? Voters in Kansas have been turning out in droves to cast advance ballots in the upcoming general election, a trend that has in the past been an indicator of heavy voter turnout on Election Day.

But when voters in Lawrence and Topeka are asked what motivated them to vote early, many of them gave very typical answers that don’t reflect a higher-than-normal level of interest in the race.

“I’m leaving the country on Wednesday so I wanted to make sure that I got my vote in and that it counted,” said Janelle Franklin, a Topeka voter who cast her ballot Monday, Oct. 31.

“I’m going to be out of town,” said Harley Catlin, who voted later that same day at an advance voting site in west Lawrence.

Mallery Warren, who voted Friday at the advance voting site on the University of Kansas campus, said it was mainly a matter of convenience for her.

“I’m going to be working on Election Day and I don’t necessarily have transportation, so I didn’t think I would actually make it to the place where I would vote on Tuesday,” she said.

And her sister, Michaela Warren, who voted at the same time Friday, said she too was mainly concerned about potential scheduling conflicts.

“My voting place is a little farther than where a bus can take me,” Michaela Warren said. “And since I work on campus, I just thought I would just come out and vote early.”

As of Friday afternoon, according to the Kansas Secretary of State’s office, more than 375,000 ballots in Kansas had already been cast, either at advance polling locations or mailed in to county election offices.

That’s already 20,000 more advance ballots than the total number cast in the 2012 presidential race. And there were still another 60,000 mail-in ballots that had been sent to voters requesting them but not yet returned Friday afternoon, with three and a half days left before Election Day.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach said last week that he thinks it’s a prelude to what he predicts will be record voter turnout in this election.

He said that’s based largely on the fact that record numbers of people are showing up, despite the fact that there seem to be no coordinated, statewide campaigns as there have been in other years to send out advance voting applications.

“That means that we’ve got some smaller campaigns, like State Senate races and State House races that are sending out within their district pre-filled request cards, but I don’t think we’re going to see a huge jump in advance ballots as a percent of total ballots cast,” Kobach said.

But other political experts say they’re not so sure, including Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew.

In Douglas County, Shew said, more than 11,000 people had cast advance ballots at in-person voting sites by Friday afternoon, exceeding the total number of in-person advance ballots cast in 2008, the last time there was an open presidential race.

But he said most of those advance ballots had come from regular voters who tend to turn out at every election, not from new voters or those who would otherwise stay home.

“They’re just choosing to vote in advance rather than voting at the polls,” he said.

And in particular, he said, there has not been a huge volume of advance voting on the KU campus the way there was in 2008.

“The only way I reach that record high is if I reach a really high university turnout, and right now I’m just not seeing that,” Shew said.

University of Kansas political science professor Patrick Miller said early voting used to be an indicator of total turnout. But he said that’s not as true today as in the past because voters have become increasingly accustomed to the idea of early voting, and campaigns have gotten more sophisticated in their approaches to it.

“Campaigns are increasingly using early voting to bank hardcore supporters early and focus their efforts closer to Election Day on harder-to-motivate voters,” he said. “That could be a factor in some places like Johnson County where there are a lot of competitive races, but less so here in Douglas where there is relatively little competition. So I do not necessarily agree with Kobach. He may be correct in the end but I don’t think that early voting is necessarily a sign of that.”

Sitting in the Memorial Union at KU on Friday were two students who said they had not yet voted, but planned to on Election Day.

Emily Meiring of Prairie Village and Joshua Fandrich of Leavenworth, both 18, said they intend to vote in their home towns, but that they haven’t had time in their schedules to cast advance ballots.

Both also said they are not particularly excited about the 2016 election, even though it will be their first opportunity to cast a ballot.

“I’m kind of sad that this election is the one that I’m able to vote in for the very first time,” Meiring said. “I wish it was a different one because it’s so frustrating.”

Meiring said she plans to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who stands to become the first female president in U.S. history. But that’s not why she’s backing Clinton.

“There’s not a point where I really, really want to vote for her, but I really, really don’t want the other candidate to be our president,” she said.

Fandrich, who said he plans to vote for Republican Donald Trump, also said his vote is at least partially a protest against the other candidate.

“It’s because I like Trump and because I don’t like Hillary,” he said.

Mallery Warren expressed what many people nationwide have been saying about the 2016 race: “I’m ready for it to be over with and I just hope we don’t have another election like this ever again.”