Polling place for Maize voters moved by mistake

Maize voters will have a different polling place for the April 11 special congressional election because of a miscommunication between City Hall and the county election office.

Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said she moved the polling station to The Ark Church, about two miles north, because her staff was told the city building wouldn’t be available on Election Day.

Moving the Maize polling place resulted from a mistake, said Becky Bouska, deputy city manager. She said that when the election office called, a city worker told them that the City Council chamber wasn’t available because the Park and Tree Board was meeting.

Bouska said city management would have been happy to move the park meeting to another conference room to accommodate the election.

Bouska said a reporter’s call inquiring why the city building was unavailable was the first management heard that the polling place was being moved.

“It was a total miscommunication between the election office and us,” Bouska said. “We called and tried to get them to move it back, but it was too late.”

Lehman said her office staff had tried to reach the city clerk by e-mail but didn’t get a response. And when they called and were told the building wasn’t available, they found a new polling place at The Ark.

She said it will be extra work to set up a new polling place at the church. But notices have already been mailed informing voters about the move, and to move it back now would be “total chaos,” Lehman said.

The April 11 vote will be a special election to fill the seat vacated when Mike Pompeo resigned from Congress to become CIA chief in the Trump administration.

The candidates to replace Pompeo are state Treasurer Ron Estes, a Republican; civil-rights lawyer James Thompson, a Democrat; and flight simulator instructor Chris Rockhold, a Libertarian.

The Ark Church, distinctively designed to resemble the biblical Noah’s Ark, is at 5501 N. Maize Road, Maize.

This story was originally published March 11, 2017 at 4:42 PM with the headline "Polling place for Maize voters moved by mistake."