The results of the Nov. 4 general election became official Monday morning when Barton County Commissioners met as a board of canvassers and provisional ballots were counted or rejected.
This did not change the outcome of any races. Voter Registration Clerk Darin DeWitt explained that a voter who arrives at a polling place and is not registered or doesn’t have a photo ID may vote on a paper “provisional” ballot.
“You get your registration corrected at the same time,” he said. “It’s nothing more than just trying to fix your registration.”
The most common issue, resulting in 25 provisional ballots, was with people who had moved to a different address within the county after registering to vote in Barton County. DeWitt said that is usually the most common reason a provisional ballot is needed in any election.
Two people did not have a current photo ID when they showed up to vote. One was able to come to the courthouse before the canvass and produce the required identification. Another did not.
County Election Officer Bev Schmeidler said sometimes a person shows up to vote and doesn’t have a photo ID with them. Other times, the ID has expired. “Some of them renewed their licenses online and didn’t have the hard copy yet,” she said.
One person’s name had changed. Two were described as a “911 address mishap.” DeWitt explained, “It was communication between us and 911, so an address got changed that shouldn’t have changed. We fixed that.”
Three people were not registered to vote at all.
Five witnesses were needed for the board of canvassers. In the absence of commissioner Barb Esfeld, who arrived a few minutes later for the regular Barton County Commission meeting, County Administrator Matt Patzner joined the other four commissioners.
Once the provisional ballots were approved, they were fed into the tallying machine. There was one “overvote” on the election for Barton Community College trustees. The ballot allowed people to vote for as many as three candidates but one person voted for four. The votes for that race on that ballot were not counted.
A clean election
Schmeidler said the election results were audited on Nov. 6. After any general election, two races are chosen at random for the audit. In this case, the Great Bend City Council Second Ward race between Charlie Dixon and Jay Luerman and the seven-candidate race for three Barton Community College board of trustee positions. For the audit, all of the ballots, including early voting, advanced mail-in ballots, and votes at the polling places, were counted by hand. The audit was “clean,” with the hand count matching the count tabulated by machine.
Schmeidler said audits have been required since approximately 2019. Barton County’s audits have never shown an error.
She noted that 18.6% of the registered voters cast ballots in this election.
There were people who wanted to know why certain races weren’t on their ballots. This is usually the case if there is a race for mayor in a city and someone who lives outside of the city wants to vote.
At the polling places, people could use the electronic machine or request a paper ballot. Either way, the results were submitted to the counting equipment as paper ballots.
