Kansas Secretary of State calls the Pony Express faster than voting by mail

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab in an interview on Wednesday said that the Pony Express was faster than voting by mail.

Schwab was advising against mailing ballots and said some ballots had shown up without being postmarked.

“We had ballots show up in several counties on Election Day that weren’t postmarked,” Schwab said. “The difference is this isn’t a Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon. This is a person’s ballot that was legally cast to vote. That the Post-Office basically disenfranchised those voters.”

The latest number show a steep decline in mail-in ballots for the primary compared to the 2020 election year. During the pandemic, voting by mail spiked with over 261,000 people sending in advance mail ballots during that primary. In the 2022 primary, 103,000 were sent. This year only about 40,000 have been returned.

“Almost 75%, in larger elections, tend to vote at their polling places in Shawnee County,” Shawnee County Election Commissioner Andrew Howell said.

Howell said he thought the election office could handle an increase in in-person numbers if people decided not to use mail-in voting.

“Typically, we’ll see almost a thousand a day come through here in a General Election, so it’ll be busy,” Howell said. “An extra 10 percent, I can see maybe, if everyone went from mail to early voting, that we might see a 10, 15 percent, maybe 20 percent jump. I think we can handle that.”

Howell told KSNT-TV there’s a percentage of mail that doesn’t make it to the election office in time, he said there’s always that risk. Earlier this year , Howell encouraged people to learn where their polling location is and find the best route. There are 87 different polling locations throughout Shawnee County.

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As for turnout, the Secretary of State’s Office said that while turnout was lower than pervious primary elections, they’re expecting an increase this November.

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