ST. LOUIS — With the exception of one woman refusing to wear a face mask, at most polling places everything ran smoothly.
One of the biggest things poll workers were surprised with is the large turnout, despite being in the middle of a pandemic.
Gary Stoff has been directing elections for the last 19 years, he says this year has been one of the most interesting primaries he's seen.
"Two years ago we had about 37% voter turnout, four years ago we had about 27% and this year based on our absentee numbers we are expecting about 35% total," explained Stoff.
Another surprise for most poll workers was the amount of young voters hitting the polls.
"I was surprised yes, I've had at least 10 new first time voters and they were like OK I'm here where do I go?" said Election Official Tracey Shanklin.
One of those voters was Kiara Jones.
"Normally there are a lot of older people in there but even the election officials I saw in there were younger so I was pleasantly surprised to see that," added Jones.
"We've got three to four times as many absentee ballots this year as we would typically have in an August election," added Stoff.
