Wyandotte County losing registered voters

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Wyandotte County, a traditional Democratic stronghold in Kansas, has lost about 7,000 registered voters even as the state has added more than 10,000 voters to registration rolls the last two years.

The Lawrence Journal-World reported that Kansas has added 10,591 more voters since July 2014, while Wyandotte, the state's third largest county, has lost 7,009 registered voters.

Figures from the secretary of state's office show Wyandotte County had 8.5 percent fewer voters on July 1, 2016, than it did exactly two years earlier. Just over half of the decline can be attributed to a loss of registered Democratic voters, and 49 percent is due to a decline in unaffiliated voters. There were 25 fewer Republican voters in Wyandotte County than two years ago.

The decline in registered voters in Wyandotte County has occurred even as the population of the county has been growing.

Wyandotte County Election Commissioner Bruce Newby said the decline was due in part to routine maintenance of voter registration rolls that involves purging the names of voters who have moved out of the county. But he also blamed both political parties for not doing enough to register new voters.

In Douglas County, registration has grown by 2,906 voters, or 3.9 percent, over the last two years. Nearly all of that has been due to growth in Democratic registration and a decline in unaffiliated voters. Republicans in that county saw an increase of 115 voters, accounting for about 4 percent of the growth.

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The Gayly - 7/10/2016 @ 12:19 p.m. CDT.