Wichita voters: Don’t panic over mail ballots, but move fast if you want to vote early
As election offices across the country struggle with worries about mail delivery of ballots, Sedgwick County election officials report they’re getting royal treatment from the local Postal Service.
To figure out how fast the mail was being delivered, Deputy Election Commissioner Melissa Schnieders checked through a stack of mail ballot envelopes that had arrived Thursday. All the ballots had been mailed in Wichita, were postmarked Wednesday and arrived in a day.
Asked if the election office had had any problems with mail delivery, Schnieders said “None. They’re really working hard for us.”
In fact, postal employees even made an 11:50 p.m. delivery of last-minute mail-ballot applications, to beat the midnight Tuesday deadline when those had to be received at the election office.
“They literally drove over with an additional 112 applications,” Schnieders said. “If they hadn’t done that, those people wouldn’t get their (mail) ballots.”
While the Post Office has been quick to deliver mail ballots, Schnieders is asking voters to have some patience with the election office in getting the ballots processed.
The office has tray upon tray of ballots and employees are working overtime to get them into the system as fast as possible.
Mail ballots are counted in advance of Election Day, but the results are withheld until the polls close to avoid influencing the election.
The volume of mail ballots has been huge this year.
Of a total 323,000 registered voters in Sedgwick County, about 96,000 requested mail ballots amid widespread concern over standing in line at election-day polling sites during the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 70,500 of those ballots have been returned to the election office so far.
It’s a figure that’s eclipsed the approximately 60,000 mail ballots sent out in the 2016 election and the approximately 40,000 sent out in presidential elections of 2008 and 2012.
Of the ballots that have been received, 46,522 had been processed and confirmed for counting by the end of the business day Thursday.
An estimated 24,000 sealed ballots remained to be verified, with more arriving daily, Schnieders said.
The bottleneck is that Sedgwick County has only one machine that photographs the envelopes.
Then, each ballot is individually hand-checked to ensure that the signature on the envelope matches the voter’s signature on file with the election office.
Signature verification goes slowly because it has to be done by election office workers who are trained and background-checked, so it can’t be farmed out to volunteers, Schnieders said.
If you have a mail ballot and haven’t filled it out yet, you still have options:
▪ You can still mail it in. Ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received at the election office by Friday will still count.
▪ You can drop it in one of the 14 official ballot drop boxes around the county until 7 p.m. Tuesday when the polls officially close. A list of those locations appears at the end of this story.
▪ You can drop it off Saturday between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the Intrust Bank Arena or any of the 16 neighborhood early voting sites around the county, also listed below.
▪ You can drop it off Saturday through Tuesday at the Sedgwick County election office, 510 N. Main, 9 a.m to 4 p.m. Saturday, or 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Tuesday.
▪ You can drop your ballot off at an open polling place on Election Day.
If you’ve mailed your ballot and want to check to see if it’s been processed yet, you can do that at the secretary of state’s VoterView website: myvoteinfo.voteks.org/voterview.
But Schnieders said voters shouldn’t panic if their ballot doesn’t show up immediately, because it takes time to process the envelopes and get the information up on the website.
Because of high interest in the election and national controversy over the integrity of the mail and voting systems, Schnieders said voters have been mailing in their ballots earlier than usual. And they are quicker to call and e-mail asking why their completed ballot’s not showing up on VoterView.
“They expect it to be instantaneous,” she said. “It’s just not possible.”
In addition to the 70,000 mail ballots, about another 50,000 have voted at the election office or the advance voting sites scattered around the community, including the “mega” voting site at Intrust Bank Arena.
This is the first — and probably last — time that Intrust will be used as a voting site.
The venue was only available because of the pandemic, which has brought live entertainment to a screeching halt across the country, Schnieders said.
Under ordinary circumstances, the arena would be too busy with its schedule of shows and events to host a major voting site, she said.
Early voting nears end
These sites will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday for early voting and drop-off of completed mail ballots. If you are just dropping off a ballot, you don’t have to wait in line and can proceed directly to the ballot box:
▪ Intrust Bank Arena, 500 E Waterman, Wichita
▪ Bel Aire City Building, 7651 E. Central Park, Bel Aire
▪ Goddard School District Conference Center, 315 S Main, Goddard
▪ Grace Presbyterian Church, 5002 E. Douglas, Wichita
▪ Haysville Community Library, 210 Hays Ave., Haysville
▪ Machinists Building, 3830 S. Meridian, Wichita
▪ Park City City Hall, 1941 E. 61st St. North, Park City
▪ Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, 2727 E. 25th St. North, Wichita
▪ Reformation Lutheran Church, 7601 E. 13th St., Wichita
▪ Sedgwick County Extension Office, 7001 W. 21st St., Wichita
▪ SEIU Building, 3340 W. Douglas, Wichita
▪ Sharon Baptist Church, 2221 S. Oliver, Wichita
▪ St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, 2555 Hyacinth Lane, Wichita
▪ Valley Center Community Center, 314 Clay, Valley Center
▪ Westlink Church of Christ, 10025 W. Central, Wichita
▪ Woodland Lakes Community Church, 770 S. Greenwich Road, Wichita
▪ Woodlawn Methodist Church, 431 S. Woodlawn Blvd., Derby
▪ Sedgwick County election office, 510 N. Main. In addition to the 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday hours, residents can also vote from 8 a.m. to noon Monday.
Ballot drop box locations
Completed mail ballots (envelopes sealed and signed) can be dropped off at these locations 24 hours a day until 7 p.m. Tuesday:
▪ Bel-Aire City Hall, 7651 E. Central Park, Bel-Aire
▪ Haysville Police Department and Court Services, 200 W. Grand, Haysville
▪ Valley Center City Hall, 121 S, Meridian, Valley Center
▪ Clearwater City Hall, 129 E. Ross, Clearwater
▪ Maize City Administration, 10100 W. Grady, Maize
▪ Derby Public Library, 1600 E. Walnut, Derby
▪ Fire Station No. 35, 1535 S. 199th, Goddard
▪ Fire Station No. 32, 7750 Wild West Road, Park City
▪ Boston Recreation Center, 6655 E. Zimmerly, Wichita
▪ Evergreen Park Recreation Center, 2700-D Woodland, Wichita
▪ Sedgwick County Health Department, 1900 E. 9th, Wichita
▪ Orchard Recreation Center, 4808 W. 9th, Wichita
▪ Linwood Recreation Center, 1901 S. Kansas, Wichita
▪ Sedgwick County Courthouse, 525 N. Main
This story was originally published October 31, 2020 at 5:01 AM.
