County election offices begin prep work for Presidential Preference Primary

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – For the first time in decades, Kansas will hold a Presidential Preference Primary.

The last time there was a Presidential Preference Primary was in 1992, back when Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush were running for the White House. This is a change in pace from the caucuses that have been held in years past.

“The caucus sometimes, I think in the past, sometimes they were a little unprepared for the turnout that happened. The parties determined that they would have the professionals do it. We do this. I mean, we have the equipment, the technology, everything to handle it,” Harvey County Election Commissioner Rick Piepho said.

The turnout is expected to be high for the Presidential Preference Primary. The Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater believes because “Presidential” is in the title, more people will choose to vote.

“We are adding about 20 new polling sites and expanding the hours of early voting at our early voting centers expanding the days and hours,” Rainwater said.

She says her staff is making changes to ensure voters don’t have to wait in long lines and adding more emphasis for people to have access to early voting.

“We will be expanding the number of days from three days to nine days so that you’ll have two Saturdays that you can come vote early if you can’t make it during the week,” Rainwater said. “We just want to make it easier for voters to get to the polling site.”

Typically county election offices don’t have elections between November and August
Rainwater says adding another election in March will lead to more overtime for her staff.

“A lot of maintenance activity goes on from January to May that’s not going to be happening. I mean, it is going to be happening, but we have an election to run on top of that, a big election, so it’s going to be challenging,” she said.

Once the votes are tallied from the Presidential Preference Primary, the results will be given to each political party. It will be up to them to allocate delegates at their party’s national convention.