This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 13, 2010 - St. Louis County Republican Party chairman Rich Magee asserted Saturday that something needs to be done in Missouri to curb the rising popularity of absentee voting.
Based on the lines of would-be absentee voters he saw at the St. Louis County Election Board before the 2008 election, Magee said that he doubted that all met the state's strict requirements for casting absentee votes. The handful of allowed reasons include the voter's belief that they won't be in their voting jurisdiction on Election Day.
Magee recounted that during one such visit, an election official stood outside the door and shouted that those in line needed to be aware that they had to meet the state's restrictions for allowing absentee votes. Nobody left, Magee said.
"We're really going to have to crack down on this. People are basically voting illegally," Magee told about 70 people attending a meeting in Chesterfield of "I Heard the People Say,'' one of the region's newer conservative groups.
Magee contended that a glut of absentee votes invites fraud. He believes that some absentee voters return to the polls on Election Day and try to vote again. So far, no such cases have been prosecuted locally.
Last year, election officials in St. Louis announced that 50 people may have cast fraudulent votes in recent elections -- but only one, in the April 2008 election, was alleged to have cast an absentee vote and then tried to vote again on Election Day.
Magee, who also is mayor of Glendale, acknowledged during a question-answer session that it could be difficult to prove that absentee voters are lying, short of "going to their house on Election Day and proving they are there -- which I suspect many of them are,'' he said.
Magee said that the other option is for state legislators to approve early voting, or no-fault absentee voting, as allowed in a majority of other states. He said that Missouri had strong laws to protect the integrity of elections, but that those laws weren't much good if they were not enforced.
Also addressing Saturday's group was Thor Hearne, a Republican activist and lawyer who has been a prominent player in various voting-related issues in Missouri and across the country.
Among other things, Hearne has advocated for a mandate that voters show a government-issued photo ID at the polls. The Missouri Supreme Court tossed out such a law in late 2006, saying it violated the state's constitution. Some legislators are now proposing a constitutional amendment, which would go before voters.
Hearne's comments Saturday didn't touch on the photo ID issue, but he did emphasize the importance of accurate up-to-date voter rolls that he said were the best defense against attempted voter fraud.
Hearne even had some kind words for Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat now running for the U.S. Senate. Hearne touched off a few groans from the crowd when he said that Carnahan had been doing a good job, in his view, of cleaning up Missouri's voter rolls. He cited her compact with neighboring states, to compare each other's voter rolls for duplications and to track voters' moves to other states, and for her work to make it easier for members of the military to register and cast ballots.
In any event, he told fellow conservatives Saturday that the best way to attack voter fraud was to get involved as a poll worker, so that they could familiarize themselves with Missouri's election laws and offer front-line protection against potential fraud.
Hearne also rejected audience queries about the possibility of widespread voter fraud. While acknowledging "a rare group of people wanting to subvert an election,'' Hearne added, "I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories."
