Karen Browning Announces Retirement as
Assistant
Election Commissioner
JOHNSON COUNTY GOVERNMENT
STATE OF KANSAS
NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release: May 18, 2009
Contact: Assistant Election Commissioner Karen Browning or Election Commissioner Brian Newby at (913) 782-3441.
Assistant Election Commissioner ends 40-year career with Johnson County
OLATHE, KS ( Johnson County Square) – Assistant Election Commissioner Karen Browning has voted for retirement, ending a 40-year career with the Johnson County Election Office.
Her retirement becomes effective on Friday, May 22. A reception in her honor is scheduled from 3 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 17, at the Election Office, 2101 E. Kansas City Road, Olathe. Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh will speak at 4 p.m. Other speakers include Annabeth Surbaugh, chairman of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, and Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian Newby.
During her career, Browning has:
- worked in more than 200 Johnson County elections, including eleven presidential elections and state selections of eight Kansas governors;
- served under six of Johnson County’s eight election commissioners and 32 county commissioners; and,
- watched the county’s voter registration increase by almost fourfold.
She also welcomed the end to time-consuming, hand-counting thousands of paper ballots in Johnson County elections to modern touch-screen voting machines with far quicker results and far less stress.
Browning has no regrets about retirement.
“My time at the Election Office was an incredible experience – full of hard work, passion for elections and democracy,” she said. “It has been a great career that I have always enjoyed, but it’s time for a new chapter in my life and to take it easy.”
Browning said she had a sense of the importance of voting long before she joined the Election Office staff.
“My folks always talked about voting and how important it was,” she said. “I started when I was young. Voting was already an important part of my life.”
She also soon proved herself an important part of the operations at the Election Office.
Newby describes Browning as a “walking encyclopedia” and the “office historian” because she has complete records on every election since she has been with the county.
“If anyone has a question about a past election, Karen is the person to ask,” he said.
Her departure as the Election Office’s grande dame is bittersweet – happy for the retirement that she deserves; sad that she’s leaving.
“Beyond all of the value Karen provides our county, the most impressive thing, to me, is that she is retiring after almost 41 years at the top of her game. Karen leaving our office is the same as Michael Jordan leaving the Chicago Bulls or Lance Armstrong walking away from the Tour de France,” Newby said. “In both those cases, those were temporary retirements. We wish Karen’s was, too. She has given so much to our county and to our voters—she provided the best return on tax dollars that could ever be imagined. She leaves with the distinction of being the most effective Election Office employee ever in Johnson County.”
Browning leaves County Government as the No. 3 employee with the most seniority at slightly more than 40 ½ years among 3,659 employees. She began her career on September 3, 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was in the final days of his presidency and two months before her first presidential election that handed the keys to the Oval Office to Richard Nixon.
That also was the first year Johnson County used mechanical voting machines for the first time, requiring a team of auditors taking the results from each lever machine and tallying them by hand. The final count ended in the midnight hours.
Then and now:
- November 5, 1968 – Presidential – Registered Voters: 100,610 – Voted: 88,314
- November 4, 2008 – Presidential – Registered Voters: 364,441 – Voted: 285,001.
Her first job at the Election Office was a key punch operator since all voter registration cards and reports were typed by hand.
“When we processed registration, we typed them into the books that went to the polling places. We typed men on one page and women on another, which I found very interesting,” she said.
According to Newby, Browning has been instrumental in the evolution of the voter registration process, which Browning has overseen for many years. From a manual system, the office progressed first to a mainframe computer application, then to a networked personal computer-based, stand-alone system, and now to a current statewide voter registration system.
In 1978, Browning was named election clerk supervisor followed by election manager in 1979 with primary responsibilities for voter registration and list maintenance. She has served as assistant election commissioner for the past 27 years.
Browning also has overseen Census and mapping operations, and knows Johnson County geography like the back of her hand, since any “visible ground feature” might someday be needed as a precinct boundary.
Over the past four decades, Browning has watched a steady increase in the number of registered voters in Johnson County as the county continued to grow and helped to implement new processes and new technology to encourage more citizens to vote and making it more convenient for them to do so.
She spearheaded the transition of using fewer paper ballots in the county’s elections and relying more on modern touch-screen voting machines. The machines have proven popular with Johnson County voters since being introduced in 2002 and have allowed election workers to post accurate election results more quickly and less reliance on time-consuming hand counting of ballots.
Another major change in the voting process for citizens of both Johnson County and the state occurred in 1996 with the beginning of advance voting, both in person and by mail. In the 2008 Presidential Elections, almost half (a record 137,323) of Johnson County citizens voted in advance of the November 4th election day. The state of Kansas also reported a record number of advance voting in the November elections.
Although the election process experienced significant changes over the years, Browning said one thing hasn’t changed. The integrity of the ballot, even from a touch-screen voting machine, is still held sacred, and that requires rigorous adherence to the office’s confirmation procedures.
Browning was awarded the CERA (Certified Election / Registration Administrator) credential in 2004 by the National Association of Election Officials, recognizing her as a CERA upon completion of the nation’s foremost professional education program in voter registration and elections administration. She is the only active election administrator in Kansas with the CERA designation.
Browning has mixed feelings about leaving Johnson County public service, but admits she will most miss the people—the ones she’s leaving behind at work at the Election Office and the ones being served while they exercise their right to vote or run for political office.
“Elections begin and end with people,” she said.
In retirement, Browning plans to take it easy, spend more time with her family, and continue to volunteer in her many civic and church activities.
A native of Kansas, Browning has lived in Johnson County since 1965. An Olathe resident for many years and a member of the Class of 1997 in the Leadership Olathe program, she now lives in Gardner.
Her family includes three sons, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Within her own family, she has passed the election torch, recruiting all three grandchildren, who have worked in the office, at polling locations, and as election night drivers transporting polling place results from collection sites to the Election Office.
Newby, too, has mixed feelings about Browning’s pending departure, but noted Shakespeare said it best: “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
“We will miss her and wish her well, but we are gratified to know that she will always be a phone call away to advise us if we have a thorny issue,” he said. “We even offered—threatened, I guess—to continue equipping her with a Blackberry so she could still be in the email loop and give us guidance.”
Last Updated: June 8, 2009 10:04 AM
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