Is my vote secure? Answers to your questions about paper ballots, counting around Kansas City
On Aug. 2, Kansas Citians will vote in different counties or jurisdictions based on where they live, but each election board has a process for safely and securely counting ballots to make sure each vote counts.
The Kansas City Election Board oversees elections for Kansas City, Missouri, residents who live south of the river. While the Jackson County Election Board manages elections for residents in Jackson County who live outside of the Kansas City — think Independence or Raytown.
Platte County Board of Elections and Clay County Board of Election Commissioners covers everything north of the Missouri River. People who live west of North Platte Purchase Road should check in with Platte County, and folks who live east of the road should go to Clay county for more information. Those who live south of Jackson County, in cities like Raymore or Belton, should check in with the Cass County Election Authority.
On the Kansas side, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County Election Office covers Kansas City, Kansas, and broader Wyandotte County. And the Johnson County Election Board oversees elections in Johnson County.
You can find your polling place in Missouri by visiting here and find your Kansas polling place by visiting here.
Readers recently wrote to The Star asking important questions about the upcoming election, including whether there will be paper ballots and what assurances there are of a fair and legal election.
We took your questions to local election officials ahead of the Aug. 2 primary. Here’s what we learned.
Will there be paper ballots?
Paper ballots are the default option at all polling places in the Kansas City area.
When voters arrive at their polling place, they will either be handed a paper ballot or be guided to a digital ballot marking machine, which are typically reserved for disabled voters and available at nearly all polling sites.
The majority of ballots are cast by using just paper ballots, which are marked by hand.
What happens to my ballot when I cast my vote?
Voters who use paper ballots will mark their choice. The voter will then take their ballot and insert it into a digital scanning machine, which collects and counts their vote.
Voters using a digital ballot machine will make their selections on the device’s touchscreen. The ballot marking machine will then print out a paper ballot to be scanned.
The scanner takes a digital picture of the individual ballot, and all of the ballot pictures are loaded onto an encrypted thumb drive. Once that thumb drive makes it back to the election office, election officials will load it onto a separate tabulator to get the final vote count.
“I know that people are concerned,” Jackson County Election Board director Sara Zorich said about voters who are in favor of paper ballots and limited technology. “But, you know, you do have the option and we always have paper ballots.”
Tell me more about the equipment used to count votes
Kansas City, Johnson County and Wyandotte County use election equipment from Electric Systems and Software, including a touch screen ballot marking device, which prints out paper ballots, and a ballot scanner, which scans each ballot.
Jackson County uses voter machines manufactured by Unisyn. They include a touch screen ballot marking device called the OpenElect Voting Interface and a scanner called the OpenElect Voting Optical.
Paper ballots are available at each polling place in the Kansas City region and are the default option. After a voter marks their choices on a paper ballot, the voter inserts the ballot to a digital scanning machine, which collects and counts their vote.
Are any machines hooked up to the internet?
None of the voting machines used in the Kansas City area are connected to the internet.
It is a common misconception that the machines are hooked up to the internet, said Michael Abbott, Election Commissioner of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas.
“It’s just not how it works,” he said.
Because the machines are not connected to the internet, there is a chain of custody for the encrypted thumb drives used on Election Day to ensure that the results safely make it to the election headquarters of each jurisdiction, without being tampered with in any way.
“They’ll pull those [thumb drives] out, we’ll seal them in a bag, and they’ll have a bipartisan team bring them down to the election board,” Shawn Kieffer, Kansas City Election Board director said.
Johnson and Wyandotte counties have a very similar process, where the supervising judge at each polling location brings the thumb drive back after it has been verified, and poll workers have signed off on the count of total ballots at that polling site.
How are mailed-in ballots counted?
Mail-in ballots are cast by mail ahead of time. Each election office starts processing those mailed-in ballots shortly before Election Day.
The main difference between how mailed-in ballots are cast and in-person voting, is that they arrive in a mailing envelope that needs to be separated from the ballot before it can be cast.
