After redistricting thirteen Kansas counties still need to fix districts in voter file
Most of these problems first appeared last July in the first voter file released after redistricting
Last year the Kansas Legislative Research Department published reports and files about the enacted redistricting plans for Kansas.
The information in these reports shows districts assigned to some voters are not correct in a voter file obtained from the Kansas Secretary of State’s office earlier this week.
Some problems have been fixed in the voter file since the first redistricting information was included in July 2022, but thirteen counties still have incorrect or missing districts for some votes.
House Districts
All problems in State Representative district assignments found last July have been fixed. The House districts were assigned based on the “Freestate 3F” plan.
Senate Districts
Kansas Legislative Research shows the “Liberty 3” plan was enacted last year for the Kansas Senate districts. PDF pages 52 - 56 show the percentage breakdown of senate districts by county.
A comparison of the Liberty 3 plan to a summary of the most recent voter file shows incorrect state senate district assignments in five counties: Comanche, Ellsworth, Lane, Scott, Wilson.
These problems can be fixed programmatically by assigning all voters in a county the correct State Senate district since the whole county is in the same district.
The “Liberty 3” redistricting plan appears to have a typo in the assignment for Kearny County.
The long list of 10 senate districts for Johnson County appeared at bottom of p. 53 in the report. The first entry on p. 54 says “Johnson” county but (I believe) should have said “Kearney” since otherwise Kearney is missing from the table. The entry incorrectly labelled “Johnson” indicated Kearney was in State Senate district 39, which is consistent with the current voter file.
This Excel file shows a summary of voter counts by State Senate district for all counties using the recently acquired data.
State Board of Education Districts
Kansas Legislative Research shows the “Apple 7” plan was enacted last year for the State Board of Education districts. PDF pages 206 - 210 show the percentage breakdown of board of education districts by county.
A comparison of the Apple 7 plan to a summary of the most recent voter file shows incorrect state board of education district assignments in five counties: Mitchell, Ness, Ottawa, Smith and Stafford.
Two counties, Cowley and Reno, are making the correct district assignments but have not assigned a district to a number of voters.
These problems can be fixed programmatically by assigning all voters in a county the correct State Board of Education district since the whole county is in the same district.
This Excel file shows a summary of voter counts by State Board of Education district for all counties using the recently acquired data.
Congressional Districts
Kansas Legislative Research shows the “Ad Astra 2” plan was enacted last year for the US Congressional districts. The PDF report only shows a map and not the number of voters in a county in a particular congressional district.
All counties are assigning the correct congressional district to voters in the current voter file, however, Douglas County has not assigned two of its voters to any congressional district.
Since Douglas County is split by congressional district, fixing the district assignment programmatically is not possible.
This Excel file shows a summary of voter counts by Kansas Congressional district for all counties using the recently acquired data.
Related
Why has DC-based "Protect Democracy" purchased 68 updates of the Kansas voter registration file since 2020 for its VoteShield project?
The voter file from earlier this week is still missing Kansas voter history from Nov. 2022 in three counties.