Laura Owen says she went to cast her ballot at the Lenexa City Center Library and watched her selections keep sliding toward the Democratic column, including a repeated switch away from Republican Sen. Roger Marshall toward his opponent, Adam Hamilton, in Kansas's closely watched Senate race. Johnson County's top election official says the equipment was checked and is working properly.
Owen, a former Kansas commerce secretary who was married to former Republican Lt. Gov. Dave Owen, cast her ballot on October 20 and later published an open letter to the Johnson County Election Office. “Most of the selections kept defaulting to the Democrat,” Owen said, according to The Kansas City Star. She said the machine specifically struggled to register her vote for Marshall. “It kept going to (Adam) Hamilton,” she said. Owen also said two friends told her they ran into the same problem while voting early, and that the experience would lead her to question a Hamilton victory if he wins the race.
Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt said the county's voting equipment was functioning properly. According to the same Star report, the Election Office has heard directly from three voters raising concerns about a ballot-marking device, and in each case the reports came in only after those voters had already cast their ballots and left the polling place.
Five Locations Flagged Concerns During Voting
Separately, five early-voting locations placed calls to the Election Office reporting voter concerns while selections were actively being made on the machines, the station's report notes. In each instance, a technician responded, recalibrated the screen and verified its accuracy, per the same account. More than 50,000 voters had already cast ballots during early voting in Johnson County at the time of those reports.
Schmidt pointed to the county's mark, verify, scan process, which the report says gives every voter the chance to review their choices on screen and then again on a printed paper ballot before it is fed into the scanner. Johnson County's own voting guidance spells out the same safeguard, instructing touchscreen users to review their voted selections on the marked ballot card before inserting it into the ballot scanner, according to Johnson County Election Office. The county notes that a ballot that is wrongly marked, defaced or torn can be returned to election judges and exchanged for a replacement.
All votes cast in Johnson County have been recorded on paper ballots since 2018, whether voters use a touchscreen ballot-marking device or fill out a full-size ballot by hand, the election office's site states. Johnson County voting stations also provide posted instructions and styluses, and voters using the touchscreen devices are told to tap directly on a candidate's name rather than the small box beside it.
State Testing Requirements and a Handful of Complaints
Schmidt said the county tests its voting equipment before each election, and the election office's own materials describe a Systems Diagnostic Test run on every voting machine beforehand, along with Logic and Accuracy tests performed on each election results stick to check the integration between machine data and the paper-ballot system. Kansas election standards separately call for equipment to be tested with a prepared stack of test ballots in a public meeting ahead of an election, according to the Kansas Secretary of State's office.
Kansas Secretary of State spokesperson Whitney Tempel said that office had received a handful of complaints about voting machines not reflecting voters' intentions, the Star reported. Schmidt advised any voter who believes a device isn't responding as expected to immediately notify the supervising judge or contact the election office before leaving the polling station — guidance that echoes the gap identified in the three direct reports the county says it received only after voters had already departed.
Democratic Chair Calls Online Claims Harmful
Jeanna Repass, chair of the Kansas Democratic Party, said she was skeptical of the alleged voting machine malfunctions reported by Owen and other voters. Repass said voters should inspect their printed ballots and promptly report any incorrect marks, but she described online discussion of the Johnson County election irregularities as harmful and insidious, warning that conspiracy theories could discourage voting and fuel disputes over election results.
The episode lands in the middle of a Senate race that election forecasters have classified as a toss-up, with Kansas having gone 96 years without electing a Democratic senator. Johnson County's 12 early voting stations remain open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday through October 31, with early voting wrapping up November 2 with hours from 8 a.m. until noon.
