(St. Louis Public Radio) – St. Louis County’s municipal elections got off to a rocky start on Tuesday.
St. Louis County Board of Elections Democratic director Eric Fey said in an e-mail to St. Louis Public Radio that anywhere from 30 to 35 locations ran out of paper ballots. The relatively short gap between the presidential primary and the municipal election meant that St. Louis and St. Louis County couldn’t use electronic voting machines. That means paper ballots are the only option for various mayoral, city council and tax proposition elections throughout the county.
“We sent an incorrect amount of ballots to these various locations. We are sending extra ballots to each polling place as we receive more from our printer,” Fey wrote. “We are in the process of drafting the appropriate documents to ask the court to extend voting hours.”
The shortage appears to be occurring across the entire county. For instance: Hart Nelson of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce Tweeted that his polling place in Brentwood was out of ballots at 8 a.m. Moline Acres Alderwoman Shonte Yong said her city ran out of paper ballots around noontime. And KSDK reported that, among other places, polling sites in Sunset Hills, Hazelwood and Bridgeton were short on ballots.
St. Louis County Councilwoman Hazel Erby, D-University City, said she started receiving phone calls early in the morning about polling places running out of ballots. She said she’s heard about shortages in University City and Berkeley, two jurisdictions that are holding highly contested municipal elections.
(Erby also said she’s received reports that some polling places in her council district received incorrect ballots. Fey said in an e-mail that “we haven’t received any credible calls about ballots in the wrong location. We just sent too few ballots to many locations.”)
Erby said that she would be in favor of keeping county polling places open past 7 p.m. to make sure people get to vote.
“If the machines could not be programmed to function this close after the March primary, then why weren’t we prepared with the number of ballots that we needed?” Erby said. “You would think that they would have had more than enough ballots if they knew that the machines would not be working today. That doesn’t make sense to me. It just seems like it’s a matter of preparation.”
This isn’t the first time county polling places have run out of ballots. During the 2014 midterm election cycle, a high demand for paper ballots caused a shortage at about 95 polling places throughout the county. That was roughly 20 percent of the county’s 444 polling places.
Erby, who has been a Democratic committeewoman for many years, said she’s been noticing inefficiencies on the election board for some time.
“I’m going to a request a Committee of the Whole, because I want an explanation as to why this happened,” said Erby, referring to a committee hearing the St. Louis County Council holds to discuss specific problems within county government. “It would be a little bit different if the voter turnout was huge and it happened toward the end of the day. But [roughly] an hour? My phone started ringing at 7:15. That’s crazy.”
Republished with permission from St. Louis Public Radio: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-county-may-extend-voting-due-ballot-shortages
