ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. — There was a line of cars to get into the parking lot of the St. Charles County Election Authority Thursday morning. Voters are showing up in droves to cast their ballots early. No excuse absentee voting opened Tuesday in Missouri.
While nearby St. Louis County, St. Louis City and Jefferson County have multiple no-excuse absentee voting locations, St. Charles County operates two. The Election Authority of St. Charles County estimates 25% of the voting population will cast ballots during the no excuse absentee period.
"We anticipate 75% of eligible voters in St. Charles County will vote in the upcoming election," St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr tells 5 On Your Side.
Despite the line of no excuse absentee voters Thursday, many did not make the trip to witness the annual public test of the voting tabulators.
"We have already programmed and tested all of these machines," explains Bahr, "and now we're allowing the public to randomly pick two of our machines and then have them test it in front of the public's view so they can see that they are accurately reflecting the votes for those machines."
The St. Charles County Election Authority typically holds the public voting machine test on the second Thursday before an election. Two volunteers — a Republican and a Democrat — picked machines at random and signed off on their accuracy. It's one step in a long process of ensuring a secure election.
Bahr described the actual voting process after the testing is complete: "information is stored on a thumb drive inside the machine which is then brought to the election authority election night, and then that is inserted into our air-gapped laptop that we tabulate the full results for the entire county."
The voting process is tedious, but one that St. Charles County voter Sharon is grateful for. "when I was in the line and I was probably about 10 people away from giving them my registration and everything, a warmth hit my chest so deep that it just, a tear came to my eye that I have the freedom to vote."
