Missouri primary drawing more absentee voters

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri voters appear to be taking a higher-than-usual interest in the presidential primaries.

Election officials from around the state reported an increase in the number of people casting absentee ballots before next Tuesday's primaries as part of a survey Friday by The Associated Press. In some places, absentee voting already has doubled that from years past.

Local election officials generally attribute the increase to closely contested presidential races that have been grabbing headlines for months.

"We've heard about it for so long and have watched the other states. I think there's just more interest this year than there has been in other presidential elections," said Livingston County Clerk Kelly Christopher, a Democrat who is president of the Missouri Association of County Clerks.

In her rural northern Missouri county, for example, voters have cast 118 absentee ballots for the presidential primaries. That may not sound like a lot to a big-city person, Christopher said, but it's already more than double the 57 absentee ballots cast in the 2004 presidential primaries.

A similar ratio holds true in St. Louis County, the state's most populous area.

Through Thursday, residents there had cast 10,385 absentee ballots, already more than twice the old record of 5,138 ballots set during the 2000 presidential primaries, said Joseph Goeke, the county's Republican elections director.

That figure is likely to keep rising. From Wednesday to Thursday alone, for example, St. Louis County received more than 600 additional absentee ballots.

The Kansas City Election Board had received 1,187 absentee ballots as of Friday, up 100 from the day before.

"They're coming in droves now," said Shelley McThomas, the city's Democratic election director. Kansas City's absentee ballots were nearing the totals for the past two elections.

Election officials in two of the state's other heavily populated counties, St. Charles and Greene, reported that absentee votes already had exceeded their totals for the last presidential primary.

In Cole County, where the Capitol is, it's possible that this year's absentee balloting could end up tripling that of 2004. The clerk's office said it had received 848 absentee ballots through mid-Friday, compared with a total of 321 four years ago.

Clerks in some counties, including Jasper and Cape Girardeau, said absentee voting appeared to be up this year but did not have comparable figures from previous presidential primaries.

To vote absentee in Missouri, residents must be unable to make it to the polls on Election Day due such reasons as travel, disability or illness. Voters are not supposed to cast absentee ballots merely as a matter of convenience.

Based on figures provided by local election officials, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office is projecting a 28 percent voter turnout for the presidential primaries, or roughly 1.1 million voters. That would double the number of votes cast in the 2004 primaries.

This is just Missouri's fourth experience with a presidential primary. The first was held in 1988, but the political parties used caucuses to select delegates for their national conventions until the primaries were reinstituted in 2000.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore was on the Democratic ballot. In 2004, President Bush was seeking a second term on the Republican ballot. This year, neither party has a candidate with that sort of incumbency edge, and both races have been more tightly contested.