Record number of ballots cast Tuesday in Cape County

More voters than ever cast ballots Tuesday in Cape Girardeau County, but aside from some initial lines when polling places opened, most voting precincts reported steady, but not overwhelming, voter turnout.

“It was like Black Friday when we opened the doors,” according to Maddie Hoffman, who served as an election judge at Good Shepherd Lutheran Chapel on West Cape Rock Drive in the City of Cape Girardeau, where 100 voters cast ballots between 6 and 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Cape Girardeau County Clerk Kara Clark Summers said the scene was similar at most, if not all, of the county’s 36 precincts.

“At 6 a.m., people were in line everywhere and I was a little anxious,” she said. “But our election judges worked very diligently to get those people through the line quickly and efficiently. After that, it was just steady all day long at most of the polling places.”

Spot checks by the Southeast Missourian at several Cape Girardeau polling places Tuesday found no waiting at most precincts with voter totals hovering between 500 and 600 by midmorning, equaling a full-day’s turnout at many of those precincts in a typical election.

A total of 40,517 of the county’s 55,350 registered voters — a number including 4,608 who registered this year — cast ballots in this week’s election for an overall participation rate of 73.2%. Absentee ballots were cast by 13,967 of those voters before Tuesday’s election, which reduced the “in-person” turnout Tuesday to a manageable 26,550 voters.

Cape Girardeau County’s voter participation percentage in this week’s election was slightly below the 73.4% achieved in the general election in November 2008 when 37,594 of the county’s 51,205 registered voters cast ballots.

“That percentage in 2008 was after our final certification, so we might be ahead of that once all of the absentee ballots that were returned to the polls are counted along with military and provisional ballots,” Summers said.

The county clerk said 120 provisional ballots will be reviewed. Qualified provisional ballots and any military ballots received by noon Friday will be included in the final ballot tally before election results are certified.

“We have to go through the auditing process of matching all the numbers to each precinct and verifying all the results to be sure they’re all reported accurately,” she said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to close out the election.”

Long Election Day

Summers and the election team began Election Day long before sunrise.

“I started my day at 4:30 a.m. at (Cape Girardeau) City Hall. We cannot set up there until the morning of the election because they had a (City Council) meeting the night before,” said Summers who spent most of Tuesday checking in at most of the county’s polling places. County vote results were posted by 9 p.m. Tuesday, after which Summers went home and watched national election returns until well after midnight.

But Tuesday wasn’t the only long day for Summers and the county’s election staff.

“My staff and I have had many very long days the last six weeks,” she said, adding that many election preparations started months ago and were complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which required additional poll workers, sanitation supplies and other precautions such as safety shields and personal protective equipment to help protect voters and election workers.

“We trained over 160 new election judges,” Summers said. “Everybody did an amazing job. A lot of people stepped up to the plate in the community to help. The support we received was overwhelming.”

The county clerk said she and her staff welcome feedback from the public about how the voting process can be improved.

“Don’t hesitate to call me if we did something wrong or if we didn’t do something as well as we could have,” she said. “If voters had a good experience, I want to know and I also want to know if they had an issue. We can always do better.”

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