p.m.

A steady stream of people voted at Grace Presbyterian Church on Douglas on Tuesday. The primary election includes a vote on a constitutional amendment on Kansas abortions.
A steady stream of people voted at Grace Presbyterian Church on Douglas on Tuesday. The primary election includes a vote on a constitutional amendment on Kansas abortions.

Outside Grace Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, Molly Kallenbach, 60, of Wichita said the constitutional amendment was the most significant vote she has cast in the 42 years she’s been voting. She would not say how she voted.

Other people also felt it was a very significant vote. They, like Kallenbach, were most interested in the constitutional amendment.

“I feel like there is a lot riding on the line,” said a 32-year-old Wichita woman, who asked not to be named. “All the signs in people’s yards, I feel like they are ready to do something about it,”

She voted yes. She grew up not believing in abortions and still feels that way.

Ricky Miller, 38, voted no.

Miller said he wanted to protect women’s right to choose and didn’t trust that legislators wouldn’t ban abortion in all cases, including if it is medically necessary to save the mother.

“It’s extremely significant,” Miller said about the vote. “This has a huge impact on the future of the rights of women. I have a daughter and I care about her future rights.”

A line of voters wrapped around the lobby of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. The wait time was 20 minutes
A line of voters wrapped around the lobby of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. The wait time was 20 minutes

What you need to know about voting on Election Day in Sedgwick County

Original 4:23 a.m.: It’s Primary Election Day in Kansas. If you’re planning to vote Tuesday, here’s what you need to know.

Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. across Sedgwick County. Anyone in-line at 7 p.m. will be allowed to cast their ballot.

Machine and paper ballot voting options will both be available.

If you’re not sure where your precinct is or want to see a sample ballot, you can use the Secretary of State’s Voter View tool or call the county election office at 316-660-7100.

If you go to the wrong polling place, you can still cast a provisional ballot, which will be counted at the county canvass if you’re a registered voter.

Voters check into Pathway Church at 2001 N Maize Rd
Voters check into Pathway Church at 2001 N Maize Rd

To vote in person, you’ll need to bring a driver’s license or another government-issued photo ID.

Voters will weigh in on key statewide races, including governor, secretary of state and attorney general, as well as state representative and U.S. Senate contests.

All voters, regardless of party affiliation, will be asked to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would remove the right to abortion from the state constitution.

To report issues with voting

Anyone who experiences issues with voting is encouraged to alert the county election office. To report voting issues to The Eagle, please email tips@wichitaeagle.com.

To find voter guide information about amendment, candidates

In search of a voter guide? Find The Eagle’s guide to candidates and races here.

Have questions about the abortion amendment? Find The Eagle’s FAQ here.

Katie Bernard of the Wichita Eagle and Kansas City Star contributed.

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