Voting appears to run more smoothly in Sedgwick County this time around

Election Day voting in Sedgwick County appeared to have run smoothly compared with the August primary, when voters at some Wichita precincts had to stand in line for multiple hours to cast a ballot.

Theresa Guillaume, 67, was able to vote immediately when she arrived at Linwood Recreation Center in south Wichita around 6 p.m.

“There are no lines. I didn’t wait. They got me in right away,” Guillaume said.

In August, a shortage of poll workers at the Linwood site forced some voters to stand in line for three hours or more.

Guillaume, who carries an oxygen tank, was one of those voters. Poll workers let her jump to the front of the line after she waited for about two hours in August, she said.

“My battery was running down so I had to turn my oxygen off,” she said. “Then I was afraid I wasn’t going to get home and I said something about it and somebody came through and he was looking for people that were handicapped and putting them in there first. The lady who was sitting next to me said, ‘She needs to go. She’s running out of air.’ So they got me in.”

Angie Conner, 46, also voted at Linwood Tuesday evening. She said she skipped out on the primary but decided the general election was too important to sit out.

“I’ve just never been all that political honestly, but it’s high time,” Conner said. “As you get to be older and become an adult, it’s something that you just need to be aware of and do.”

At a 6 p.m. news conference, Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Angela Caudillo said voting in the Wichita area had gone smoothly through the afternoon, with wait times no longer than 30 minutes at lunchtime.

Caudillo said by 3 p.m., Sedgwick County had 38% voter turnout. That was before the after-work rush and included approximately 50,600 early in-person voters, 25,000 mail ballots and 50,000 election day voters.

Voter turnout for the roughly 333,000 registered voters was expected to be between 52-55%; about 75,000 voted early or by mail.

There were about 475 election workers for the primary which had a 43% turnout, according to Sedgwick County spokesperson Nicole Gibbs. There were 690-700 workers scheduled for Tuesday, she said.

This story was originally published November 8, 2022 at 5:27 AM.