This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 26, 2012 - Staff at the St. Louis County Election Board say they don’t want a repeat of 2008, when would-be absentee voters lined up for blocks – rain or shine – as they waited to cast ballots at the board’s headquarters in Maplewood.
This time, the board has set up dozens of voting machines in a nearby warehouse in the same multi-building complex. The building has a large “Vote” sign across the top.
The additional machines – about 30 – are in addition to the voting machines and booths in the main board office a few dozen yards away.
“It’s an effort to streamline the process,’’ said Robyn Wilks, assistant to Democratic elections director Rita Days.
The expanded absentee-voting setup appears to be a first for St. Louis County, which previously had absentee voting only at its headquarters.
Absentee balloting is underway in both offices from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Under Missouri law, absentee voting is allowed only under specified circumstances, although the county typically has tens of thousands of absentee voters.
St. Louis County provides the largest bloc of votes in Missouri, generally supplying roughly 20 percent of the state’s total vote in a typical election. Election officials previously have said that they want to avoid the situation in 2008, where voters in some north St. Louis County precincts waited as long as eight hours to cast ballots.
As of Wednesday, Wilks said close to 30,000 county voters had cast absentee ballots. In 2008, the final absentee tally was about 72,290 -- about 15 percent of the county's roughly 560,000 votes cast in that presidential election.
