Kansas
Trust fall: Trump’s win or loss will further damage our elections • Kansas Reflector
The Rule said, “Don’t talk about politics at the dinner table.”
It wasn’t polite to mention deficit spending, because, well … The Rule. And not immigration. Or racism. Or abortion. Or inflation.
And according to The Rule, you certainly shouldn’t bring up the candidates. You weren’t to mention how you didn’t trust the Democrat, or how you didn’t agree with the Republican.
The Rule told us this talk was too divisive. Instead, just tell your dinner guests that you voted, because, even if we couldn’t agree on policy or candidates, we agreed to trust the elections.
How old-fashioned.
Today, merely mentioning the election — mail-in ballots, early voting, election fraud, poll workers — is just as likely to kick up a fight as a debate about the choice between Democrat or Republican, red or blue, pro-life or pro-choice.
At its core, the 2024 presidential election next week will shine a spotlight on our confidence in democratic election results. Will we trust the announced winners? A partisan divide on basic election logistics suggests that we could be in for a roiling debate, not just at our national dinner table, but here in Kansas as well.
A report on the political attitudes of Kansans published this week by the Docking Institute at Fort Hays State University surveyed hundreds of voters statewide.
It happily noted, “Respondents had high confidence with the election results in Kansas. About sixty percent (60.5%) of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were confident that the reported winners of the elections in Kansas are actually the candidates that most Kansas voted for.”
Is 60.5% a number that should make us confident?
The fact that anyone reads this polling result as positive news is itself discouraging. To that same question, 10.4% said they disagree or strongly disagree. The same number said they “don’t know.”
This is not “high confidence” in elections. Those “disagree” and “don’t know” percentages, even if wildly off, represent tens of thousands of Kansans that might believe the wrong candidate — their candidate — unfairly lost.
How have those confidence percentages changed during the past few years? Not much. While it’s positive news that Kansans aren’t doubting their elections more each year, we might also worry that this doubt is becoming part of the political identity of Kansans.
Kansans are worried about problems that either don’t exist or problems so rare that they are difficult to document:
- 15.3% believe that illegal immigrants were voting in Kansas elections in large numbers.
- 11.6% believe that voter fraud routinely decides the winners of elections in Kansas.
- Sizeable numbers believed ballot drop boxes should be banned (23.5%) and vote by mail should be abolished (23%).
Call it Kansas election skepticism.
The scare-mongering of Kris Kobach might have successfully entrenched this anxiety about elections into Kansans. His deceptive hyperventilation about voter fraud played out in the courts, in his grasps for national office and in his run for governor. His constant squawks about voter fraud and election integrity may have nudged our statewide attitudes toward suspicion, along with Trump’s more recent shoves on the national stage.
How much is this a Kansas belief and how much is this a Republican belief? That’s difficult to tease out from the survey. All we can see is that 34.1% identified as some kind of “conservative,” while 23.5% identified somewhere along the range of “liberal.”
To answer this question, we need to check national partisan attitudes.
In a report issued last month, Gallup surveyed nationally on the issue of “votes cast by people who, by law, are not eligible to vote.” A wide majority of Republicans (74%) identified this as a “major problem,” while only 14% of Democrats saw it that way. Other surveys found similar partisan divides.
According to the Pew Research Center, Democrats (90%) are 33 percentage points more likely to forecast this election as being run and administered very or somewhat well than Republicans (57%). Trump supporters are less trusting than Harris supporters of election basics such as vote counting, poll workers and election officials. The divide on mail-in ballots is the widest: 85% of Harris supporters are confident in them as opposed to 38% of Trump supporters.
An area of skeptical overlap? Only 8% of all respondents to the Pew poll said they are highly confident in the Supreme Court’s neutrality, if it needed to issue an election decision (2% for Harris supporters; 14% for Trump supporters).
That kind of animosity — whether from one political party or both — toward the basic function of voting is an existential threat to democracy. As some of Trump’s advisers whispered to his deaf ear in 2020, it’s vital to American democracy that the loser trusts both the counts and the courts, and steps aside.
Clearly, Trump’s false claims about voting have fueled Republican doubts about elections. Look no further than Kansas Speaks: It didn’t start asking about election confidence until the 2022 fall survey, in the wake of Trump’s fraudulent clinging to office.
The Rule about dinner table politics was a domestic rule about courtesy. Respect the people who sit across the table from you — enough to not clutter the table with politics.
A Trump biographer and the new movie about Trump’s rise detail another version of The Rule. Along with two other tenets, Trump learned this lesson from the ruthless New York lawyer Roy Cohn. This version of The Rule? “Claim victory and never admit defeat.”
