Mike Brown, chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, steps off the Kansas GOP bus for a stop at the Capitol in Topeka with candidates for Tuesday’s vote. He praised Kansas Republicans’ willingness to adopt advance voting in 2024, an election that could see record turnout. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — Mike Brown, chairman of the Republican Party of Kansas, touted preliminary evidence that the state’s Republican voters complied with the voting procedure Democrats typically rely on to boost turnout.
Brown, elected chairman of the state party after losing the 2022 primary for secretary of state on an election integrity platform, said Friday at the Capitol that Kansas voters responded to former President Donald Trump’s plea to his supporters to vote before the election day on Tuesday. .
“We see it everywhere. The turnout is huge,” Brown said during a pit stop during the Kansas GOP bus tour. “At this point I will say that as a Republican and chairman of the party, I am very proud that we rose to the challenge. We spent a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of resources to make sure people took it to heart.”
The approach stood in contrast to the 2020 election cycle, when Trump asked Republicans to turn their backs on advance voting over questions about election security. Trump lost his re-election campaign to Democrat Joe Biden, who opted not to seek a second term in 2024. The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, is in a tight national race against Trump, with the outcome likely to be decided in a handful of swings. states.
Trump is expected to take Kansas after carrying the state by 20.4 percentage points in 2016 and 14.6 percentage points in 2020.
Good turnout
Secretary of State Scott Schwab said this on Friday There were 516,776 ballots cast through advance voting by Kansans. At this point in the 2020 election cycle, 642,724 ballots had been pre-forwarded to county elections offices. In 2016, 375,857 advance ballots were submitted at that time.
“As we compare this year’s advance voting data to the 2020 and 2016 elections, we must remember that the 2020 cycle was unusual due to the pandemic. Take that year with a grain of salt,” Schwab said. “We are on a path to set a record, so I encourage every voter to get out and exercise their constitutional right.”
Of the state’s 1 million registered voters, 65.9% voted in 2020 and 59.7% cast a ballot in 2016.
During brief campaign speeches on the south steps of the Capitol, Republican congressional candidate Derek Schmidt celebrated the Republican Party’s work on advance voting but emphasized that conservatives should not be complacent. He is running in the 2nd District against Democrat Nancy Boyda for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner.
“There are a lot of people voting in Kansas right now. We are seeing record high voting numbers and, as Republicans, the numbers look very, very good,” Schmidt said. “We can’t stop for another four days. Not until Tuesday 7:00 PM. Even the Kansas City Chiefs lose to a high school team if they stop playing before the game is over. We need to go through the tape.”
“On Election Day, we can save this country. We can turn these things around. In four years we could be better off than we are now. But to do that, we have to win this election next week,” he said.
GOP supermajorities
Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, said the priorities were to elect Trump, gain Republican Party control of Congress and protect Republican supermajorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.
One of Governor Laura Kelly’s goals this year was to add a few Democrats to the House of Representatives and the Senate so that it would be harder for Republicans to override her vetoes.
“Do you want to go back to Trump’s $1.85 gas or do you want to stay where we are? This is such a stark choice,” Masterson said. “We need our supermajorities to overcome some of the mess we’re in, right?”
Those two-thirds margins need to be kept by Republicans, he said, because “I could have a super-duper majority on the Senate side, but if we don’t have it on the House side, it’s kind of meaningless. ”
In-person voting ends Monday at noon in Kansas. To be counted, pre-mailed ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by a county elections office by November 8.
Ballots in Kansas include contests for U.S. President, the four U.S. House seats, all 165 seats in the Kansas House and the Kansas Senate, and a collection of local government offices and ballots. None of the statewide executive branch offices, including the governor and attorney general, are up for grabs in 2024.
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican, could seek re-election in 2026, while U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, also a Republican, could face another election in 2028. Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly has two years left in her second term as governor.
