Results trickled in throughout the night. Sedgwick County election officials explain why
As Election Day results trickled in Tuesday night in Sedgwick County, the total number of unofficial ballots cast on Tuesday stood at 206,356 — roughly 59% voter turnout, Board of Election officials said.
But vote-counting was going slowly.
The Election Office staff explained why it was taking longer than usual to process the ballots in this election.
“I want to apologize for the late final results coming in. Technology is to blame. We had a fabulous day. The election ran very smoothly,” Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater said.
County spokeswoman Stephanie Birmingham said media sticks — a type of thumb drive — carry all the vote information from each polling site and then are uploaded into the election software, which then counts and processes it all.
“The information from them [media sticks] has to be uploaded into electionware, and it’s simply taking a long time to upload all the information,” she said midway through the evening.
Electionware is an election management software that allows jurisdictions of all sizes to manage their elections, according to the company’s website.
There are just under 345,000 registered voters in Sedgwick County. About 97,000 voted early. Rainwater said Tuesday morning she thought that there would be around 70% voter turnout.
“We’re going to struggle to get to 70. I mean, at this point, we’re averaging about 6,300 voters an hour,” Rainwater said at a briefing later in the day. “We’re only at 56,555 ... it’s probably going to be around 60-65% turnout.”
Lighter-than-expected turnout
No polling sites in Sedgwick County experienced any problems on election day, including electioneering, Rainwater said.
It was a little less turnout on Election Day than early voting, Rainwater added.
“It was light today, and you know, we had the initial burst right at 6 a.m. where lines were kind of long before going to work, and then it just trickled in throughout the day,” Rainwater said. “There were never long lines anywhere throughout the day, even at the end of the night, there were no long lines.”
There was no line at the Linwood Recreation Center, 1901 S. Kansas Ave. in south Wichita, where the 3 p.m. briefing was held.
Election officials said they think that a heavy turnout during early voting helped make the voting lines much more manageable on Tuesday.
The presidential race between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris was the big draw getting people to the polls.
“That’s the only thing I was really worried about” was the presidential election, said 43-year-old Akisha Hamilton, who is a paraeducator for elementary students in USD 259.
She voted for Harris.
“After all the things that previously been ... said about Trump, I decided that wasn’t a vote for me, even though I wasn’t 100% for Kamala. I just thought that I am going to take a chance with them versus all the lies . . . I’ve been seeing.”
Tammy Petersen, a 59-year-old account manager at Textron Aviation, said this race was enough to get her to vote for the first time in over 20 years.
“I want America back,” she said. “I don’t like her [Harris]. I think she’s fake. I think he did a great job when he was in the presidency. I think the Democrats were unfair through the whole thing.”
Live election results for races in Wichita, Sedgwick County and south-central Kansas can be found here.
