Polls closed at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, August 1st for Junction City residents voting for City Commission candidates to advance to the November General Election.

By 8:30 pm all of the ballots were counted. Nine hundred and thirteen ballots were cast, representing only eight percent of registered Junction City voters.

Rebecca Bossemeyer, Geary County Clerk, wasn’t sure what contributed to the low voter turnout.

“We haven’t had a primary for City/School elections in probably over a decade, so I really don’t know,” said Bossemeyer. “I didn’t expect a huge turnout today, but I’ve been frankly horrified at the low turnout we had.”

There are still 11 provisional ballots that will be canvassed on Monday, August 7th when County Commissioners sit as the Board of Canvassers, and 64 mailed ballots that have not yet been returned that could have a slight impact on the vote.

“A new law that took effect July 1st – if we have ballots that are postmarked on or before election day and we receive them on Friday (August 4th) we can count those, and we’ve not been able to do that before,” said Bossemeyer. “I do not believe all of those will come back, but I do think there’s a chance that we might get a handful of those ballots back.”

Bossemeyer stressed that the results are still unofficial at this point until all other ballots are counted.