Advance Voting Begins

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly

By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)

Originally published 01:38 p.m., July 15, 2008
Updated 01:38 p.m., July 15, 2008

It’s time for citizens to exercise their rights: advance voting begins Wednesday morning.

Lyon County Clerk Karen Hartenbower said that voting can be done at the courthouse, 420 Commercial St., prior to the Aug. 5 primary vote at precinct headquarters across county.

“It’s every day ’til noon the day before the election, from 8 to 5,” she said. “... Load up a carload of people and come down, save some gas.”

Advance voters may go online and download forms to request advance ballots, or can pick one up at the courthouse.

Forms are available online at http://www.lyoncounty.org/Clerk_Voter_Information_Page.htm or at http://www.voteks.org/.

“City clerks in even third-class cities have forms,” Hartenbower said.

A vote on a county-wide 1 percent sales tax proposal will be on the ballot for the primary. Residents of the City of Hartford will vote on a 1 percent sales tax that is to be used to improve streets in Hartford.

Only two contested elections will be on the ballot for the primary.

Republican Peggy Mast of Emporia, incumbent state representative from the 76th district, will face a challenge from Republican Tony Trimble of Burlington.

At the national level, Democrats Jim Slattery and Lee Jones are running for the right to oppose incumbent Pat Roberts for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Hartenbower and her employees are working to ensure that the opportunity to vote is available for all who are eligible.

Employees in the county clerk’s office occasionally take ballots to people who are hospitalized and this year, for the first time, they will hold a test run of long-term care mobile voting at three facilities here, she said.

Hartenbower was part of a legislative committee that studied the expanded balloting and recommended it be enacted.

“It’s not into law until 2010 because some election officials didn’t want to mess with it, but I do want to mess with it,” Hartenbower said.

The week before the Aug. 5 primary, Hartenbower and staff will go to Emporia Presbyterian Manor, Horizon Plaza, and Flint Hills Care Center to offer voting to residents.

“The League of Women Voters will be the mobile election board, and then hopefully in November we will offer that to all nine sites in Lyon County,” Hartenbower said.

Residents at those homes already have said they are pleased at the prospect of being able to take part in the voting process again.

“In the Flint Hills Care Center, not one person was registered to vote,” Hartenbower said.

Weather, the cost of transportation coupons and gas, and often the absence of a private vehicle are all factors that sometimes eliminate the ability to vote, she said. That is something she is determined to change before she leaves office in January.

“They lose so much of their identity and dignity and such, but this is something they can still do,” she said.

Registered voters also may choose to participate in the traditional way, by showing up at the proper polling place on election day.

Citizens who are not registered to vote may do so by the end of the day on July 21. Registration will open again after the primary election.

Hartenbower hopes to see voter apathy be replaced by voter enthusiasm this year. In other countries, such as Bosnia, where she has monitored elections, she has observed great interest in voting.

“It is a party and it is dress up in your Sunday best,” Hartenbower said. “There’s food and there’s drink. Even the election workers with the whiskey bottle right beside them. I’ve got pictures of that.”

She doesn’t advocate enthusiasm to that extreme, but she would like to see Lyon County exceed its record 84 percent participation in the 1988 presidential election.

“We’re such a new country, but yet we’ve lost so much of the spirit,” she said.

Candidates who are running unopposed in the primary election are:

Second District County Commission: Phil Winter, Admire, Democrat; Teresa Walters, Emporia, Republican.

Third District County Commission: Chris Bartel, Madison, Democrat; Rollie Martin, Hartford, Republican. Bartel has a Madison address, but lives in Lyon County.

County Clerk: Mike Dorcey, Emporia, Democrat; Tammy Vopat, Emporia, Republican.

17th District, Kansas Senate: Kitty Frank, Allen, Democrat; Jim Barnett, Emporia, Republican.

First District U.S. House of Representatives: James Bordonaro, Emporia, Democrat; Jerry Moran, Hays, Republican.