Kansas election officials threw out thousands of ballots

[clueliss]

Meanwhile in Brownbackistan (by the way, Brownback is now asking for tax hikes to fix the disaster he's made of the state budget.  The alphabet doesn't go far enough for me to give his economic theories in action a grade)

 

And remember  Kobach looked for a while like Trump was courting him for something.  

http://cjonline.com/news/state-government/2017-01-14/kansas-election-officials-threw-out-thousands-ballots

Quote

WICHITA — Kansas election officials threw out thousands of uncounted provisional ballots cast in November, mostly because the state had no record that those residents were registered voters.

Some local election officials are now voicing concerns about instances of lost registrations from people who filled out applications on Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s online site and at motor vehicle offices, but whose names never showed up on poll books, voter rolls or even a list of people whose applications weren’t complete. Some voters had date-stamped, computer screenshots showing they successfully completed their voter registration.

Kobach’s office said in an emailed statement there was a technical problem with the computer system that handles voter registrations for the motor vehicle department, and that it is the office’s understanding that the problem was corrected within a few days of its discovery in October. Kobach’s office then instructed county election officers to accept any paper printout of an applicant’s computer screen as proof that the person timely completed the registration form.

What troubles local election officials is an increasing number of people in the last two election cycles who say their voter registration applications were completed online or at driver’s license offices, but whose names never made it to county election offices to be added to local voter rolls. The extent of that problem is unknown. Douglas County was the only county AP found that specifically tracked provisional ballots cast by people in November who claimed their registrations were lost.

Kobach’s office has not yet compiled a statewide count of how many provisional ballots were discarded. Numbers that The Associated Press obtained from county election offices and the League of Women Voters for the state’s 11 largest counties show that 8,864 ballots cast were not counted, slightly more than 1 percent of votes cast in those counties. The reasons include lack of proper identification at polls, not providing proof of citizenship at registration, and not signing or filling out the advance ballot envelope correctly. More than half of ballots were tossed out because there was no record the person was a registered voter.

Among those who say their registration was lost is Gail Sims Holland. She registered during the summer using her passport as proof of U.S. citizenship when she and her husband got their drivers’ licenses after moving to Kansas. Her husband soon received notification of his polling site, but officials had no record that the 50-year-old Viola woman had even tried to register to vote. She again filled out the application, this time on the secretary of state’s website. Again her registration got lost.

“I was calling back quite a bit to say, ‘Look this is my right to vote and I really want to vote.’ And they kept saying, ‘You should get it in a couple of days’ or ‘You should have gotten it by now,’ and I am like, ‘Look I need a confirmation,’” Holland said.

The Sedgwick County election office allowed her to register again after the cutoff date for the November election because she had a copy of the voter registration confirmation.

“If I didn’t keep a copy from my computer I wouldn’t have been able to show that I had done it,” Holland said.

After Douglas County election officials noticed an increase of people in that same situation, County Clerk Jamie Shew decided to track those cases in November. If people said they registered online or at motor vehicle offices but their names weren’t in registration records, Shew had poll workers mark the outside of the envelopes used to seal provisional ballots.

Douglas County documented 52 instances of lost registrations in which election officials determined the person had completed their registration in time. Because voters could prove they had registered, their ballots were counted. An additional 92 ballots from people who insisted they had registered but who didn’t have proof were tossed. Four ballots from voters who likely voted in a wrong precinct were partially counted.

“I really wanted to track it down because it appears over the past few years increasingly we are having difficulties getting registrations done online or at the DMV,” Shew said.

All told, Douglas County discarded 710 ballots for various reasons. Johnson County, the state’s most populous county, trashed 2,873 ballots. Sedgwick County threw out 2,194.

Connor William Bobb, a student at Kansas State University who filled out his registration at the secretary of state’s website, found out later that he wasn’t registered. Sedgwick County election office counted his ballot because he had printed out the confirmation.

Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said Wednesday that her office has still not received the registrations that Holland and Bobb submitted online.

“It did seem we had some hiccups on that online registration process,” Lehman said.

