This month’s primary election in Douglas County offered poll workers a “surprise whammy at the end,” said County Commissioner Shannon Reid, as voter numbers suddenly increased, leading to the county’s second-highest primary turnout to date.
County residents cast 33,419 ballots in total, including 614 provisional ballots, which are used to record a vote when questions about the voter’s eligibility must be resolved through the canvass process. There are about 80,200 registered voters in the county, meaning there was a 42% voter turnout.
Commissioners met with county staff Monday for the canvass, where they certify the results of the election. No commissioner decisions changed the outcomes of any races in Douglas County.
Incumbent Commissioner Patrick Kelly held his seat against challenger Milton Scott, while newcomer Ethan Spurling ousted Commissioner Gene Dorsey.
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Incumbent Suzanne Wikle also held her Kansas House District 10 seat against challenger TJ Campsey. Barring highly unusual circumstances, that primary election will decide the candidate who will be elected to the seat as no other candidate is running for the seat with another party.
(See the Lawrence Times election guide to read more about the outcomes of local, state and federal races at this link.)
On Monday, Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew put the number of voters Aug. 4 into perspective. He said the county saw about 15,000 voters in the 2024 primary.
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The 2026 primary, Shew said, was second only to 2022, which had a turnout of 47,000 voters.
In 2022, there was a proposed constitutional amendment to restrict Kansans’ access to abortions. There was also a proposed constitutional amendment on this summer’s ballot, seeking to change how Kansas Supreme Court justices are appointed.
61.4% of Kansans who voted in the 2026 primary were opposed to the amendment, which would have voters directly elect justices. Many “no” voters expressed concern that the amendment was backed by politicians and PACs that wanted to limit voting rights and cut public school funding.
Shew said county polling numbers early on Election Day didn’t indicate the influx of people they’d get as the afternoon wore on.
“Anybody who worked that day a couple weeks ago will tell you it felt like that all happened within about four hours,” he said. “It was a nice steady day, and then everybody showed up. So, we’re excited about the turnout.”
Four polling locations welcomed more than 1,000 voters on Election Day, including Rev City Church, First Southern Baptist Church, the Douglas County Fairgrounds and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church. Grant Township Hall saw the smallest number of voters, at 104.
Shew said the skew is largely due to voter density. In some cases, they can’t add an additional polling location in higher-population areas if there isn’t another building that can host a polling location under Kansas law, like a church. Shew said they can’t put polling locations in schools anymore.
However, there are some precincts that tend to show higher civic engagement on Election Day. He said the downtown precinct always has higher turnout than its neighboring precincts, and the Indian Hills neighborhood also gets solid numbers.
Provisional ballots
“The thing I always like about the canvass is we show people we balance everything,” Shew said. “… It’s not like I walk in and say we have 1,000 extra ballots, right? I mean, we’re down to the ballot, making sure that the voters and the signatures and the ballots all match.”
This year, his office counted 490 of the 614 provisional ballots it received. That means 124, or 20%, of the provisional ballots were not counted.
Of the ballots that weren’t counted, 68 were not registered in Douglas County; 23 did not provide ID or had an expired ID; and 13 were registered in another county. Two, Shew said, weren’t counted due to poll worker error.
Those voters showed up at the wrong precinct, so the board had them fill out the ballots and put them in a provisional envelope. Those voters didn’t sign the poll book and the workers didn’t put any information on the envelopes, “so we can’t count it because we don’t know who they are,” Shew said.
He also touched on 33 provisional ballots that were also categorized as “Pollworker/Clerical Error,” but which were ultimately counted. He said that was a larger error margin than they usually see.
“We had one board that, for the first part of the morning, made unaffiliated voters who were declaring parties vote provisional until we kind of caught,” he said. “They’re not supposed to be provisional.”
Advance ballots
There were 7,447 in-person, advance voters, which included 100 provisional ballots.
The office received requests for 2,728 ballots to be mailed, which Shew said was fewer than normal. He said about 20% of the 7,347 nonprovisional advance ballots cast in person were from people who normally vote by mail.
“I think some of the challenges we have with the postal service are moving people’s behaviors a little bit,” Shew said.
The election office received 2,125 mail-in ballots back, marking a 78% return rate. They also got 15 provisional mail-in ballots.
“Also because of the post office, the majority of what we received back were hand-dropped off or in dropboxes,” Shew said.
Douglas County District Court Judge Carl Folsom placed a temporary injunction that paused a 2025 law that would make county election officials invalidate any advance mail-in ballots that didn’t arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
“We received 39 (ballots) after Election Day that were postmarked well before Election Day, and because of that court case … we were able to add those to the totals,” Shew said.
They received five advance ballots after Aug. 4 — two postmarked after Election Day, and three with no postmark. They also had 61 ballots they mailed that were returned as undeliverable, “which is a pretty good undeliverable rate,” Shew said.
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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].
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Jacob Rice (he/him), photo editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since March 2026. He can be reached at [email protected].
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More coverage: Election 2026
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