WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Long lines continue to form at early voting locations throughout Sedgwick County and Kansas. With strong turnout comes questions about the early voting process, including: “What happens to your ballot when you vote early?”

With less than a week until Election Day, many voters have already made up their minds and cast their ballots. The latest numbers Wednesday from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office show more than 340,000 votes cast so far via early mail and in-person.

What happens to the votes before they are counted on election night? That’s a viewer question we asked Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater.

For early in-person voting, you will have a paper ballot, whether you vote by hand using a ballot marking device. That is then included in the vote tabulation called DS 200, where the way you voted is recorded on a multimedia device.

“At the end of the election, at these early voting sites, those media devices are returned to the elections office and stored in a secure location,” Rainwater said.

These devices are not read by the election computer until election night. The tabulator and the electoral computer are not connected to the Internet, as required by law. Those advanced mail ballots, when they arrive at the elections office, are processed by the advanced board, opened and tabulated.

This data is also stored on a media device until election night. Sedgwick County will hold a public test Friday at 10 a.m. at the historic courthouse to determine tabulation equipment for Election Day.

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