JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — If a Missouri voter wants to cast a ballot on a day other than a designated Election Day, he is required to provide an excuse and sign an affidavit with his local election authority swearing he will be out of town or unable to vote in person.

But for many Missourians, the issue may not be that they are out of town but rather that other commitments take precedence, such as a 10-hour work day that starts early and ends late with stops at daycare on both ends — the kind of day that might not allow for a stop at a packed polling place.

In an effort to ease that dilemma, lawmakers have considered the idea of allowing for an early-voting period in Missouri for general elections. Currently, 33 states and the District of Columbia allow residents to vote early without an excuse, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

This spring, the Republican-controlled General Assembly in Missouri placed a measure before voters asking whether they think that is a good idea. It will be on the ballot when voters go to the polls on Nov. 4.

Though early voting is generally supported by Democrats, some have criticized it, saying it does not go far enough to make early voting accessible and that they wanted a longer window.

And this particular measure Ð known as Amendment 6 has sparked strong opposition from the state’s chief election officer, Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat who has advocated for early voting in the past.
“Constitutional Amendment 6 would make voting more confusing and less secure,” Kander said last week.

He said the confusion lies in the way the amendment would distribute the early voting period and the potential for inconsistency from election to election.

Amendment 6 would allow for a six-day period for early voting. The period would begin 13 days prior to Election Day on a Wednesday, shut down for the weekend and open back up from Monday to Wednesday in the week prior to Election Day. After that Wednesday, early voting would shut down until polls opened on Election Day.

‘Changing the constitution’?

“I’m a huge proponent of early voting, but I cannot support changing the constitution in a way that would require us to go back and fix it almost immediately,” said Kander, whose office oversaw a commission on early voting last year that studied how to implement such a policy in the state.

Newton County Clerk Kay Baum, who oversees the county’s election processes, said the Wednesday end-date under Amendment 6 provides an important buffer between the early voting period and Election Day.

“It cuts off at a good time because it would give us time to get our stuff in order before the election,” she said. “If it goes later, it’d be next to impossible to get it all together.”

Despite its restriction on early voting six days before the election, Amendment 6 has nothing to say about absentee voting. Under the measure, absentee voters with an excuse still could cast ballots in person all the way up until Election Day.

“If someone was going on vacation, they could vote,” Kander said. “If they had to work, they could not.”

That challenge, he said, is only augmented by the fact that Amendment 6 does not allow for any voting on the weekend or during non-business hours.
“People work for a living, and they tend to do it during business hours during the week,” he said.

State Rep. Charlie Davis, R-Webb City, said he has not always been a fan of early voting, and he’d rather just see everybody vote in person on Election Day.

But Davis said he is also realistic. He said Amendment 6 was passed in the spirit of compromise. He said the amendment is a better option than an initiative proposal backed by Democrats that failed to make it to the ballot this year. That proposal called for a six-week voting period.
Rep. Tony Dugger, a Hartville Republican who sponsored the ballot proposal up for a vote, said if Missourians vote too early, they could miss important information about candidates that sometimes only comes to light closer to the election.

“Six weeks out is a long time to start thinking about voting,” Dugger said. “People don’t have their minds made up at that point.”

Some Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri have called Amendment 6 a “sham,” pointing to its prohibition of early voting on weekends. The initiative proposal backed by the Democrats also would have allowed voting on Saturdays and Sundays for the final 21 days before federal or state elections.

Davis said a six-day early voting period Ð compared to a 42-day period Ð prevents “too much deviation” from the political circumstances on Election Day and still allows the state to “protect the integrity of the process.

“We have people, some members of the military, that would benefit from a few extra days prior to the election to ensure their vote counts,” Davis said. “Instead of a long and extended period, we’re trying to give six days.”

State pays

The measure also would require the local costs of an expanded voting period to be paid for by the state, which is estimated at close to $2 million the first year and at least $100,000 per election in following years.

For Newton County, Baum said that money will go toward the costs of hiring both a Republican and a Democrat to serve as election judges as well as purchasing some additional technology.

Baum said she likes the provision that would require the state to pay for the costs of the early-voting period. If the proposal passes, the only problem she foresees in Newton County is space in the courthouse.

“In a presidential year, I don’t know how we’d handle early voting in our office. We’d have to have another room,” she said.

Even if passed, the amendment does not require Missouri to have early voting in every election. According to the text, an early-voting period would be allowed “only if the Legislature and the governor appropriate and disburse funds to pay for the increased costs of such voting.”

Kander said giving the state the choice about whether to fund an early voting period would only add to the confusion about the proposed changes.
“It’s just an issue of consistency,” he said. “Whichever election you’re going to have early voting for, it shouldn’t be that voters don’t know whether that’s not going to happen again next year.”

Who wins?

More time to vote and greater accessibility typically is considered an advantage for Democrats, who are believed to get greater support from low-income residents who struggle to get time off work or have transportation challenges, ACLU of Missouri Executive Director Jeffrey Mittman said.

But research on the impact of early voting on turnout is mixed. The Early Voting Information Center at Reed College found early voting generally increases voter turnout by 2 to 4 percent, but professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported the opposite, saying it sometimes decreases voter turnout and aides Republicans.