Cape County Clerk, staff guide coronavirus-era election, prepare for November

This past Tuesday began for Kara Clark Summers like most Election Days: at 3:30 a.m.

Though by her own admission “not a morning person,” the Cape Girardeau county clerk and her team would spend the next 20 hours or so doing, well, just about whatever it took to shepherd another pandemic-year election to an accurate and orderly end.

Her first stop was City Hall in Cape Girardeau — the only one of the 29 precincts in her purview that had yet to be assembled in the preceding days — to ready the site before election judges arrived at 5 a.m.

For the second election cycle this year, much of that assembly was aimed at coronavirus-proofing the voting procedure from start to finish. The measures went beyond just face masks and hand sanitizer. Through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act that Congress passed earlier this year, Cape Girardeau County received about $69,000 to conduct elections with additional personal protective equipment. So barriers were erected, physical-distancing guides marked in duct tape on the carpet, and a small contingent of auxiliary staffers, armed with spray bottles and washrags, were charged with tailing voters throughout the day to constantly sanitize all identifiable touch-points.

Clark Summers, who is quick and insistent when ascribing credit to the office’s staff, reserved special praise for the colleagues who shouldered this latter task, noting that, “We paid them to work, but that’s a long day, especially when they’re putting themselves out there. Ten dollars an hour is not a lot when you’re asking someone to come in and sanitize after every voter.”

Election officials Amy Hester, right and Caitlin McCready perform verification tasks necessary for the results of the Aug. 4 election to be verified at the Cape Girardeau County Clerk's Office on Friday in uptown JacksonTyler Graef ~ Special to the Southeast Missourian

One such worker, Chris Walley, would later cast the day’s work as a matter of civic duty; a responsibility he felt to help his neighbors and strangers alike engage in local government.

“It’s something we have to do,” he said. “We can’t keep people from voting. A little old lady just told me it’s welcoming now to walk into a place and smell alcohol when it’s not a bar. Because you know it’s clean. So we’re gonna keep cleaning so people can vote and we’re gonna be okay.”

The unexpected

When the polls opened at 6 a.m., Clark Summers began her custom of visiting as many polling locations as possible to address or prevent any potential problems. She said the county was blessed this cycle to have avoided any malfunctions in actual voting equipment, as can happen on occasion. But problems inevitably surface once the polls open and those problems are seldom obvious.

This election, for instance, had seen the polling place at St. Andrew’s church on Kingshighway in Cape Girardeau relocated from its customary spot in the church to a nearby building in the weeks before Election Day, and although voters were sent notices reminding them of the change, enough confusion transpired at the far end of the parking lot that one poll worker had to be stationed outside to direct traffic.

“There was just a lot going on there,” Clark Summers said, keeping most, if not all, traces of exasperation from her voice. The problem, she explained, was eventually solved through an impromptu shuttle service using a golf cart on loan from the City; yet another example of the cooperation for which Clark Summers was grateful.

“We have such a great staff and a very generous community,” she said, which came in handy considering the higher-than-normal voter turnout of last week’s election.

The preparations

Meanwhile, in-person polling places are only one part of the equation. Tuesday’s election saw roughly three times the normal amount of votes cast by mail, Clark Summers said, so much so that a portion of the county offices had to be rearranged in anticipation of the increased volume.

“We knew it was going to be like that,” she explained, citing the similarly hectic 2016 primary election as instructive experience for both the elections held so far this year and the hurdles anticipated come November. And although her team of around 180 people was able to handle last week’s election, she said November’s will likely require at least 275, plus sanitation workers.

“We’re going to need a lot more people in November,” Clark Summers said, especially urging young people to apply, since some older or at-risk election judges have withdrawn due to coronavirus concerns.

Other judges, however, such as third-year election judge Lisa Elfrink, expressed high confidence in the safety measures put in place by the county.

“The county has done an excellent job of keeping voters safe,” she said at around noon Tuesday at City Hall.

The count

Seven hours later, Clark Summers was back at the county offices in uptown Jackson to oversee the count and offer that small prayer common to election officials — the one for wide margins.

The polls now closed, the ballots were extracted from their sealed dropboxes and sent off to a lower-level room in the county building, where a tabulation machine unconnected to the internet rendered the unofficial results. Those results were then simultaneously uploaded to the county’s webpage for the general public, as well as stapled to a corkboard in the next room, where a small gaggle of county employees, journalists and campaign staffers squinted over one another, scanning the results for surprises or early trends.

Under Missouri law, Clark Summers and her team have 14 days to certify the election results, but only after completing a sequence of proofs designed to ensure total accuracy. At least two precincts are drawn at random, one large and one small, to undergo a manual recount of all ballots. The counts are amended to reflect any absentee ballots not immediately available on election night. The ballot boxes themselves undergo fidelity screenings.

“That’s why results are unofficial,” Clark Summers explained. “Until they’re official.”

And in this case, even before Tuesday’s results were certified, Clark Summers and her staff already have one eye trained on November.

“Elections don’t just start 10 weeks before Election Day,” she said, encouraging anyone interested in helping conduct that November election to contact her office for more information.