Lawrence.com

Posted by Keith Campbell October 10, 2008 at 6:27 p.m.

The Elections Office...the center of activity

I wanted to write about advance voting. At some point this weekend I will write about advance voting, explain your options, how to do it, and how it works. I am a little behind in what I wanted to write about because this is the week that our office was bombarded by phone calls and emails. It isn't surprising that our office became a popular place, but we couldn't help but speculate on why this week. We have been really busy, but this week was exponentially busier than last week. My best guess is that 21 states, including Missouri, had their voter registration deadlines this week. I think voters in Kansas heard about these other states deadlines from the national news, NPR, or from Kansas City television and radio stations and the rush was on. The deadline to vote in Kansas isn't until October 20th. Maybe the rush this week will make next week better.I tell you this because if you are trying to call or email or office please be patient. I promise we answer the phones when we are at our desks and we respond to emails, but with the volumes we are getting you might need to leave a message, or give us a few hours to get back with you via email. There are times that I can take a call and click my receiver and go right to another call. I can do this for a while. I have even dialed the phone on a couple on callers because I picked up the phone and started to dial not realizing that I had picked up a call before it rang.On to another topic, one that may only interest me:I like numbers; I like what they say and what they don't say. I like how it can quantify what we do, and I like the way they can tell a story. Here is a number that interested me, 11.1%. I ran some numbers to see how many voter registrations our office has processed that are: new registrants address changes, and name changes since we reopened the voter rolls after the August Primary election. The answer: 8906*. This works out to be that we have handled a registration for 11.1% of our entire voting population since the August Primary. And this number is going to go up even more; we still have 10 days to register to vote. A teaser: Advance voting begins 10/15 and if you are one of the approximately 4500 Douglas County Residents who have requested a ballot be mailed to you they are mailed on that day. The date is set by Kansas Law.I check for a dial tone now before I dial.
* This isn't a perfect number because it could double count a name change and address change, and it can leave some things off like a straight party affiliation change, a telephone number change and it excludes duplicated registrations, but I think it is very close. I am not including the registrations in our office that are waiting to be processed. The good news is that right now we are processing registrations we received on 10/8. The bad news is there are about 500-750 registrations waiting to be entered, and we get several hundred new ones per day.The fastest way to check your registration? [www.douglascountyelections.com][1] [1]: http://www.douglascountyelections.com