Overseeing the state’s elections process.
What has Jason Kander utterly failed to do time and time again? You guessed it.
While Kander has focused his time on pandering to Washington insiders and high-powered lobbyists, he’s neglected his duties as Secretary of State. As a result, nearly three-dozen polling locations in St. Louis ran out of ballots during today’s municipal elections.
St. Louis Public Radio notes that this isn’t the first time the process has failed under Kander’s watch: in 2014, 20% of St. Louis polling locations ran out of ballots.
According to his Twitter feed, Kander spent yesterday watching basketball, talking to the AFL-CIO, and tracking down Facebook posts from six years ago. Ensuring that St. Louis County wouldn’t run out of ballots (again!) was apparently not a priority.
See the report below for more.
Kander Announces Review Of St. Louis County Elections After Reports Of Ballot Shortages
Jason Rosenbaum
4/5/16
St. Louis County’s municipal elections got off to a rocky start on Tuesday.
Eric Fey, Democratic director of the St. Louis County Board of Elections, 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 were the only option for various mayoral, city council and tax proposition elections throughout the county.
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Secretary of State Jason Kander, who is also a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, said in a tweet that his office would launch an immediate review of the ballot shortages.
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The shortage appeared to be occurring across the entire county. For instance: Hart Nelson of the St. Louis Regional Chamber 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 noon. And KSDK- TV reported that, among other places, polling sites in Sunset Hills, Hazelwood and Bridgeton were short on ballots.
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“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 St. Louis 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.