One in 50 Missouri mail ballots may go uncounted in November. Is the system too complex?

For every 50 ballots cast by mail, Missouri election authorities will reject at least one, says Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. That rate, according to his numbers, is roughly double the national average.

It’s why the state’s top election official says he opposes making expanded mail-in voting — instituted for this year only in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — permanent.

“That (rate) doesn’t seem like a lot, but we’re dealing with people’s votes,” he said in an interview. Mail ballots are most often rejected for lacking a signature, not being notarized or arriving too late, according to Ashcroft’s data.

But Ashcroft is misstating the problem, according to voting rights advocates and local election officials, who contend the rejections are caused by the maze of unnecessary rules Missourians must navigate.

“If your state has a higher rejection rate than say the national average, that to me signifies the state and local officials aren’t doing enough to educate their voters as opposed to mail-in voting being inherently flawed,” said Danielle Root, associate director of voting rights and access to justice at the Center for American Progress.

Missouri in the past has required an excuse to vote absentee and its expansion of mail voting comes with a host of restrictions. When approving the changes this spring, lawmakers differentiated between legal mail ballots and absentee ballots, causing confusion.

Most voters need to have their ballot notarized in order to use the mail. But some groups are exempted. The notarization rule doesn’t apply to voters 65 or older, the immunocompromised, or those who have certain chronic or respiratory illnesses.

Even as voting by mail has become more popular across the country, Missouri largely held onto to its excuse-only absentee system until this year. Just 8 percent of state voters used mail in the 2018 general election, according to federal statistics, compared to 25 percent nationwide.

Ashcroft, who is on the November ballot, maintains in-person is the best way to vote. He said Missouri mail-in ballots are rejected at a rate between 2 and 3 percent.

When The Star asked Ashcroft’s office for information supporting his 1-in-50 claim, a spokeswoman provided rejection figures for the state’s last three presidential primary contests.

The data shows that officials rejected between 1.2 to 3.4 percent of mail ballots that were returned in the 2012, 2016 and 2020 primaries. In total, the three primaries averaged a 2.27 percent rejection rate, in line with Ashcroft’s claim.

In the 2018 general election, Missouri authorities rejected 2.18 percent of returned mail ballots, according to the federal Election Administration and Voting Survey. Nationwide, the percentage was 1.4 percent.

“People are going to have their vote not counted because we have an error rate with mail-in ballots. We should never as a government be suggesting people do the second best or the third best or the fourth best,” Ashcroft said.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who is facing Democrat Nicole Galloway, the state auditor, in the November election, has equivocated on whether he wants the mail-in voting law extended.

Galloway has said the notary requirement should be eliminated immediately. Democrats say Missouri’s mail-in ballot procedure, with its complexity and numerous rules, is turning off and confusing voters.

“I think the law, it was better than not having mail-in at all, but it falls far short of what we actually need for Missourians to be able to vote safely in this pandemic,” said Yinka Faleti, Ashcroft’s Democratic opponent.

Mail voting confusion

Corey Dillon, Democratic director of the Jackson County Election Board, said the bulk of phone calls in recent days have been from voters confused about the state’s mail-in system.

“Tons of people are having trouble navigating that,” she said.

The confusion stems from the state making legal distinctions between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots. In most states, these terms are synonyms. Any Missouri voter may request a mail-in ballot, but it must be notarized and returned via mail.

“So if you procrastinate you can’t just come and drop it by the office,” Dillon said.

Absentee ballots, on the other hand, can be delivered to local election offices.

“This is an unnecessary complication by design,” Rep. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, said. “I would encourage people if they’re going to absentee or mail-in vote to quadruple check to make sure they’re doing everything correctly.”

Following all the rules doesn’t necessarily protect against problems. Kristen Bushko, a St. Louis software developer assistant, said she took her application for a mail-in ballot to the city’s election authority on July 20 in advance of the Aug. 4 primary. She didn’t receive it until Aug. 1.