Trump’s dogged insistence that he won — that he always wins — is his personal version of what MIT election experts call the “loser’s regret phenomenon.”
Researchers with their Election Data + Science Lab have documented this effect over decades and across countries. When voters watch their preferred candidate lose, they express less confidence in the election process. Logically, there is a “winner’s effect,” calculated by tracking how much more confident people become in elections after their candidate wins.
When combined, these effects can be substantial. Simply put in one of their studies, “Winners are consistently more trusting of the vote count than losers.” In this way, the reaction of Trump and his followers was at once predictable and extreme, as they searched for votes in Georgia, waged losing court battles and ultimately stormed the Capitol.
Four days from the election, we are caught in a dilemma of election confidence. If voters elect Trump as president next week, he will have four more years in power to damage confidence in our elections. During his first term, he used the bully pulpit to cast doubt about voting machines, poll workers and election commissions. We should expect more of the same from a second Trump term. We should expect election confidence to slide, even with the winner’s effect. Republicans might be buoyed, but Democrats will doubt, with everyone soured by Trump’s deep distrust of elections.
Conversely, if Trump loses, he is likely to fight the election results. The Rule of “never admitting defeat” means a wave of loser’s regret, fueled by Trump’s childish insistence that he must win. His supporters are likely to feel that sting and doubt returns in upcoming elections.
Either way, Trump and his enablers have been and likely will continue to be an accelerant of election doubt, fueling unbounded and unfounded skepticism. Four years from now, political scientists likely will still be polling doubting Kansans who will be thinking of Trump’s lies and parroting them around the kitchen table to anyone who will listen — even if it ruins family dinner.
In this way and many others, the bonfires that Trump and his operatives lit within our elections will still be burning, regardless of who wins next week.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas
Kansas election officials urge remaining mail-in voters to skip post office, drop ballots off at drop box
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (KCTV) – If you plan to vote by mail in Kansas, but haven’t sent your ballot back yet, you may have some work to do. Kansas election officials say it’s too late to put your ballot in the mail.
“If you drop it in the mail, there is no guarantee when it’s coming back,” said Michael Abbott, Wyandotte County’s election commissioner.
Instead, election officials are telling the remaining mail-in voters to drop off their ballots at designated drop boxes.
“If you drop it at a drop box, we’re going to pick it up the same day. If you [drop it off] at a polling location, it’s coming back to the election office the same day,” Abbott said. “That’s the best way to do it.”
The Kansas Secretary of State’s office agrees.
ELECTION GUIDE: What Missouri, Kansas voters need to know before heading to the polls
“Secretary Schwab encourages voters to return their ballot as soon as possible,” Scott Schwab’s office told KCTV5 in a statement Thursday. “As always, the better choice is to return your ballot via county-monitored drop box, in-person at your county election office, or any polling place within the county.”
The drop boxes are checked daily by a member of both major parties. The ballots are then taken directly to the county’s election headquarters.
“We have a team, a bi-partisan team, that checks them every single day,” Abbott said. “There is a Democrat and a Republican. They go out and check the drop boxes and bring the ballots back to our office.”
This year, Wyandotte County sent out around 7,000 mail-in ballots and has had about 5,000 returned. The county says it is on pace for a strong turnout among all voters.
“In 2020, I think it was a little over 70,000 ballots cast. Right now, we’re a little under 19,400,” Abbott said. “We’re tracking to do between 60-70% turnout right now.”
If you are a Kansas mail-in voter and would like to find a ballot drop box near you, click on one of these links:
Copyright 2024 KCTV. All rights reserved.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes described efforts to bring a WNBA team to Kansas City as a “no-brainer” to reporters Thursday.
Mahomes took questions about his and his wife Brittany’s role in attempting to land a WNBA team during his regular weekly news conference with reporters.
“Obviously, we want to get basketball to Kansas City in general,” Mahomes said. “The WNBA and the success they had this last season and the last few seasons, it’s kind of a no-brainer to get a WNBA team to Kansas City.”
RELATED | ‘We’re the city for this’: Officials push for Kansas City to be considered for WNBA expansion team
The Mahomes’ are co-owners of the Kansas City Current of the National Women’s Soccer League along with Chris and Angie Long. Mahomes spoke of the effort to bring the Current to Kansas City and hopes to use that as a foundation for a potential WNBA team.
Mahomes, who is also a co-owner of the Kansas City Royals and Sporting KC, said his business involvement with the clubs is “for life after football.”
