Entering the final day before Election Day on Tuesday, Johnson County is reporting record-high early voter turnout numbers.
As of Saturday, 203,379 voters had cast ballots early in person, according to the Johnson County Election Office. That’s on top of roughly 50,000 more mail-in ballots that have been sent out at voters’ request.
“We are seeing really good, healthy turnouts in advance of voting here in Johnson County,” Election Commissioner Fred Sherman said in an interview with the Post last week.
By the numbers
The number of voters so far who have cast ballots early in person in 2024 far surpasses the numbers for the last two presidential elections in Johnson County.
In 2020, 123,242 people in Johnson County voted early. Four years earlier in 2016, 135,782 voted early in person in that year’s general election, according to the county election office’s online database.
A major caveat for the 2020 numbers is the high amount of mail-in voting that occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, the county sent out mail-in voting applications to every registered voter and about 150,000 people voted by mail in Johnson County in 2020.
Before this year, Sherman said 2016 was the previous record holder for in-person early voting in Johnson County.
What is driving people to vote early?
Greg Vonnahme, department chair for the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Department of Political Science, specializes in voting and elections. He said there’s been a national trend toward more early voting over the past three decades or so.
“Typically, once people vote through some other method, be that vote by mail or in-person early voting, they’re more likely to do that again in the future,” he said. “That’s part of the story, just sort of that natural evolution that we’ve seen over time.”
Plus, Sherman said one of the key attractions of early in-person person is the convenience of it. You can vote at any of the early voting locations starting in mid-October regardless of where you live, and there’s weekend availability, too.
“Clearly the utility of advanced voting is just convenience and kind of flexibility the voters have,” he said on KCUR’s Up To Date last week.
Across the county, there have been as many as 18 advance in-person voting places open at one time, each with weekday and weekend hours.
All those options make it easier to cast your ballot while you’re already out and about, Sherman said, like when you’re running errands, dropping kids off at activities or on your way to and from work.
Additionally, Vonnahme said political parties and candidates themselves have been pushing early voting more broadly.
“They have a strategic incentive to do that; as they get people to the polls earlier, those are votes that they can count on, and then they can focus their mobilization efforts on voters that haven’t yet cast a ballot,” he said.
What does that mean for total turnout?
Though early voting has drawn a lot of people to the polls this year in Johnson County, that doesn’t necessarily mean the final turnout will be higher in Johnson County than in past presidential elections.
“For the most part, in most elections, high early voting turnout is not indicative of high turnout generally,” Vonnahme said. “Typically, what early voting has done is it hasn’t really encouraged a lot more people to vote, but rather, most people who would have voted on Election Day anyway.”
That’s not always the case though, he said, adding that “there are some instances where high early voting has been predictive of high voter turnout overall.”
“Most people understand that to be just a reflection of the level of energy, interest and mobilization that’s already in the electorate,” Vonnahme said.
In 2020, 350,750 people cast ballots in the general election. Sherman said he expects about the same number of total ballots for this year’s general election, potentially a few more due to population growth, but that’s just a forecast.
“It’s a little bit like predicting the hurricanes. I can tell you pretty much the date and the time and location that hurricane is going to hit, but whether it’s a Category 3, 4 or 5 is still to be determined,” he said. “We shall see.”
If that prediction proves accurate, that would mean about 73% of the nearly 479,000 registered voters in Johnson County turned out for this election. That would be lower than the 77% turnout in 2020 but nearly identical to the 73% in 2016.
A guide to voting on election day
- Early in-person voting is still available at three locations on Monday between 8 a.m. and noon.
- That being said, if you do wait until Election Day to cast your vote, be sure to go to your assigned precinct polling place. On Election Day, you must vote at the location that’s been designated for you based on your address.
- “I cannot stress it enough, [voters] have to go to their assigned polling location [on Election Day] to vote a perfect ballot,” Sherman said.
- Due to Johnson County’s size, there are dozens of precinct polling locations on Election Day.
- Find your assigned polling place and look at a sample version of your ballot here.
- Read Johnson County Post coverage of state and local elections for 2024 here.
More on Johnson County elections: What Johnson County voters should expect Election Night — and after
