WICHITA — Thousands of Reno County voters usually cast their ballots at the Kansas State Fairgrounds in Hutchinson, a central location with a high capacity.
Deputy Election Officer Jenna Fager said it’ll look different for this year’s August primary and November general election to avoid spreading the coronavirus. How different, though, she’s not sure.
“We’d have to consult emergency management and our health department and just, kind of, do the best we can,” she said.
Fager is one of dozens of county election officials in Kansas preparing for two possibly unusual elections — and an expected surge in voting by mail. Kansas law requires polling places to be open on election days, so counties are looking to stock up on disinfectants and protective gear. And unlike neighboring Missouri, voters in Kansas don’t have to have a specific excuse to request a mail-in ballot.
Though mail-in voting might be a safe and convenient option for voters, it also comes with its own costs and challenges.
“The cost of envelopes, paper ballots, and postage will likely be significantly more than we budgeted for those purposes,” said Marion County Clerk Tina Spencer, who oversees elections for the county’s more than 7,500 voters and eight polling places.
Spencer said the county election board will also likely have to meet once or twice per week in the weeks leading up to election day to process the additional advance ballots.
Johnson County officials are shipping vote-by-mail applications directly to all registered voters. Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt said she hopes that will help prevent overcrowding or long lines at polling places.
“We won’t be able to have as many voting machines in some of the locations as we’ve had in the past,” she told The Kansas City Star. “They will have to be spread out. That’s another reason why we’re encouraging people to vote by mail this time.”
It’s difficult to estimate what it would take for the entire state to run elections by mail.
“Elections in Kansas are conducted at the county level, and depending on the election, the ballot length, ballot weight and a number of other factors,” said Joanna Dolan, principal research analyst at the Kansas Legislative Research Department, “costs could vary from county to county and election to election.”
Sending applications to its more than 400,000 registered voters will cost Johnson County an estimated $120,000. They’re hoping they’ll be reimbursed with federal funds, which were made available through the CARES Act. Of the $400 million nationally, Kansas will receive just under $4 million, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab said.
That money will help cover safety measures for polling places, like hand sanitizer, disinfectants and protective gear, as well as the additional postage and processing that’s expected with extra mail-in ballots.
Costs, approaches vary by county
The funds will also reimburse counties who have already incurred some of those expenses. Fager said Reno County secured protective gear and other materials for its polling places through local resources.
