Jesse Alexander's absentee ballot never showed up in her mailbox, so on Election Day she got on a plane instead. The Johnson County voter, who was temporarily living in Atlanta for a work project, flew overnight back to Kansas just to cast her vote at Antioch Church in Overland Park.
Alexander had requested an absentee ballot from the Johnson County Election Office, but when it never arrived by mail, she was told her only option was to vote in person, according to KMBC. That meant getting herself from Atlanta to the Kansas City area in time for the polls, a plan that nearly fell apart before it even got off the ground.
Her flight was scheduled to leave Atlanta at 12:30 a.m. Eastern time and land in Kansas City at 1:21 a.m., but weather pushed everything back. She didn't touch down until 2:29 a.m., more than an hour behind schedule, the station reported. Despite the delay and the middle-of-the-night scramble, Alexander said voting was worth doing and that she was glad she did it.
A Round Trip Just to Reach the Ballot Box
After voting at Antioch Church, Alexander didn't linger in Kansas. She flew back to Atlanta that same Tuesday night, closing out a cross-country round trip built entirely around one ballot. The episode underscores how far some voters felt they needed to go after a mailed ballot failed to arrive in time.
Johnson County election officials note that registered voters have options beyond mail. Any registered voter in Johnson County can vote at any advance voting location, and in-person voting only requires a valid government-issued photo ID, according to the Johnson County Election Office. The county also says any registered voter can apply to vote by mail for a November general election without giving a reason, though that application must be received by the Tuesday before Election Day, and ballots aren't processed for mailing until 20 days before the election.
Absentee Delays Have Surfaced Elsewhere Too
Alexander's experience echoes, without being tied to, separate absentee-ballot troubles reported in metro Atlanta this election cycle. In that region, a lawsuit alleged that more than 1,800 registered Gwinnett County voters who had requested absentee ballots had not received them by Friday, even though the ballots were marked as issued, per CBS Atlanta. The outlet also reported a separate lawsuit over absentee-ballot delays in Cobb County, where election officials acknowledged some delays but disagreed with the scope of the lawsuit.
In response to the Gwinnett and DeKalb cases, the Southern Poverty Law Center reached separate agreements with those two counties to individually contact voters whose ballots had not been returned, the same report noted. Under those agreements, replacement ballots would be sent overnight with the counties covering return postage. Georgia voters who hadn't received an absentee ballot were told they could still vote in person on Election Day as long as they signed a document attesting they were voting only once.
There is no evidence connecting Alexander's missing ballot to the issues reported in Gwinnett, DeKalb or Cobb counties, and it remains unclear why her ballot didn't arrive in Kansas. What's clear is that she wasn't willing to let a late mail delivery keep her from the polls, even if it meant landing in Kansas City after 2:30 in the morning to make it happen.
