Reports Of Long Lines, Broken Voting Machines In St. Louis

ST. LOUIS, MO — Voters across the St. Louis area reported very long lines at polling places Tuesday as well as some more serious issues.

Several voters have told Propublic's Electionland hotline that poll workers were not accepting voter ID cards as a valid form of identification. Instead, they demanded drivers licenses or other forms of photo identification, which a judge ruled in October that Missourians don't need to vote. Others said poll workers were unable to find them in the system or had trouble with paper ballots due to technical problems.

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One St. Louis County voter, Heidi Klosterman, told Patch that when she went to vote at her polling place — Long Elementary School in Crestwood — this morning, she encountered a problem that gave her pause enough to report it. While she was eventually able to vote, the poll worker who scanned her driver's license was initially unable to find a record of her.

"They use tablets at my polling location to check people in so the gentleman scanned my driver's license, but he got a message that there was no record of me," she said in an email. "So he typed my name in manually and got the same result."

(SEE ALSO: Missouri Midterms 2018: Election Results And Up-To-Date Coverage)

Klosterman said she was lucky enough to have brought her sample ballot with her, which she used to prove she was registered. The poll worker scanned the bar code on the sample ballot and found her in the system.

"If I hadn't decided to bring my sample ballot with me at the last minute, I would have had to vote provisionally," she said. "That is a significant burden on voters since you then have to follow up and prove you are registered to vote."

Klosterman said she has been voting at the same location for more than 20 years and nothing like this has ever happened before.

Real-time heat map of voting problems around the country from Google Trends:

Will Shaw, a voter in Oakville, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, encountered a different problem when he went to vote at Wohlwend Elementary School this morning. The scanner wouldn't accept his ballot.

"They have the little tabulating machine there, and they stuck [my ballot] in and it spit it back out. And the lady said, 'Well, let's try it the other way.' And she turned it upside down, stuck it in and it spit it back out. She said, 'Well, this thing's being crazy.'"

Shaw said he quickly realized he wasn't alone. The scanners weren't accepting anyone's paper ballots. The poll worker was pleasant, he said, but seemed "flummoxed" and she put his ballot into a bin marked "provisional."

"Hopefully it gets counted as a regular ballot," he said, adding that he called the local election commission to complain.

Patch is aware of perhaps a dozen other reports through Electionland and social media that closely resemble Klosterman's and Shaw's, with some witnesses claiming they were asked for the wrong types of identification and others saying poll workers couldn't figure out how to scan the bar codes on their passports or driver's licenses.

"They are telling people that they can't use the voter registration card for identification because they can't read the bar code," one election monitor said at Prairie Commons Branch Library in Hazelwood, Missouri.

Witnesses also say very long lines and malfunctioning equipment may have discouraged some voters at the polls. Eric Fey with the St. Louis County Board of Elections confirmed that some optical scanners used to process paper ballots went down across the county, but that officials are working hard over the course of the day to get them back up and running.

Fey also said that some ballots were dropped off at the wrong locations this morning, leading some polls to run out of paper ballots very early in the day. One voter, Michael Kelly, told the Post-Dispatch he waited in line for close to 45 minutes for a paper ballot at Lee Hamilton Elementary School in Ferguson, calling the process "disgraceful and disorganized."

Even politicians weren't immune. Sen. Claire McCaskill waited for about half an hour to vote at the Kirkwood Community Center on S. Geyer Road Tuesday morning. While she was there, one of that polling station's scanners jammed, leading to a short delay.

"We are trying to monitor every problem," McCaskill said, addressing the issue. "Part of the problem here is that we have such a long ballot that is taking people a long time to work through it. If you haven't come to the polls yet, study the ballot before you come so that you understand what all the different issues are so you can move through it a little more quickly."

Despite the issues in St. Louis County, the senator said she still recommends paper ballots because they're usually faster.

This story started as a tip from ProPublica's Electionland project, which monitors voting problems around the country. If you had trouble voting, or if you saw something you want to tell us about, here’s how.

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