Chiefs QB Patrick MAhomes says he wants to do as much as he can to help bring a WNBA team to Kansas City
“I love sports and I know how much this city loves sports,” Mahomes said. “Let’s bring as many sports in here and showcase how great Kansas City is not only as a city but the people as well.”
His involvement specifically in women’s sports is just as personal.
Reed Hoffmann/AP
“I want to show (my daughter) she can follow her dreams and make an impact in this world in whatever that dream is,” Mahomes said.
Mahomes says Kansas City is a great place for the WNBA to continue its recent growth, but acknowledged that they’ll have to battle with other cities also vying for a WNBA expansion team.
The WNBA is expanding from its current 12-team league to 15 teams over the next few seasons. The Golden State Valkyries will join the league starting with the 2025 regular season. In 2026, the league is set to add teams from Portland, Oregon, and Toronto.
The league appears poised to add a 16th team, which is where Kansas City could come into play. CBS Sports reported Wednesday that Philadelphia, Miami, Denver and Nashville are also in the running for the 16th team.
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Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly gives her thoughts on upcoming election
Hear from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly as she answers election-related questions.
Advance voting locations statewide and in Topeka are experiencing a surge of people voting early in-person.
Shawnee County election commissioner Andrew Howell said that, as of around 10:15 a.m. Wednesday, 17,800 voters had voted early in-person so far this election.
“We’re not quite double, but it’s — depending on which year you compare it to — it is double to some years,” Howell told The Capital-Journal.
“In a presidential (election), 10,000 to 12,000 for the entire two-week period is a fairly average number,” he said. “So I suspect that we’re going to be double what we normally see here. Over 3,000 people the first day. It’s a rare day in the past that we do 1,500 a day.”
The Shawnee County Election Office was busy Wednesday morning with early voters. One of those early voters was Gov. Laura Kelly. When voting early in other recent elections, Kelly has often been one of only a small handful of voters filling out their ballots. This time, several of the booths were filled.
“I think there’s a lot of energy and excitement around the races this year, particularly obviously at the presidential level, but I think even locally on the state level,” Kelly said of the turnout.
“I come out to vote early so that I make sure I get it done,” she told reporters. “It is fun to come to the polls on Election Day. I used to enjoy that a lot, but there’s always a chance that something — you know, ice storms or whatever — could happen. So I like to get it done.”
Early in-person voting is up in Kansas
Election offices across the state are experiencing a similar boom in in-person advance voting.
The Kansas Secretary of State’s Office reported that, through Tuesday, there had been 252,482 ballots statewide had been cast in person.
That’s 54% above 2020, when there had been 163,527 in-person advance ballots at this point. It’s 80% above 2016, when there had been 139,912 early in-person voters.
Mail voting lags behind
While in-person is up, mail voting is down locally and statewide.
“Mail is down,” Howell said. “What I don’t know if people that normally vote by mail are now just coming and voting early, I wonder.”
Mail voting has also been the subject of criticism from some Republicans after former President Donald Trump in 2020 discouraged Republicans from voting by mail. He called voting by mail “corrupt” and alleged it led to cheating. Some Kansas Republican lawmakers have sought to end the three-day grace period.
Secretary of State’s Office statistics also show that Democrats are leading Republicans in voting by mail.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Scott Schwab has been critical of the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of election mail, blaming USPS failures for disenfranchising voters in the August primary.
Kansas election offices had mailed out 161,410 advance ballots through Tuesday, of which 87,600 had already been returned, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Compared to this point in the last two presidential elections: In 2020 — in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — there had been 501,446 mail ballots sent with 279,950 returned, and in 2016, there had been 191,307 sent with 102,130 returned.
At least on the state level, the total number of early ballots cast in-person plus mail ballots that have been delivered so far in 2024 outpaces 2016 by about 41%. But it doesn’t outpace 2020, when mail voting skyrocketed during the pandemic.
So far this year, 340,082 advance ballots have been cast. At this point in 2020, there had been a total of 443,477 ballots, including both returned mail ballots and in-person voting. In 2016, there had been 242,042 in total.
‘Don’t wait’ until last minute to vote early
Voters in Kansas can vote early by mail and in-person, or they can wait until Election Day. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
Early in-person voting will continue until Monday. This week, voters can go to the Shawnee County Election Office at 3420 S.W. Van Buren Street between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays. Next week, voters can go between 8 a.m. and noon on Monday.
“Please, if you’re going to vote early, don’t wait until noon on Monday, because there will be a line,” Howell said. “We’ve managed to keep it under five minutes on average. Most people it’s two minutes or less, but occasionally it’ll get a five-minute line. Monday at 11 o’clock, there will be a line, and it will be significant.”
Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for The Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.
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