Is Sedgwick County counting illegal ballots? Irregularities cloud vote count
Sedgwick County commissioners took the rare step Thursday of ordering the election office to count ballots that may not have arrived by the legal deadline after the Aug. 3 city council primary.
The commissioners, sitting as the county’s canvassing board, rejected a recommendation by the new election commissioner, Angela Caudillo, who recommended tossing the votes out.
At issue are 37 ballots that were postmarked on election day.
State law says that if those ballots are delivered by the end of the following Friday, they count. And if they don’t arrive by then, they don’t count.
But commissioners said there was no way to tell whether the ballots arrived on time or not. Caudillo acknowledged that the election office didn’t check the mail after 8 a.m. Friday.
The ballots all showed up when they checked Monday morning.
Late Thursday, Caudillo said she’ll take action between now and the November election to ensure the problem isn’t repeated.
“We’ll review the processes and make sure we have something in place that makes sense,” she said.
Former election commissioner Tabitha Lehman, who left office in July after Caudillo was appointed to replace her, said it was rare to have more than a handful of too-late mail ballots. And in most cases, the ones that were postmarked on time but showed up late were mailed from out of state.
“We normally would go (to the Post Office) in the morning and they would deliver the mail late in the afternoon if they had any more, because we always worked that out with the Post Office,” Lehman said.
“We would contact them before every big election” to arrange late deliveries and there had been times when postal employees would bring mail near midnight to beat deadlines, she said. “They’d done that for years for us.”
Commissioner Jim Howell said the slow delivery of the ballots should be investigated to make sure the situation isn’t repeated.
“I don’t know if this is a consequence of a transfer of one (election) commissioner to the next — maybe some processes are not understood. I really can’t explain why that happened,” Howell said. “But I do know that once we understood what happened, I think the entire canvassing board was kind of disappointed in that.”
Howell said he and his colleagues were prepared to defy state law if they had to.
“The attorney basically reiterated that there wasn’t really a provision in the law for us to accept these ballots. I said, ‘Sue me. I’m going to accept them anyway,” Howell said. “And I think my colleagues all agreed.”
“This afternoon, he said he has reviewed the law and he believes there would be defense for us to do what we did,” Howell said.
Commissioners also voted to send a letter to Wichita Postmaster Ryon Knopik — and to copy U.S. Senators Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall along with Congressman Ron Estes — seeking an investigation and assurance it won’t happen again.
Knopik did not return phone calls and did not respond to emailed questions Thursday.
“We want to make sure people’s votes get counted,” Commissioner Lacey Cruse said. “There shouldn’t be a reason why it should take that long for someone in town who’s voting in a city council race for their ballot to be lost in the shuffle at the Post Office.”
Cruse requested that in the future Caudillo make a second trip to the post office at 5 p.m. on Fridays following elections.
Commission Chairman Pete Meitzner said regardless of fault, he just wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“The bottom line is those 37 (votes) did get counted,” he said. “And it was a small election . . . We’ve got a big one coming up in November and a huge one a year from now. I didn’t want to have thousands get postmarked Tuesday and then not show up, that’s for sure.”
Commissioner David Dennis said he decided to stand with the voters because they did their job and mailed their votes on time — and they shouldn’t be punished whether the delay was caused by the Post Office, the election office or both.
Lehman served 10 years as election commissioner, but Secretary of State Scott Schwab told her in January that he wouldn’t reappoint her after they had a conflict over remote access to election computers.
Lehman, who was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer last year, was under doctor’s orders not to go to the office because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She largely ran the 2020 election from home through a secured line set up by the county government.
Schwabb said that was an unacceptable security risk and the reason he wouldn’t reappoint Lehman.
After Lehman was dismissed, both of her deputies, Sandra Gritz and Melissa Schnieders, also resigned, leaving a management vacuum at the top level of the election office.
The disputed ballots weren’t enough to change any races.
In the final tally, Mike Hoheisel, 437 votes, and appointed incumbent Jared Cerullo, 395 votes, remained the No. 1 and 2 candidates in Wichita City Council District 3.
In Wichita District 6, Maggie Ballard got 1,240 votes to incumbent Cindy Claycomb’s 1,172 and their 1-2 finish didn’t change either.
In the only other race on the ballot, Wichita Police Officer Charley Davidson finished first with 103 votes in Park City’s Ward 1; the second place finisher, Angie Carter, got 29 votes.
All six candidates advance to the Nov. 2 general election.
This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 5:03 PM.
