This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 10, 2008 - Missouri is an attractive destination for presidential candidates and their surrogates for an obvious reason: Polls show the swing state is more up for grabs now than at any other time in the campaign.
But there's another tactical reason to pour resources into advertising and door-to-door canvassing here before Election Day. Unlike 31 other states, Missouri doesn't allow voters to cast ballots early without an excuse. This means the campaigns still have time to reach almost all of the state's electorate, as opposed to the still large but shrinking percentage of voters elsewhere who choose to wait until the first Tuesday in November to vote.
Given the recent history of Election Day chaos at some polling places, does the current system remain good for Missourians?
Those who say the process doesn't need changing, or that tweaking the voting schedule is the best solution, tend to argue that in-person voting is the safest bet. Opening the polls a few days early is fine if it will help Election Day congestion. But allowing everyone to vote by mail introduces a range of oversight concerns, says John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who looks at election reform.
Many early-voting advocates want both in-person and absentee options open to everyone. Without across-the-board changes, supporters argue, people will once again face avoidable barriers to casting their vote at the polls. Typically early voting, also called "absentee voting," includes mail-in voting and in-person voting at a central polling place.
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan said she continues to support no-excuse, in-person early voting and hopes Missouri lawmakers will come around before the next election.
"Missourians need the convenience," Carnahan said. "The stress and strain on election officials wouldn't be as bad. Lines would be shorter, and a lot of things would be different if early voting was available."
Recent Turmoil at the Polls
With memories of long lines and Election Day ballot problems from the past two presidential elections still fresh on the minds of some voters, election officials can expect intense scrutiny of the process this time around.
Carnahan said she's spent the last two years talking to officials about how to improve preparations and avoid long lines. Is the state ready for the likely influx?
"I certainly hope so," she said. "My view is that this comes down to well-trained poll workers."
Richard Bauer, assistant director of elections for the St. Louis County Board of Election Commissioners, said he expects both a record number of voters and a record number of poll workers in November. While a typical presidential election calls for roughly 5,000 volunteers, he said more than 5,400 people will likely be needed this year to handle the Election Day rush.
"I think we'll be able to recruit an adequate number of people, but you're never confident until the day after the election," he said.
In a report released in August, FairVote, a nonpartisan advocacy group, had identified Missouri as one of the swing states that is unprepared for a surge in voter turnout. Not all Missouri election officials appear to have taken the steps needed to avoid potentially long lines at polling stations, the report says.
FairVote says it surveyed nearly all of Missouri's county clerks and found the state lacks a standardized method for allocating voting booths among polling stations. In the past, a shortage of booths particularly plagued voters in lower-income neighborhoods.
(Since the release of the report, election officials in St. Louis and St. Louis County have tried to resolve some of these issues.)
Carnahan released a report early last year acknowledging there had been "long lines and voter accessibility issues" in recent elections. In 2000, voters in St. Louis city waited for several hours in the office of the Board of Election Commissioners to cast a ballot, the secretary's report noted. In 2004, voters in Oronogo (Jasper County) waited in line to vote for several hours.
"The challenge of long lines and their possible consequence -- voter disenfranchisement -- are not new to Missouri," according to Carnahan's report.
Carnahan's office said that in the last presidential election, understaffed polling places led to some of the voting delays. And while the report noted that an effort to recruit more workers had helped in the 2006 midterm election, people still reported "long lines and severe delays ... in a number of counties, rural and urban, around the state." Voters waited for new paper ballots to arrive, and in polling locations across the region, "poll workers reported long lines due to a lack of new equipment or privacy booths for voting."
Bauer, the St. Louis County election official, said voters will have some say in whether lines move quicker this Election Day.
"The thing we fear out here at the election board is people who see 10 county and state issues for the first time when they're in the booth," he said. "We want them to read the ballot ahead of time," and the polling places will have sample ballots available for voters to read in line. Still, "if they take 10 minutes to vote that'll be a problem." (Advocates of early voting say it gives people more time to become familiar with the ballot.)
Officials say a rule change prior to the 2006 midterm election that no longer allowed voters to mark once to vote for all candidates of a political party -- and instead required them to vote for each candidate individually -- slowed down the process, as well.
Carnahan's report also said voters complained that they were being "misinformed and confused" by private groups and local election officials in 2006. Nearly one out of every five complaints received by the secretary of state's office concerned a voter being asked for the wrong type of identification at the polls on Election Day. (Missouri voters are not required to show a government-issued photo ID.)
Rules of the Vote
Absentee voting used to be reserved mainly for people who were unable to make it to the polls on Election Day, whether they were too sick to travel, away on business or serving in the military. State laws still vary, but most are relaxing such restrictions -- and voters are taking advantage.
Fortier, a research fellow who leads an election reform project, said that in 1980, only about one in 20 voters voted before Election Day. That total was more than 20 percent in 2004. And Fortier expects roughly 30 percent of the electorate to vote early in the 2008 presidential election.
Unlike Missouri and Illinois, 28 states allow no-excuse absentee voting by mail. To vote absentee in Missouri, a resident must expect to be absent from the jurisdiction on Election Day, be incapacitated due to illness or physical disability (or such a person's caregiver), be prevented from voting by religious belief or practice, be employed as an election authority, or be incarcerated. Inconvenience is not a sufficient reason to get an absentee ballot.
Illinois has many of the same requirements for absentee voting. But voters there are allowed to cast ballots at the polls early without an excuse.
