A recount of ballots cast for a much-watched measure in Prairie Village yielded the exact same result, upholding voters’ original rejection of the question by nearly 30 percentage points.
Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman told the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners, acting as the board of canvassers, on Wednesday morning that no discrepancies were found between the certified results and the recount results.
This means that even after the recount of the “abandon” petition, Prairie Village residents on Nov. 4 overwhelmingly rejected tossing out its current form of government. (Read more about the “abandon” petition here, and the Post’s coverage of the 2025 election in Prairie Village here.)
Last week, the board of canvassers certified the Nov. 4 results that showed the “no” side earned 5,842 votes and the “yes” crowd earned 3,168 vote. Those exact same numbers were upheld after the mid-November recount.
John Cantrell, the Prairie Village resident who posted a $5,800 bond to pay for the recount, did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comment for this story.
The recount results show no discrepancies
Sherman told the board of canvassers on Wednesday that after the days-long, manual recount process, the Nov. 4 election results for the abandon petition remain the same: 5,842 “no” votes beating the 3,168 “yes” votes.
The board of canvassers unanimously approved certifying the recount results.
County Librarian Tricia Suellentrop and Brent Christensen, the county’s director of financial management and administration, acted as proxies for Chair Mike Kelly and Commissioner Becky Fast, respectively.
Commissioners Shirley Allenbrand and Janeé Hanzlick complimented the election office’s work on the recount.
Hanzlick said it is “impressive” how “quickly and efficiently” election workers were able to complete the task. Allenbrand said the recount finding the same results as the certified results “says a lot.”
“Commissioner Sherman, I think this speaks very highly of your staff and the organization of our election office, and that makes me really proud,” Allenbrand said. “I thought maybe there might be one or two off, but I mean, these are the same numbers and I think that says a lot.”
Election office, workers spent days on the recount
Sherman told reporters during a Tuesday morning press conference that the recount itself wrapped up that morning, a day before the results were shared with the board of canvassers.
Full-time staff spent time on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 15 and 16, finding only the Prairie Village ballots cast out of the roughly 115,000 total ballots cast countywide, Sherman said.
Roughly 40 election workers broken off into bipartisan teams of two, who are not full-time election office staffers, spent most of Monday and Tuesday morning conducting a by-hand recount of the 9,113 Prairie Village ballots, Sherman said.
The bipartisan teams went through the ballots and counted the “yes” votes, the “no” votes, the under votes (or ballots that did not include a response to the question) and the over votes (ballots that marked both “yes” and “no” to the question). Of the total 9,113 ballots cast, 103 were under votes.
Sherman said the $5,800 bond covers the recount itself, particularly for the extra election workers who tallied the ballots by hand earlier this week.
After tallying the total cost of the recount process, the election office determined it owes Cantrell a $971 refund, according to county documents. That means the recount itself cost $4,828.46 in total.
The last time the election office conducted a recount was for the 2022 Value Them Both amendment.
Next steps:
- The recount results, certified on Nov. 19, reaffirm that Prairie Village voters do not want to abandon their city government.
- No changes to the city’s form of government are happening as a result of the recount.
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