WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Election officials in Cowley and Harvey Counties say they are seeing a steady stream of early voters and this year is unlike anything they have seen.
Early voting saw an unprecedented turnout in Cowley County, with about 500 ballots being cast each day.
“We’ve had more people vote now, just early voting here in the office, than we had the entire presidential primary,” Karen Madison, Cowley County Clerk, said. “That was back in March, like including Election Day. So turnout is astronomically higher than what it was then.”
Madison said they are up to 1750 in three and a half days and have mailed out between 1,100 and 1,200 ballots.
Harvey County is seeing a similar trend, shattering a previous record. On the first day, 600 voters, from 23,000 registered voters cast their ballots.
“I expect it’ll kind of stay steady for the next rest of this week and most of next and it’ll pick back up,” Rick Peipho, Harvey County Clerk, said. “And it could be that, you know, next Friday we could break this record that we just broke.”
Peipho saidthey have about 23,000 registered voters, our first day of early voting, which was Tuesday, we had 653 plus a few provisional (ballots). Yesterday we had another 505.”
Voters say they’re doing their “civic duty” and beating potential crowds on election day.
“I care about the future of the country because I have grandchildren, and I care about what kind of a country we are going to leave for them in the future,” said Deborah Kimmell.
Kimmell adds, “I’m early voting because I don’t want to stand in long lines for one thing, and I work out of town a lot.”
It’s unclear if these early voting numbers indicate more people are heading to the polls or if they’re just taking advantage of the opportunity to vote before November 5th.