Early voting in Missouri was promoted after the 2000 general election -- when closely contested presidential and state races resulted in large voter turnout. In St. Louis, scores of residents were taken off the voter rolls for failing to provide updated addresses, and thousands of people gave up and went home when they encountered long lines. The parties went to court over extending the closure time for polls.
Then-Secretary of State Matt Blunt pushed for early voting during his tenure, and in 2002, state legislators passed a law requiring all counties to plan for early voting. Earlier versions of the bill would have allowed voters to cast ballots up to two weeks before the election -- but opponents shied away from that provision because of the cost. The city of St. Louis attempted to carry out its early voting plan, but Blunt stopped it, claiming the Legislature's failure to provide funding for voting meant the state couldn't cover all election expenses as regulations required.
At the time, he said the law "is clear and it does not allow one jurisdiction to provide opportunities that are denied to the rest of the state." Republicans contended that Democrats were trying to gain an advantage in liberal St. Louis, and Democrats said Blunt was trying to suppress the city vote.
Jessica Robinson, a spokeswoman for Blunt, said in an e-mail that the governor has "always supported early voting with the appropriate safeguards and funding. We cannot allow early voting in one jurisdiction, but not others. We cannot allow it to occur unless the law authorizes it."
Missouri's Legislature has since rejected proposed revisions to the law, concluding that no-excuse early voting is costly and that it is not shown to increase voter turnout and only increases convenience to voters. Several studies have confirmed that conclusion, revealing that those who vote early are typically people who would have voted on Election Day anyway.
Fortier, of AEI, said the only time no-excuse early voting substantially increases the overall vote count is in low-turnout local elections. He added that it's difficult to assign a cost to early voting.
Fortier said that while he favors opening polling places up to 10 days prior to Election Day for voter convenience, he doesn't support allowing all voters to send in ballots by mail weeks in advance. Those who cast an early ballot stand to miss out on important pre-election information, he said.
"It's a good thing to celebrate that we are all going to the polls together," Fortier said. "It becomes diffuse if we're voting impersonally over a long period of time."
Added Carnahan: "I, for one, like Election Day. It's a good civic activity to go out and see your neighbors voting."
Carnahan said she's "less enthusiastic" about no-excuse absentee voting than about early voting at a polling location. One reason: Election officials express concerns about the potential for voter fraud in the absentee process. (Carnahan's report called for an increase in the maximum penalty for people who commit absentee voter fraud.)
In a case that has received national attention, a group that aims to recruit low-income voters -- typically a Democratic bloc -- stands accused of turning in falsified or duplicate registration forms to Missouri election officials. The FBI is planning to investigate the most recent claims involving the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, which has been accused of election fraud elsewhere. ACORN workers in the St. Louis area pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards in the 2006 election.
Some Missouri lawmakers also have expressed concern that absentee voters can be influenced by others and given misleading information about the rules of voting, which can disqualify them.
Another controversy has arisen over whether absentee forms sent to Missouri voters of both parties by Sen. John McCain's campaign are a reminder to vote, as his campaign says, or an attempt to disqualify voters who aren't eligible for early voting, as critics claim. Ryan Hobart, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said in a statement last month that: "Voters need to read the fine print on mailers like this because there are specific requirements for absentee voting in Missouri." (Read the Beacon story on a controversy about a similar Democratic mailer.)
Carnahan, a Democrat, said it's frustrating that the early voting issue is so politicized. Republican lawmakers generally supported the change when Blunt was in charge; now the mindset has changed.
"To me it's nonsense that these legislators haven't looked beyond thinking that someone is going to get a partisan advantage," she said. "There are no suggestions in any other state that this favors one party over another. But it's a proven convenience for voters."
Carnahan said county clerks have been reluctant to embrace early voting in past election cycles because it's another change in the system; they have already been dealing with updated voter registration databases and other requirements put in place as part of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, she said.
So while officials and partisans continue to hash over the merits of no-excuse early voting, Missourians face another Election Day not knowing what to expect at their polling station.
Early voting in Illinois
Early voting is underway in Illinois.
Madison county offers a variety of places to vote:
- Madison County Administration Bldg., Edwardsville
- Law Enforcement Center, 700 E. Broadway, Alton
- Senior Citizen Center, 420 E. Main St., Collinsville
- Village Hall, Godfrey
- Township Office, Granite City
- Tri-Township Library, Troy
- Madison County Health Dept., 101 Edwardsville Rd., Wood River
- Alton Fire Station No. 2, 3212 College Ave., Alton
- Bethalto Senior Citizen Center, 100 E. Central Ave., Bethalto
Early voting will also take place on certain days in New Douglas (Oct. 17 at the Fire Department); Pontoon Beach (Oct. 21 and 28 at the Village Hall), Southwestern Illinois College, Granite City campus ( Oct. 21, 23, 28, 30); SIUE Morris Center (Oct. 24, 25) and Venice (Oct. 21, 28 at the Recreation Hall)
For information, call 618-692-6290 or go to
www.madisonvotes.com/early-voting
In St. Clair County, East St. Louis residents can vote at the Election Board office (8740 State Street, Suite 200, 618-398-3778), residents of the rest of the county should go to the county clerk's office in Belleville (618-825-2380).
In Monroe County, early voting will take place at the clerk's office in the courthouse in Waterloo (100 S. Main, 618-939-8681).
Elia Powers is a freelance writer in St. Louis.