Just under 700,000 Kansans voted by advanced mail-in ballots or advanced in-person voting, Secretary of State Scott Schwab said in a news conference late Tuesday afternoon.

“That’s really a credit to the campaigns across the state and probably nationally pushing that out,” he said. “And by selling that as opposed to insulting that or saying that’s not a good way to vote, it’s really made sure that more people’s votes are counted so credit to the various campaigns for pushing early voting where it made most sense for those voters.”

He also said advanced voting during the pandemic created some new behaviors for some.

Schwab said the uptick in advanced voting has made Election Day operations less busy, although he does not think that means lower voter turnout overall.

Schwab said the state recounted over 65% of the ballots cast in 2022 after a citizen paid for the recount. Not one outcome was overturned, he said. He said this gave people real evidence that the election was valid. He said after that recount, they stopped receiving calls about fraud.

“There’s nothing more you can do to convince people unless they want to be a poll worker,” he said.

The results website will go live at 5 p.m. Schwab said the first results seen on the website will be those from early returned ballots. He said larger counties will then have another update in an hour and a half or so.

He said he hopes every county in the state will be counted Tuesday night so they can move on to election audits Wednesday and handle provision audits. The post-election audits will be at 9 a.m. Wednesday and will be open to the public.

Schwab said the ballots have until Friday to arrive in order to still be counted.

Results will begin to come in after the polls close at this link: https://ent.sos.ks.gov/kssos_ent.html 

Here is the Douglas County results page: https://www.livevoterturnout.com/ENR/douglasksenr/18/en/Index_18.html