WICHITA, Kan (KSNW) – The Sedgwick County Election Office is conducting its election canvass on Thursday to present provisional ballots to the Board of Canvassers. The results will be officially announced on Monday afternoon.
The election office has been busy reviewing mail-in ballots, auditing, and categorizing provisional ballots, which total nearly 7,500 this year.
“The majority of those are people that showed up at the wrong polling place despite our efforts to tell them the 25 new polling places existed,” Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater said. “A third of them are people not registered in Sedgwick County. We never turn a voter away from the polls, so we allow them to vote provisionally until we can validate their registration status.”
Rainwater says the parameters are decided by law.
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“They’re defined by statutes of what they can and can’t accept,” Rainwater said. “There are state laws that govern whether they can accept a provisional ballot or not. It’s not just in my opinion.”