Tuesday’s record voter turnout in Sedgwick County came with some long waits, miscues

Primary Election Day in Sedgwick County was marked by strong voter turnout and some problems at the polls, including long lines at several precincts and an incident in Maize where as many as 150 voters were turned away.

Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Angela Caudillo called the roughly 43% of registered voters who cast ballots a county record for a statewide primary election. She said 90,000 people voted in person Tuesday.

“I know that some people did wait in line but we’re just excited that they came out to vote,” Caudillo said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

Roughly 20 minutes before polls closed at the Maize Recreation Commission precinct, two poll workers told voters standing in line that they needed to leave and go to another precinct.

Caudillo called that decision a mistake that was made unilaterally, without her office’s knowledge. She said Wednesday that she is in communication with the workers about why they gave the directive, but would not say if her office is taking any disciplinary action against them.

After learning of the incident, the election office notified supervising judges at other precincts that if voters came from the Maize Rec site, they must be allowed to vote provisionally.

Caudillo said about 70 of those voters cast provisional ballots at the nearby Life Church polling site in Maize but could not say how many of those who were wrongfully turned away had a chance to vote Tuesday night.

A number of sites saw long lines, which appeared to be exacerbated by a shortage of poll workers and several malfunctioning machines. The last voter at the Linwood Recreation Center precinct cast her ballot at 9:45 p.m. Tuesday after standing in line for more than two hours and 45 minutes.

Jane Bell, 76, of Wichita, said she got to the crowded Linwood location around 4 p.m. She walked out the door after voting at 7:58 p.m. She said 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.

Wait times of more than two hours were common for voters all day at the understaffed Linwood polling station, and voters at several other precincts reported similar delays.

“Lines were long at some places. Lines were not long at all places,” Caudillo said.

She said moving forward, her office will reassess its allocation of poll workers and voting machines at each of the county’s 81 polling sites.

At a news conference earlier Wednesday, Bryan Caskey, director of elections for Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office, said an abnormally high number of poll workers called in sick Tuesday in both Sedgwick and Johnson County, where some voters also faced long wait times.

Caudillo said between 500 and 600 election workers manned the polls Tuesday. She could not say how many would-be workers called in sick. 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

“All across the state, we’re going to make a concerted effort to have a bigger backup pool in case we have last-minute cancellations like we did this time,” Caskey said.

In the last three midterm primary elections, between 20% and 27% of Sedgwick County voters have turned out. Tuesday’s showing comfortably outpaced the 34% who cast ballots in the 2020 presidential primary.

High turnout was largely driven by the referendum on a proposed constitutional amendment that would have said there is no right to an abortion in the Kansas Constitution. That ballot measure failed by a margin of more than 17 percentage points statewide, with about 58% of Sedgwick County voters in opposition.

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

“With every election, there’s something to learn, and I think we’ve definitely learned something this election,” Caudillo said Wednesday. “We’ll be debriefing and looking at all of the things that went right and all of the things that went wrong. Definitely voter engagement, voter participation, voter turnout went right. If there’s anything we can do to alleviate long lines, we’ll do that.”

Contibuting: Eduardo Castillo of The Eagle