More than 40,000 people cast provisional ballots in November’s general election in the state’s 10 biggest counties. The majority of those ballots were counted, but 13,717 were not for a variety of reasons.
Secretary of State Kris Kobach told the House Elections Committee on Wednesday that the most common reason was that the person was not registered to vote. About 74 percent of the uncounted provisional ballots fell into this category.
Kobach said the “vast majority” of those people are most likely people who came to the polls without attempting to register first, something that happens every year.
However, some portion of that group could have been people who thought they were registered but were affected by a glitch in the state’s voter registration website.
Kobach said his office became aware of a glitch that occurred for a few days in October because of the high number of people using the registration website in the build-up to the election.
People who used the state’s website, which is run by the Kansas Department of Vehicles, could have gotten a message that they had completed their voter registration application even though the state did not record that registration.
His office instructed local election officials to treat anyone who presented a screen shot showing that they had completed the registration process through the website as if they were registered to vote. But his office did not announce that to the public.
Kobach said his office did not do a public announcement because “we were still trying to get a grasp of what the problem was.”
Rep. Brett Parker, D-Overland Park, questioned why the secretary of state’s office did not let Kansans who registered during October know that their registration status could be incomplete.
“I’m not going to take a screen shot regardless because I don’t think there’s a problem, but even if I did I wouldn’t know that I needed to bring that in,” Parker said.
Kobach said that if these voters had checked with their county election office, or on the state’s voter information website, they would have found they weren’t registered.
He said his office is trying to get the number of people who presented a screen shot at the polls. He said it is unlikely they’ll be able to determine the total number of people affected by the glitch.
“What we don’t know is the total number of people who attempted to register online and didn’t take a screen shot and subsequently showed up to vote,” Kobach said. “And there’s no way we can know it because the DOV (Department of Vehicles) computer system wasn’t recording it during those few days the glitch was occurring.”
In addition, roughly 2 percent of the uncounted ballots, 353, occurred because the prospective voter had not brought a photo ID to the polls as required by Kansas law and did not provide an ID after casting a provisional ballot.
©2017 The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.). Visit The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.) at www.kansas.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
