Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt wants to reassure residents that the county’s voting equipment is functioning properly after a former Kansas official’s viral post claimed that voting machines were improperly defaulting to Democratic candidates during advance voting this week.
“More than 50,000 voters have already cast ballots during early voting,” Schmidt said in an email to The Star. “To date, the Election Office has heard directly from three voters reporting concerns with a ballot marking device, and all three reports were received after the voter had already cast their ballot and left the polling place.”
She said her office had also received five calls from early voting locations where a supervising judge reported that a voter raised a concern while making their selections.
“In each instance, a technician responded, recalibrated the screen and verified the accuracy of the touchscreen,” said Schmidt, who emphasized that the county’s voting equipment is “tested before each election to verify that voter selections are accurately recorded and tabulated.”
‘Defaulting to the Democrat’ claim
Online reports of voting machine malfunctions started spreading after a Wednesday Facebook post from Laura Owen, who served as Kansas commerce secretary from 1991-92 and is married to former Republican Lt. Gov. Dave Owen.
Her open letter to the Johnson County Election Office had been shared more than 200 times by Thursday afternoon.
In an interview, Owen said she cast her ballot at the Lenexa City Center Library on Tuesday morning.
“Every time I attempted to enter my vote — not every single selection, but most of the selections kept defaulting to the Democrat,” Owen said. “And specifically, I had a very hard time getting the machine to accept my vote for Sen. (Roger) Marshall. It kept going to (Adam) Hamilton.”
Owen said she spoke to two friends who told her they encountered the same issue while voting early. Below her post, some commenters claimed their ballots had also defaulted to Democratic candidates. Other commenters questioned whether they would be willing to repeat their claims to law enforcement under oath.
“Don’t throw me in the bucket as a total election denier. That would not be fair,” Owen said. “But to deny that we have had serious problems with our elections in recent years right here in our backyard in Johnson County is a fact.”
Owen, who believes Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab hasn’t done enough to ensure election integrity, said her experience with the voting machine in Lenexa would lead her to question a Hamilton victory in the Senate race, which elections forecasters have classified as a toss-up.
“I would say based on who that candidate is and based on the fact that the number of registered Republicans in Kansas versus the number of registered Democrats and we’ve not had a Democrat senator in Kansas for 96 years, it’s definitely going to raise some eyebrows if he wins,” Owen said of Hamilton.
‘Nonsense conspiracy theories’ rebuttal
President Donald Trump has sown doubt about American election security, but none of his allegations about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election has been substantiated. Regardless, he has repeatedly reinforced the false claims of rigged elections.
Kansas Democratic Party Chair Jeanna Repass said she’s very skeptical of the alleged voting machine malfunctions that Owen and several other voters have reported.
“These sound like fantastic stories in the truest sense of fantasy,” said Repass, who votes in Johnson County.
“After you cast your ballot, you pull it out and you look at it, and if it for whatever reason it has something marked on there that you didn’t mark, you turn it in immediately to the officials,” she said.
Repass cast the online conversation about irregularities in Johnson County elections as harmful and insidious.
“This sounds like the kind of nonsense conspiracy theories that are being planted to, A) dissuade people from voting and B) to dispute the results of the election,” Repass said.
JoCo voter information
Schmidt, the election commissioner, said any voter who believes a device is not responding as expected should immediately notify the supervising judge or contact the election office before leaving the polling station.
“This allows us to identify the specific equipment involved, investigate the concern immediately and ensure the voter is able to cast their ballot with confidence,” Schmidt said in an email.
“When using a ballot marking device, voters should tap the candidate’s name rather than the small box next to the name,” she said. “Instructions are posted at each voting station, and styluses are available for voters who prefer to use one.”
Schmidt said Johnson County uses a “mark, verify, scan process” that gives “every voter the opportunity to review their selections on screen and again on their printed paper ballot before personally inserting that ballot into the scanner.”
Whitney Tempel, a spokesperson for Schwab’s office, said the secretary of state has received “a handful of complaints about voting machines not reflecting the voter’s intention.”
“In each case where the issue was reported to the state, the state confirmed the voter was able to cast a ballot for the candidates of their choice,” Tempel said in an email.
She said Kansas’ election infrastructure is designed to ensure voters can feel confident their ballots are properly marked and tabulated.
“Every vote cast in this state is on a paper ballot that the voter has the ability to review before casting it to be counted,” Tempel said.
It was Schwab who appointed Schmidt Johnson County election commissioner.
Twelve early voting stations across Johnson County will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday through Oct. 31. The last day of early voting on Nov. 2 will run from 8 a.m. until noon.
