The 2022 law allowing two weeks of voting before Election Day is proving its popularity with turnouts approaching 20% of the total cast four years ago
BY: RUDI KELLER
Missouri Independent
Don’t call it early voting. It is “no excuse absentee” voting.
Whatever the name, it is clearly popular in Missouri. As of late-morning Tuesday, more than 100,000 St. Louis County voters had cast ballots. That is nearly 20% of the total vote recorded in the county in the 2020 presidential race.
Across the Missouri River in St. Charles County, the story is the same.
St. Charles, second in total 2020 ballots only to St. Louis County among Missouri’s 116 voting jurisdictions, had more than 35,000 votes cast when the offices closed on Monday, Kurt Bahr, the county’s director of elections.
Bahr is operating two locations for no-excuse absentee voting.
Missouri’s law allowing two weeks for no-excuse absentee voting passed in 2022. It was included in a bill that also mandated the use of a government-issued identification for voting.
The two weeks of early voting was the price state Senate Democrats extracted for allowing the bill to come to a vote.
Some of the early votes in the St. Charles County tally are traditional absentee ballots, for people who will be out of town or physically unable to go to the polls Nov. 5, Bahr said. But the vast majority are people who are taking advantage of the new law to cast ballots when every election authority in the state is open for in-person voting.
“If I do another 5,000 today, which we’re likely to do, between my office and the satellite location, we’re gonna get over the number of voters who voted in the April election in its entirety,” Bahr said.
In Greene County, which had the fourth largest vote recorded in 2020, about 2,500 people cast a ballot each day last week, increasing to 3,000 on Monday, Clerk Shane Schoeller said.
“I anticipate by the end of the no excuse absentee voting period that we will be somewhere between 20 and 25% turnout,” Schoeller said.
And in Boone County, which ranked ninth in 2020 with 91,130 votes cast for president, the number who have already voted is nearing the total absentee vote of 14,000 from 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led a large number of people to use a vote-by-mail option.
Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon said 2,000 people voted Saturday at polling locations in a shopping mall and a centrally located park. This weekend, she will take the mobile polling stations to Ashland and Centralia, the two largest communities in the county outside Columbia.
“It has been increasing every day,” Lennon said.
And in smaller jurisdictions, the turnout is just as strong. Cape Girardeau County in southeast Missouri had 1,400 ballots cast in the first two days of no-excuse absentee voting, Clerk Kara Clark Summers said last week.
“There are lines of people voting,” she said on Thursday. “I was here until 7:30 last night.”
While St. Louis County is the only top-10 voting jurisdiction to post turnout numbers on its website, news outlets across the state are reporting long lines and many people waiting 45 minutes or an hour to vote at many clerk’s offices.
But the delays don’t seem to deter anyone, Bahr said. There are parking issues at his central location and it can take up to a half hour or longer to find a parking spot. He runs a shuttle from a nearby church parking lot to ease traffic.
People are showing up in pairs and trios and generally are in a good mood, he said.
“Early voting tends to be a little bit more of a social event for voters,” Bahr said.
A traditional absentee ballot is cast because someone will be out of town or physically unable to go to the polls on Election Day. Liberal groups nationwide have pushed early voting as a way to boost participation, while it has generally been opposed by conservatives who argue it increases the chances for problems with the election.
The first election when the no-excuse early voting option was available in Missouri was November 2022.
This is the first presidential election using the new law and Lennon said she thinks part of the surge is word-of-mouth sharing from people who have already voted.
“It’s just people realizing that we have the option now,” she said. “But a lot of them, too, are just people worried that they’re not going to be able to make it to the polls on Election Day. They don’t want to have to worry about ‘what if an emergency happens’”
Kathy Ritter, a retired educator who voted Tuesday at the Boone County Government Center in Columbia, said she loved having the ability to just show up and vote at any time during the day.
“It’s a wonderful convenience for our community,” she said. “The line was long, but it went quickly.”