Confusion, obstacles raise voting concerns in some states, including Kansas

Judge orders all votes by federal registrants to be counted in Kansas primary

Kansas judge bars Wichita mathematician's access to voting machine tapes

Wichita State mathematician says Kansas voting machines need to be audited to check accuracy

Kris Kobach seeks to block release of voting machine paper tapes

1

Bolding above is mine.  

Geography lesson:

Sedgewick County = Wichita (an urban area by Kansas Standards)

Douglas County = Lawrence, liberal stronghold, sits between Topeka (the capital) and KC.

Johnson County = Suburban Kansas City (there is money here).

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It never fails to amaze me the number of nasty tricks and games the Repugs, especially the far right, will play. Sadly, the people are the ones who lose; Brownhack and his buddies don't ever pay for their wrongs.

[47of74]

I think we should have true universal suffrage where the only requirement is that a person is a US Citizen who has turned 18 years old.  No restrictions whatsoever at that point.  And I think voter suppression and electoral fraud should be punishable by life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for the people involved.

[candygirl200413]

I have a couple of friends who are newly american citizens and they were like yeah they register you to vote the moment you turn 18. Why don't we do that?! Like I was personally so excited when I turned 18 since I was just a month out before the election in 2012 and I was willing and knew it would be easy to be able to register even though it was through snail mail. Now in my state you can finally register online, but it's just why don't peoples state DOT send some type of notification?

[clueliss]

I can tell you from frustrating conversations with my late step-father, that some people do not register to vote or vote simply because they think it's going to put them on the list for jury duty.  My response to this based on the county he lived in and 'county government day' my senior year of high school was that merely having a driver's license put him on that list anyway.  Didn't change his opinion.  

Then there is the coworker 2 years ago who said 'my husband vote, I let him vote for the household.'  I didn't bother to see if she registered this election.  I was curious since she went through a divorce in the last year.  

 

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, clueliss said:

Snip

Then there is the coworker 2 years ago who said 'my husband vote, I let him vote for the household.'  I didn't bother to see if she registered this election.  I was curious since she went through a divorce in the last year.  

 

This makes be both sick and snarly at the same time. 

 

 Voting is the greatest privilege we have as Americans. If you choose not to vote, you dishonor three important groups of people. The first group is the men and women who have fought to make and keep this country free. In order to preserve this idea of freedom and equality, lives of potentially great men and women were lost in places like Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, San Juan Hill, Northern Africa, Italy, the beaches of Normandie and other parts of France, Belgium, and Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

 The second group you dishonor is the Suffragettes. These women fought tremendously hard to gain the right to vote, believing that all men and women were created equal and should all have the right to make their voice heard in government through the right to vote. These women were attacked, sometimes beaten, thrown into prison, and ostracized by their families. It was an incredibly brave thing to do, to stand up ,right letters, and march demanding that women have the same voting privileges as men. which only came about with the Nineteenth Amendment, passed in 1920.

The third group that this women dishonors is African Americans. Even after the end of slavery, too many laws were passed to completely disenfranchise this group of Americans. People who came out of slavery looking to have equal rights as American citizens were told they had to pay a poll tax, one that was extremely expensive for them in order to vote. They were also given literacy tests, in which they were asked to read and explain part of the Constitution "correctly". Some states and areas used the "grandfather clause" in which you were only allowed to vote if your grandfather had voted. During the Summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Riders, made up of college students, trained in Ohio, then took busses to Mississippi. One of the things these college students focused on was registering people to vote. Three of the Freedom Riders were murdered because of this. 

 

Voting is the greatest privilege we have as Americans, one that people around the globe wish to proudly emulate. Many of us here on Free Jinger can remember seeing pictures of the brave folks who voted in the first elections in Iraq, after Hussain was thrown out of power who proudly showed their inked finger, showing they had voted. Anyone who can vote and doesn't lets the sacrifices of the military, Suffragettes, and African Americans happen in vain. 

[JMarie]

Matthew Broderick's character did the same thing in Election, and he got fired.  But hey, that's just a movie.  Real life doesn't work like that, right?

[CTRLZero]

@Audrey2- I hope I can remember your excellent post and its points when I implore people to get out and vote.  This sentiment should be distributed to every household and reinforced before every election.  Thank you!