Lawmakers disagree whether they rejected early voting

The Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- While St. Louis officials believe a state law enacted in 2002 requires them to allow early voting in this November's election, lawmakers who wrote the bill disagree on whether they meant to allow the procedure.

Sen. Anita Yeckel, the bill's sponsor and chairwoman of the Senate's election committee, said Friday that early voting is legal if the secretary of state approved an election authority's plan for it.

"We put it in place that you could do it but you had to have a plan approved," said Yeckel, R-St. Louis. "Anybody that's had a plan and submitted it and had it approved by the secretary of state's office -- they can do it."

But Rep. Jim Seigfreid, who chaired the House Elections Committee when the legislature approved the bill, was surprised when a reporter told him that St. Louis was trying to use the measure to allow early voting.

"We didn't actually pass a bill to do that," said Seigfreid, D-Marshall. The bill "said that clerks and election authorities have to send to the secretary of state a plan to do it. It didn't actually authorize it."

An early version of the bill would have allowed early voting, but that provision was taken out of the final version, Seigfreid said.

Missouri's chief elections official, Secretary of State Matt Blunt, agrees with Seigfreid's argument. Blunt has said he supports early voting and that he wishes legislators had approved it -- but they didn't, and that state funding was not approved to pay for the effort.

St. Louis officials say the law requires early voting in presidential elections. The city's mayor and Board of Election Commissioners are taking steps toward opening polls from Oct. 19 to Oct. 27, though polls would not be open on Sunday, Oct. 24. Polls also would be open on the regular election day, Nov. 2. The early votes would be counted after the polls close Nov. 2.

All sides agree the law requires election authorities to create a plan for early voting and submit it to the secretary of state. But in the middle of paragraphs requiring authorities to plan for early voting, one phrase says "advance voting procedures shall be conducted." That seems to be causing the confusion.

Officials with the St. Louis mayor's office and the secretary of state's office expect the issue to eventually be decided in court.