The ballots from past years that Johnson County had been preserving at the request of Sheriff Calvin Hayden were ultimately shredded by county election officials, who noted that their destruction is required by state law.
Ballots from as far back as 2019 were long a point of contention between Hayden and the Johnson County Commission.
They had been kept after Hayden said his office would investigate his suspicions about the county’s election integrity. At the time, Hayden questioned the strong showing from Democrats in 2020 given the county’s long Republican-leaning history, and he later voiced skepticism about how mail-in advance ballots were handled.
Sheriff’s years-long probe has yielded no charges
Despite Hayden’s repeated comments over three years casting doubt on the county’s election integrity, the investigation has not resulted in any charges from the Johnson County District Attorney’s office.
Most recently, Hayden cited the county’s use of poll worker management software by Michigan-based Konnech Inc. as a reason to continue looking into perceived irregularities.
Los Angeles prosecutors brought a criminal case against the founder of Konnech alleging that personal information had illegally been stored on servers in China. But Konnech founder Eugene Yu was exonerated and later won a $5 million settlement against the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Konnech software did not handle election results and ballots. Johnson County stopped using it in 2022, and is planning additional election security upgrades this year.
In late January, Hayden’s office received a letter from a lawyer for Konnech that referenced the California settlement and warned him about making any unfounded statements damaging to the company.
Kansas law requires ballots be destroyed after six months
Kansas law requires ballots of city, county, school district and township elections be destroyed after six months as long as the elections are not contested.
KSA 25-2708 requires state and national ballots to be held for 22 months before being destroyed.
Because of Hayden’s investigation, Johnson County ballots have been kept. But after county election officials began to get reminders from Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office about the destruction statute, county commissioners in December gave Chairman Mike Kelly approval to appoint two bipartisan observers for the process.
The sheriff’s office once again asked for preservation of the ballots, with support from Attorney General Kris Kobach.
Johnson County Legal Counsel Peg Trent responded by asking if the sheriff’s office planned to use a search warrant to get custody of the ballots.
The election office had no further communication from the sheriff’s or attorney general’s office since December, said Election Commissioner Fred Sherman when asked about the destruction.
Ballots from 2019, 2020 and 2021 and accompanying election documents were shredded in the presence of an appointed bipartisan team of observers on February 19 and 21, Sherman said.
An emailed request for comment from Hayden’s office went unanswered.
