They aren’t Republican or Democrat. But these Kansans can still show up at the polls.

Stephan Metzger doesn’t call himself a Republican or a Democrat, but he’s thinking about voting in Tuesday’s primary election all the same.

The Manhattan resident is trying to decide whether he will show up to his polling place, choose a political party and vote in the primary. It’s an option Metzger and other Kansas voters who don’t belong to either party are seriously considering.

Metzger is leaning toward voting in the Republican primary, but hasn’t made up his mind. He says he can have a bigger impact in the Republican primary because there are more contested races.

But he’s conflicted about it.

“That’s really the crux of it: Do I want to affiliate, do I want to be a part of the Republican Party even though I don’t consider myself a Republican?” Metzger said.

Under Kansas law, if you’re an unaffiliated voter (meaning you didn’t choose a party when you registered to vote), you can still vote in Tuesday’s primary election. All you need to do is show up at your polling place on Election Day and declare a party. You’ll then be able to vote in that party’s primary.

After that, you can’t change back to unaffiliated until Sept. 1.

Unaffiliated voters make up 31 percent of all registered voters in Kansas — about 558,000 of 1.8 million registered voters. Kansas has more unaffiliated voters than Democrats, who number roughly 436,000. Only Republicans outnumber unaffiliated voters, with nearly 790,000 registered voters.

If even a fraction of the state’s unaffiliated voters showed up at the polls, they could wield significant influence in the Republican or Democratic primaries.

But whether they will show up in significant numbers is another story.

Brandi Fisher, director of the Mainstream Coalition, a group that works to elect moderate candidates, said it had knocked on thousands of doors over the past few days, with an emphasis on reaching unaffiliated voters.

Fisher herself is unaffiliated. She said she plans to vote in the primary but is still deciding which party she’ll choose.

Unaffiliated voters often don’t receive campaign materials in the mail and don’t know that much about the races, she said.

“I think so many of them don’t know they can declare a party,” Fisher said.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is running in the Republican race for governor, downplayed the potential effect of unaffiliated voters in the primary. Kobach predicts a 26 percent turnout among all voters in Tuesday’s election, which would be the highest turnout for a primary election in more than 10 years.

Kobach is predicting about 468,500 voters will cast ballots. The prediction takes into account unaffiliated voters.

Bryan Caskey, the state’s director of elections, said his sense is that Kansas is a “little bit ahead” of previous years in the number of unaffiliated voters joining a party. In previous years, between 3,000 and 4,000 people have affiliated during the entire election cycle — both the primary and general election — he said.

“That’s a relatively small number compared to the tens of thousands” of votes already cast,” Kobach said.

More than 33,000 advance votes have been cast in the Republican primary, the secretary of state’s office said Thursday. Nearly 21,000 have already voted in the Democratic primary.

Kobach is the main consideration for some unaffiliated voters who are choosing whether to participate. Several unaffiliated voters who spoke to The Eagle said they were considering voting in the Republican primary for the sole purpose of opposing Kobach.

“I felt really compelled to enter the race” for that reason, said Anita Parsa, an unaffiliated Johnson County voter.

Other unaffiliated voters are choosing to participate in the Democratic primary. Kansas Democrats are heading into their first contested primary election for governor in decades.

Topeka state Sen. Laura Kelly, former state Rep. Josh Svaty and former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer are all competing for the nomination.

Waylon Cooper, an unaffiliated voter in Wichita, plans to vote in the Democratic primary for Svaty and then switch back after the election is over.

“I had to decide if I was better off voting against candidates I do not want to see elected, or if I was better off voting for the candidates I want to win in November. Initially I leaned heavily to voting against the people I want to lose, but I have decided to instead vote for the candidates I want to win,” Cooper said.

Kansas Democratic Party director Ethan Corson said the party had already seen a significant number of previously unaffiliated voters register as Democrats in order to vote in the primary.

“For many voters, they either weren’t alive or weren’t old enough to vote in our last competitive gubernatorial primary, so there’s a lot of energy and excitement,” Corson said.

The party discourages strategic voting, he said. The practice involves people who become Republicans or Democrats in order to vote in a primary but then quickly leave the party. Individuals who identify as a Democrat should register and participate in the primary, he said.

Kansas Republican Party director Jim Joice didn’t respond to a request for comment. Previous party director Clay Barker, who now works for Gov. Jeff Colyer, has said in the past that joining a party for the sole purpose of voting in its primary is unethical.

Metzger said he understands the arguments on both sides.

He worked on a past legislative campaign for Sen. John Doll, who was a Republican until he became an independent and joined independent Greg Orman’s ticket as running mate. Metzger said he is not a Republican and joining a party to vote in the primary could feel like putting on a team’s jersey.

But he said if there are concerns about unaffiliated voters jumping into primaries, the law can always be changed to prevent it.

“On the one hand, you don’t want to undermine what is a Republican or a Democratic process,” Metzger said. “But on the other hand, that option is available to me.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2018 at 9:43 PM with the headline "They aren’t Republican or Democrat. But these Kansans can still show up at the polls.."