(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Nov. 3, 2014)
Best guesses so far are that those 25,360 Kansans whose voter registration applications are in “suspense” aren’t going to yield much in the way of post-Election Day results changes for any candidates.
Which means that the election’s results from Tuesday are probably just how it’s going to be, and waiting for the final county canvassing board certified vote totals from next week—either Monday or Wednesday, depending on the county election officials’ choice—is unlikely to change anything.
Oh, those “suspense” voters whom we’ve been hearing about for months under the new voter registration law will probably get a ballot, the fun of filling it out and one of those “I Voted” lapel stickers—but the vast majority of them will have just disappeared from the election.
Voters had until midnight before election day to square up their registrations—generally change of address or such—and if they didn’t get that done, well, their ballot will be put in an envelope, not counted on Tuesday after the polls closed and in a few cases might be able to provide the information necessary to see that envelope opened and the votes counted.
Will those non-voter voters change any elections? That’s the real question, and there are thousands of them in some counties, and apparently just one in Greeley County.
But they won’t be among the numbers we see in the election night vote totals that some of us will stay up to see—and then we’ll probably arrive at the office Wednesday a little groggy.
Because we’ll never see whom those “suspense” voters voted for, we’re not going to know whether the Secretary of State Kris Kobach-pushed new voter registration law changed results of any races.
Surprising? It made a pretty catchy campaign issue in the race for secretary of state, but for those “little guys” down the ballot, the House races and county officer races where races are sometimes decided by 100 votes or so, well, chances are that the county determinations of which of those “suspense” ballot envelopes get opened and counted are unlikely to make a difference.
There go those high-excitement and little-attended county election board meetings, where in a close race candidates for office—where a couple dozen votes might make a difference on who comes to Topeka—will be looking at boxes of might-be votes but are unlikely to see many of those ballots actually counted.
The Kansans who got a ballot Tuesday—nearly everyone does—probably aren’t going to know whether their vote will count, and depending on who was in line to vote nearby, may or may not bother to provide the information to make their ballot count.
The election law change that is designed to prevent foreigners from messing with Kansas elections probably isn’t going to catch a lot of illegal voting attempts, but it may make the number of votes which actually have to be counted on either Election Day or by county canvassing boards a little smaller than some would like. But, chances are that Tuesday’s vote totals will be very close in virtually every district, and that opens up the possibility that you might be able to cosign for whoever appears to have won on Tuesday…
And, whether your vote counts or not, at least the TV campaign ads will be over, so we’ll get to see what the new Fords look like this year…