I’ve never understood why counties (or the Secretary of State) do not publish summaries of Kansas overseas voters at election time, since this is a category of voters very different from all others. More information about the voting process from authoritative sources is always helpful.

What are the numbers for overseas voters in Kansas? Are they big? Are they small? 

The US Election Assistance Commission recently released its 306-page Election Administration and Voter Survey (EAVS) 2024 Comprehensive Report with national and state details from the Nov. 2024 US general election. County details are available in a separate EAVS data file.

Chapter 4 of the EAVS report gives state overview details of military and overseas voting, which are called “UOCAVA voters.”

Graphic from EAC’s July 2024 Instagram posting about Military and Overseas Voters.  View EAC’s UOCAVA page here.

Congress passed the Uniformed and Oversees Citizen Absentee Voting Act(UOCAVA) in 1986 establishing procedures for absentee voting overseas by US citizens both for the military and other citizens abroad.

UOCAVA Voters 2014-2024: Military vs. Overseas Citizens

Most reporting about UOCAVA only mentions military voting, but since 2014 less than half of UOCAVA voters are in the military. 

In 2024 only 26.3% of UOCAVA voters were in the military nationally.

EAC EAVS 2024 (PDF p. 219) figure showing breakdown of UOCAVA voters from 2014-2024 by miliary vs overseas citizens.

UOCAVA voters from Kansas mirrored the national numbers with 25.1% from the military and 74.9% overseas Kansas citizens.

EAC EAVS 2024 (PDF p. 221) figure shows breakdown of UOCAVA voters by state with percentages of Miliary vs. Overseas Citizens.

UOCAVA Voters: Kansas and US Total

Summary data extracted from the EAVS report showing Kansas and US Totals …

Registered Voters

EAC EAVS 2024 (PDF pp. 229-230) table extract shows numbers of registered UOCAVA voters in Kansas and nationally.

Ballots

EAC EAVS 2024 (PDF pp. 227-230) table extract shows UOCAVA ballot counts for Kansas and nationally.

Voters

EAC EAVS 2024 (PDF pp. 62-63) table extract shows the number of actual UOCAVA voters in the 20024 general election for Kansas and nationally.

Rejected UOCAVA Ballots

EAC EAVS 2024 (PDF p. ) US “map” showing rejection rates of UOCAVA ballots in 2024. Kansas had a single UOCAVA ballot rejected.

Kansas UOCAVA Breakdown by County

In addition to the massive EAVS report with state summaries, the EAC released an Excel file with a staggering 535 columns of data for each of 6461 jurisdictions(usually counties). 

Documentation for these 535 data columns is provided in a “Data Codebook”.

Each of the 105 Kansas counties has a single line of EAVS data in this national Excel file. A Kansas EAVS subset was used here — see additional information below.

Kansas Counties with 20 or more UOCAVA Voters

The 5160 UOCAVA Kansas voters were mentioned above. Here is a list of Kansas counties with 20 or more UOCAVA voters in 2024:

Kansas counties with 20 or more UOCAVA voters in the 2024 general election. This information is from variable F1c, which is the count of Absentee UOCAVA voters.

County UOCAVA Turnout Rates

Two counties near Fort Riley had the highest UOCAVA turnout rates.

Total UOCAVA registrations and number of UOCAVA absentee voters in 2024 by county. Only Kansas counties with 0.25% or higher UOCAVA voters are shown.

It’s unclear why Douglas County has a higher UOCAVA turnout rate than the nearby Leavenworth County with potential Fort Leavenworth military voters.

UOCAVA Absentee Voters Exceeded Registrations

At this time it’s unclear what the explanation might be for these data anomalies.

Eight Kansas counties reported more UOCAVA Absentee voters than UOCAVA registrations. 

Kansas counties reporting more UOCAVA voters than registrations.

For example, Chautauqua County reported zero UOCAVA registrations but three UOCAVA voters.

Nationally, 146 voting jurisdictions showed more UOCAVA voters than UOCAVA registrations. The “worst” was Webb County, TX with 291 UOCAVA registration and 2,010 UOCAVA absentee votes cast.

Kansas UOCAVA Data

Selected UOCAVA-related data was extracted from the 2024 EAC EAVS file for the 105 Kansas counties, which can be viewed in the following Excel file.

	2024 EAVS UOCAVA Data for Kansas134KB ∙ XLSX file
Kansas EAVS UOCAVA data extracted from national file (many other columns are “hidden” in the Excel file).
Download

The “Codebook” file gives some information about each of th3 535 columns in the original national file.

	2024 EAVS Kansas Codebook41.8KB ∙ XLSX file
List of 535 EAVS data fields showing information about columns with missing or constant data.  The “delete” column shows columns that were deleted in the abridged data version for Kansas. The Kansas “abridged” file only has 325 columns (instead of 535) after missing or constant columns were removed.  The full or “abridged” versions are available at the GitHub repository listed below.
Download

See the EAVS Data section of the initial article for information about how to download state EAVS files (“raw data” or “abridged”) all states.