Early voting begins in Cape County; absentee ballots in the mail

Voters across Missouri, including dozens of Cape Girardeau County residents, began casting ballots Tuesday in advance of the Nov. 3 general election.

Two polling places opened Tuesday in Cape Girardeau County — one at the Osage Centre in Cape Girardeau and the other inside the county government Administrative Building in Jackson — and will remain open for any registered voter in the county to vote before Election Day.

“Between the two places, we had more than 45 people vote by early Tuesday afternoon,” according to County Clerk Kara Clark Summers. The early voting locations in Cape Girardeau and Jackson will be open from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays through Nov. 2 and also from 8 a.m. until noon Oct. 31, the Saturday before the general election. The early voting locations will also serve as “central polling sites” Nov. 3, in addition to all other polling locations throughout the county.

Summers said she anticipates a record number of voters will take advantage of absentee ballots and optional early voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 2,100 absentee ballots were mailed Tuesday from the clerk’s office to voters in Cape Girardeau County who had requested them.

“People who requested absentee ballots by now should expect to see them in their mailboxes this week,” Summers said. “We’re processing them as they come in.”

Summers recommended voters complete and return absentee ballots “promptly” so the post office has plenty of time to deliver them to her office and her office has ample time to process them.

“We have stacks (of absentee ballot requests) that came in today that we’ll process and will be going out tomorrow,” she said.

Confusing mail

Summers said she received several reports Tuesday from county residents about what she described as “confusing mail” they received this week about the voter registration process and how to request absentee ballots.

“From what people are describing, I think there are several mailings,” Summer said and explained the mailings are either giving some people the impression they aren’t registered to vote when they know they are or are providing instructions on how to request an absentee ballot when they have already submitted their requests.

Summers said the only thing she knows about the mailings is where they didn’t come from.

“We didn’t send the mailings,” she said. “I know a business that got one about registering. It was addressed to the business and a business cannot register to vote, so obviously it was some sort of mass mailing list.”

If residents are unsure whether they’re registered to vote, Summers said they can contact her office at (573) 243-3547 for verification.

“And if people are unsure of how to request an absentee ballot, they can just contact our office and we can walk them through the process.”

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