Sedgwick County commissioners will be lobbying state lawmakers for changes in election law to allow voters to cast ballots at any location on election day.

This is one of several issues that will be on the county’s legislative platform for 2019.   Commissioners want a system that will allow voters to cast ballots at any polling place within the county if the technology is available.   Interim county counselor Mike Pepoon said this would include having locations available at “vote centers” or setting up other locations where a voter could avoid having to cast a provisional ballot.

County commission chairman David Dennis said there were hundreds of paper provisional ballots cast in the November general election, and they were mostly from people who went to the wrong polling place.   He said the problem is that the paper ballot may have different races that the voter is not eligible to cast a ballot for.    Dennis says the county has machines that would allow people to vote at any polling place.

Commissioner Jim Howell sees this as a high priority that needs to be fixed.   He said a system could be created for voters to go to any poll site, and the voting machine would bring up the proper ballot for each voter.