WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Long lines continue to form at early voting locations across Sedgwick County and Kansas. With the strong turnouts come questions about the early voting process including, “What happens to your ballot when you vote early?”
Less than a week out from Election Day, many voters have already made up their minds and cast their ballots. The latest numbers Wednesday from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office show more than 340,000 ballots cast so far through early in-person and advanced mail.
What happens to votes before they’re counted on election night? That’s the question from one viewer we took to Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater.
For early in-person voting, you will have a paper ballot, not mater if you vote by hand for ballot-marking device. That is then put into the vote tabulation called a DS 200 where how you voted is recorded on a media stick.
“At the end of the election, early voting for these early voting sites, those media sticks are brought back to the election office and stored in a secure location,” Rainwater said.
Those media sticks are not read until election night by the election computer. The tabulator and election computer are not connected to the internet, as required by law. Those advanced mail-in ballots, when they arrive at the election office, they are processed by the advanced board, opened and tabulated.
That data is also stored on a media stick until election night. Sedgwick County will have a public test at 10 a.m. Friday at the historic courthouse for the tabulating equipment for election day.
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