Bushko, 37, had heard warnings against mailing the ballot back unless there was a full week for the postal service to deliver it. So on primary day she brought the ballot to her polling place, handed it over and was able to vote.

She came away feeling that the process was more difficult than necessary.

“It does seem like they’re trying to make it more complicated to vote on purpose,” she said.

Some notaries are witnessing the confusion first hand. Nicola Price, a Kansas City notary for 12 years, said several voters have requested her services under the mistaken assumption that they needed to get their ballot request form notarized.

Price suggested putting vote-by-mail instructions on the back of the cards sent to voters confirming the location of their polling place.

“We need to make it as accessible and as easy for individuals to be able to [vote] as possible,” she said.

The Missouri election system has generated court challenges. On Thursday, the Organization for Black Struggle, Missouri Faith Voices, the St. Louis and Greater Kansas City Chapters of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and the National Council of Jewish Women St. Louis Section filed a federal lawsuit alleging the state’s absentee and mail voting systems saddle Missourians with unlawful restrictions on their right to vote.

Three St. Louis-area voters and the national nonprofit American Women have sued in Cole County. They argue Missouri’s dual system, which requires some voters to have ballots notarized but not others, creates unnecessary confusion. A judge has set a trial for early October.

The state law that expanded mail-in voting expires at the end of the year, meaning Missourians will be back to the old system next election unless the General Assembly passes a new measure. The chances of that happening are mixed at best, given opposition in the Republican-controlled legislature.

“It opens up a very disturbing level of opportunities for voter fraud,” said Sen. Eric Burlison, a Battlefield Republican. “If someone could figure out a way to make sure that those opportunities for fraud are eliminated, then I’m open to talking about it. But without that, I have a lot of concerns.”

Sen. Bob Onder, a St. Charles County Republican, echoed Burlison’s concerns for expanding mail-in voting and voter fraud.

“In person voting should be the rule,” Onder said. “There certainly are exceptions that ought to be made, and COVID being what it is this year, the legislature made an exception this year. But I think I wouldn’t be in favor of expanding mail-in voting going forward.”

At least one Missouri election has been overturned because of questions surrounding absentee ballots. In 2016, a judge ordered a new Democratic primary for a state House seat in St. Louis after the local election board counted 142 absentee ballots that weren’t in sealed envelopes.

Still, other states, including Republican-dominated ones such as Kansas, have allowed no-excuse absentee voting for years with few significant cases of fraud.

Faleti said Missouri will likely have to expand mail-in voting through an initiative petition or executive order from the governor. He criticized Gov. Mike Parson for not waiving the notarization requirement.

“The legislature is the preferred method, but I don’t see hope for that with the current mix of the legislature that we have,” Faleti said.

Voters helping voters

Malia Hatley, 47, rehabilitates houses for a living, but decided to help voters understand mail-in and absentee voting in Missouri after she heard people were confused about the process.

The Kansas City, Kansas, resident started a volunteer organization to help voters on both sides of the state border understand how to avoid a trip to the polls on Election Day.

“It’s a two-pronged attack on helping people understand what’s going on and making it easier instead of harder,” Hatley said.

The first part of Voters Helping Voters’ involves handing out thousands of applications at groceries stores, laundromats, parks and other locations throughout the region.

Of the group’s 85 volunteers, about 30 became notaries. The Missouri Secretary of State’s office has compiled a list of notaries who will offer their services free of charge to voters.

A study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found that vote-by-mail policies don’t favor one political party over another. But Hatley doesn’t buy it. She said she believes Missouri’s Republican leaders want to suppress Democratic votes, and that they are following the lead of President Trump, an outspoken opponent of mail balloting.

“If we make mail-in voting hard and perhaps make it harder for people who are less inclined to go through all the steps, if we make it as hard as possible, then that is somehow advantageous to what I’m going to suspect is the Republican Party.”

Bryan Lowry and Matthew Kelly contributed to this story.

This story was originally published September 21, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "One in 50 Missouri mail ballots may go uncounted in November. Is the system too complex?."