Absentee voting by mail is coming to Missouri in 2020 – if a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Missouri, and Missouri Voter Protection Coalition prevails.
They demand this from Cole County Circuit Court because the COVID-19 pandemic “poses an existential threat to Missourian’s ability to safely participate in their electoral democracy,” as they argue in a 34-page class-action petition filed on Friday, April 17. The Missouri State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the lead named plaintiff in the plaintiff class. Missouri Secretary of State John R. (Jay) Ashcroft is the lead defendant.
The context, of course, is the public health concern about voting in person during a pandemic. As they argue, “Thousands of eligible voters cannot be physically lining up with others at their traditional polling places, touch the same equipment, have face-to-face interactions with poll workers, and more without contravening the advice of public health experts and threatening public safety, elections workers, and the health of individual voters and their families.”
They note that Missouri law already provides six reasons a voter may cite to vote absentee, one of which “readily extends to cover all Missouri voters who wish to confine themselves at home and vote absentee to avoid contracting or spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.” That reason is: “incapacity or confinement due to illness.”
As they point out in the petition, Governor Mike Parson – who is on the ballot this year – has said that trying to avoid infection by the novel coronavirus “does not constitute a valid excuse” to vote absentee. However, Ashcroft, the state’s top election authority, has said that local election officials must interpret the statute for themselves. This lack of clarity is unacceptable, they argue, because providing an explanation deemed invalid could be judged as making a false statement on an absentee ballot, which is a Class One felony.
The director of the Jackson County Election Board, they note, has stated that “fear of contracting or spreading the COVID-19 virus is not a legal reason to vote absentee in Missouri.” For that reason, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker is among the named defendants, since her office would consider the prosecution of any election felonies. In a twist, she also chairs the Missouri Democratic Party, which traditionally favors making voting easier, just as Parson and Ashcroft’s Republican Party typically tries to restrict access to voting.
“As an African American, there are members of our community who remember facing death just for exercising their constitutional right to vote,” said Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP. “COVID-19 offers that same risk with Secretary Ashcroft’s dereliction of duty to provide safe elections, which is within his powers in Missouri state law. If Secretary Ashcroft fails to act, death will be the new poll tax in the state of Missouri.”
Without clarification on this matter from the court, the plaintiffs’ counsel argues, “Missouri voters face the unconscionable choice between protecting their health and the health of their families and neighbors and forfeiting their right to vote or voting absentee at the risk of their ballots being discarded and potential criminal prosecution.”
The matter is particularly pressing for lead plaintiff the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP, they argue, because COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on African Americans. On the day the suit was filed, 502 of the 788 COVID-19 cases in the City of St. Louis were African Americans – that’s 64% of the cases, while only 45.9% of the city’s population is African-American, according to the U.S. Census. On April 17, 36 of the 70 COVID-19 deaths in St. Louis County were of black people, or 51%, while according to the Census the county’s population is only 24.9% black.
The class also includes a black voter from Kansas City named Kamisha D. Webb who has several of the preexisting conditions that help to explain why COVID-19 has been so devastating to black people.
Crucially, the plaintiffs argue, “There is no vaccine, cure, or herd immunity” for COVID-19 and none is expected to be available before Missouri voters elect, among other officials, a president, governor, attorney general and, indeed, a secretary of state – the lead defendant, Ashcroft, is himself on the ballot this year.
They cite no less an authority than the now-famous Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who recently said that he “can’t guarantee” in-person voting will be safe even in November.
They ask the court to declare that fear of COVID-19 infection is a valid reason to vote absentee due to “incapacity or confinement due to illness.” They also ask the court to issue an injunction prohibiting Ashcroft and other election officials “from limiting the availability of absentee voting without a notary seal” – in other words, making it possible to vote absentee without a notary.
“Missourians should not have to expose themselves to a deadly virus in order to vote,” said Tony Rothert of the ACLU of Missouri. “Despite some feigned confusion by elected officials, Missouri law allows absentee voting by mail in situations like this. The secretary of state knows this and could clear this up, but he insists a court should do it. We are taking his advice and going to court.”
Read the complaint at https://tinyurl.com/ACLU-COVID.
ArchCity Defenders and the Close the Workhouse campaign have released a series of legal declarations and audio recordings from people incarcerated in St. Louis city’s jails, describing the “unsanitary and unsafe conditions” in both the City Justice Center and the Medium Security Institution, also known as the Workhouse.
“They don’t hand out hand sanitizer,” said a man who is currently jailed at the Workhouse. “We’ve only received one mask. There are (correction officers) coming in from the outside who are constantly not wearing masks. No one offers any soap. If you don’t have soap to wash your hands, you’re just on your own. They’re not really putting in the effort to make sure any cells are clean. They don’t pass out cleaning supplies. They don’t even give us a broom, let alone a mop. We’re just sitting here rotting.”
A spokesman for the city said the city is not detaining individuals on low-level, non-violent and/or misdemeanor charges and has increased routine cleaning and sanitizing of corrections facilities. Besides doing routine temperature checks, he said the city is quarantining new inmates for 14 days and monitoring their health. He said the city is limiting detainee movement and trying to keep detainees socially distant.
As of Wednesday, April 23, he said, there were no cases of COVID-19 in either city jail.
While the Workhouse has a capacity of 1,138, the number of people jailed there has steadily decreased to a population of 112 as a result of Close the Workhouse campaign’s efforts, community organizing, growing political pressure, ongoing litigation, community and Bail Project bailouts, and prosecutorial reforms, according to a statement from the campaign. The campaign argues that the diminished population in the Workhouse, combined with the dangers of COVID-19, presents a critical moment for the City of St. Louis to permanently shutter the jail that costs taxpayers $16 million annually.
“These accounts are deeply concerning,” said Blake Strode, executive director of ArchCity Defenders. “Every day, we are hearing from one set of people inside these jails who feel that their health and very lives are at great risk. At the same time, other concerned St. Louisans are asking what is being done to ensure that people are safe. City officials at every level need to think very hard about whether they are comfortable condemning a certain number of people in their jails to serious illness or, worse, death. The experts continue to warn us that that is a real possibility.”
On March 26, 17 medical and public health experts signed onto a letter to the Missouri Supreme Court, authored by Dr. Fred Rottnek of St. Louis University School of Medicine. In requesting that the court order the release of individuals from jails across the state, Rottnek, formerly the medical director of the St. Louis County Jail, wrote that he and other signers “believe these institutions are unable to comply with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for treating or preventing the spread of COVID-19.”
The letter also states that “the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to devastate the lives of both incarcerated individuals and jail personnel, and result in a medical emergency that could overwhelm Missouri’s medical infrastructure.” Among the signers were Dr. Laurie Punch, a trauma surgeon with BJC Healthcare, Dr. Christine Jacobs, chair of the department of Family and Community Medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine, and Jason Purnell, Health Equity Works program director at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and head of the newly-formed COVID-19 Regional Response Team.
Campaign organizers said that the Workhouse has long been known for “caging poor people and Black people pretrial in hellish and inhumane conditions (e.g., black mold, violent-unsafe, mice & rat infestation, mice feces in food, bug and roach infestation, snakes in showers, inadequate medical care).” A jail conditions lawsuit filed by ArchCity Defenders in November 2017, Cody vs. City of St. Louis, is pending.
In late March, ArchCity Defenders set-up a jail hotline number to learn about jail conditions from people incarcerated and their loved ones on the outside. Call and leave a message at (314) 643-8773.