Missouri employers are required by law to give workers three hours leave to vote on Election Day, but only if the employee requests it in advance and does not have three hours when they are not working while the polls are open.
“Just having the flexibility of voting in the days before the one day, because that one day, especially for people who work, it can be difficult to squeeze in time to vote,” Ritter said.
Voter ID link
The ties between early voting and the voter identification law aren’t just that they were included in the same bill. As their price for including it, Republicans demanded language that ended the no-excuse absentee voting if the identification provisions were thrown out by the courts.
Missouri Republicans have pushed what’s known as a photo-ID law through several times, and voters signed off on putting it in the state constitution in 2016, it has never withstood a legal challenge.
The new law is facing a court test and the ruling could come at any time. On Oct. 21, Circuit Judge Jon Beetem heard final arguments in a challenge filed in 2022 and took the case under advisement.
The lawsuit focuses on the burdens faced by three individuals obtaining state-issued identification. The problems include finding transportation to a state license office, misspellings on important documents or lack of those documents entirely due to age.
To qualify as acceptable for voting, the identification must be Missouri- or federally issued with a photo, date of birth and an expiration date. Identification that has expired since the most recent general election is also acceptable.
A voter who does not have one of those forms of identification can cast a provisional ballot. For that ballot to be counted, the voter must return to the polling place and show an acceptable ID or hope that the signature on the ballot is considered a valid match with their signature on file.
Prior to the law taking effect in 2022, a voter could also use an out-of-state driver’s license or identification card, a student identification, a voter registration card issued by the local election authority, or a recent bank statement or utility bill mailed to them at their registered address.
If Beetem rules against the law, there will be demands that it be re-enacted without any caveats, said Bahr, a former state representative.
“There’d be an outcry because most voters, Republican, Democrat, general voters, like this accessibility to their ballot box and like the convenience of not having to worry about a single day,” Bahr said.
Schoeller, who also served in the legislature, said he, too, thinks there would be people pressuring for the law to be re-enacted if the courts strike down the identification law.
“I’ve always been a proponent of it, especially after becoming an election authority when you realize that when you concentrate all your problems on the day of the election, that creates a lot of challenges for voters,” he said.
The popularity of early voting does not appear to be partisan. St. Louis County voted 61% for Joe Biden in 2020 and St. Charles County voted 58% for Trump. Boone County
Election authorities like it as much, if not more, than voters, Bahr said.
“One, we like people voting. We like to help people,” Bahr said. “And two, if everything is in one day, you know, there’s always that fear of ‘what happens if something goes bad.’ But if we can handle issues early, then we can take care of it over a span of time.”
Election Day impact
There will not be any delays in delivering election results to the public because of the extra early votes, both Bahr and Lennon said.
It generally takes her office about an hour after polls close to release absentee results and that won’t change, Lennon said.
The surge of early votes could point to a large increase in overall turnout, but election authorities are not forecasting much change from four years ago.
There are very high profile ballot measures this year for abortion rights and sports wagering, but the only statewide candidate race where large sums have been spent on advertising is the U.S. Senate contest.
About 70% of Missouri’s registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 election and that is the estimate Secretary of State Jay Ashcrorft is making for this year, spokesman JoDonn Chaney said.
That’s Lennon’s estimate for Boone County as well. The early voting period changes when people vote but she doesn’t expect it to lead to a big increase in participation.
“I’m sticking with 70,” she said. “It was 70% in 2020, so I feel pretty confident.”
Bahr said he anticipates 75% turnout in St. Charles County, about the same as 2020.
For Ritter, voting in Boone County, the urge to vote right away was overwhelming.
“I was so excited to vote and so motivated to vote that I couldn’t wait until Nov. 5 to do it,” she said.
She wants civility in politics, she said, and that’s what she voted for.
“I’m looking for some sanity in politics, and I just felt like my little voice could be heard,” Ritter said. “And if it could be heard, I’m going to put it out there today.”