The Kansas City Election Board begins processing absentee or mailed-in ballots the Thursday before the election. Kansas City election officials organize and verify the mail-in ballots and then wait until Election Day to run them through a scanner called a DS450, according to Kieffer, the election board director.
In both Johnson and Wyandotte counties, there is a small appointed bipartisan board that collects and processes the mailed-in ballots
“In Kansas they’re allowed to start processing the mail ballots as soon as they come in. So we’re able to check in the voter, verify their identification and verify their signature,” said Fred Sherman, Johnson County election commissioner. Once each ballot has been verified by the board, they are then scanned and tabulated. “We do not release any results until after 7 p.m. on Election Day.”
In Jackson County, there’s an absentee office, where a bipartisan team verifies and counts those absentee ballots separately.
“They sit together as a team, and read off the names and then open the envelopes and separate the envelope from the ballot,” Jackson County Election Board Director Sara Zorich said.
“Then once that’s done, those ballots get [taken] into the tabulation room. And that’s where they’re run and tabulated just like at the end of the night for the regular Election Day ballots.”
How do I know if my mailed-in ballot was counted?
If you are voting in Kansas, the best way to confirm that your ballot was received by election officials is to check the Secretary of State’s VoterView tool. This way voters can see when the commissioner’s office actually receives their ballot. Once it is received, it is separated from its mailing envelope to maintain anonymity.
For Jackson County and Kansas City election boards, the best way to check on your ballot is to call. Jackson County Election Board can be reached at 816-325-4600, and Kansas City Election Board can be reached at 816-842-4820.
“There’s a lot of other entities who have election boards and county clerks that have tracking. We’ve looked into it [but] it’s super expensive,” Zorich from Jackson County said. “It’s not something we’re ready to do right now, but it is something that we were looking into.”
How are provisional ballots counted?
Provisional ballots are used when someone needs to cast their vote but they don’t have the right ID, or there is an issue with their voter registration. These votes need further verification in order to be counted.
In both Wyandotte and Johnson counties, a board of canvassers, typically made up of county commissioners, will review the provisional ballots from each election and decide whether or not they should be counted. When deciding on whether a provisional ballot should be counted, the commissioner will factor in things like whether the person voted in the right location, whether they are registered at all or whether they have confirmed their identity by bringing a valid ID to the commissioner. The election commissioner will also make a case for ballots to be counted.
“That is also open to the public, anybody could come and see that,” Wyandotte County Election Commissioner Michael Abbott said.
In Jackson County and Kansas City, the process is a bit different.
In Kansas City, election officials will go through the provisional ballots and verify the identity and registration of each voter who cast a provisional ballot. Then a second group of people, including the election board directors will make a final determination on each ballot.
“We invite the public in and they come in and watch… then we count them and once counted, the ones that count are run through the [voting] machine and added to the totals,” Kieffer, director of the Kansas City Election Board, said.
Zorich, the Jackson County director, said her office doesn’t receive many provisional ballots, but when they do, a bipartisan team will check each provisional ballot to make sure that the voter is an active registered voter and that the signatures on the ballot match.
Do the election boards test equipment?
Kansas law requires election officials to host a public test of voter equipment prior to each election.
“We do go through a full logic and accuracy testing, where every piece of equipment that is deployed… does go through some kind of test scenarios, a test election,” Sherman, Johnson County’s election commissioner, said. “We make sure that it’s functioning and calibrated correctly. We will also do a public test that is open to the public.”
Johnson County’s public test of the voting equipment will be held on Thursday, July 28 at 2 p.m. at 2101 E. Kansas City Rd. in Olathe.
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County’s Election office goes through a series of tests to make sure the voting machines are working properly as well. Wyandotte County’s public test will be on July 26 at 10 a.m. at 850 State Ave., Kansas City, Kansas.
Jackson County Election Board will have a public test on August 1 at 9 a.m. at 215 N Liberty St., Independence.
The Kansas City Election Board doesn’t have a public test scheduled for the upcoming election, but if you want more information, you can visit here to learn more about their equipment or give them a call at 816-842-4820.
