Missouri ripe for voting snags

Among 12 states where conditions spark concerns

Darren Woods of St. Louis said changes in Missouri's voting system are untested. (Jerry Naunheim Jr.)

ST. LOUIS - Darren and Karen Woods live in the crossfire of a political battleground.

The presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, are running dead even in Missouri, have made more than a dozen campaign visits each, and have saturated the TV airwaves with mostly negative spots.

In addition, there's an intense political ad war between Attorney General Jay Nixon and US Representative Kenny Hulshof - former colleagues in the state attorney general's office now battling for governor - and the ballot has an initiative on education as well as a slew of legislative races.

The couple headed downtown on a weekday afternoon to cast absentee ballots at the state election headquarters after seeing TV news reports of long lines and glitches in early voting at polling places in other states.

"I think this is a safe system," Darren Woods said of Missouri's election process, but he said he was worried about voters being discouraged by new identification requirements and long waits - and about the chance that there will be no clear winner on election night.

"Of course, it's possible," said Woods, noting that the changes "haven't been tested."

Several specialists agree with him.

A recent study by electionline.org, a nonpartisan research foundation, placed Missouri on a list of roughly a dozen states that have a high probability of encountering significant problems on Nov. 4.

Like the other states, Missouri has several possibly troublesome factors, including new voter identification laws, a heated race for a statewide office, a ballot packed with candidates and initiatives, and a highly charged, partisan atmosphere. Missouri has the added complication of being a swing state in the presidential race, with the candidates virtually tied.

Those factors, coupled with an unprecedented number of new voters and an expected record turnout, has led some political analysts to predict that Missouri could be at the center of "a perfect storm" that could throw the 2008 presidential election into disarray.

"Expecting a voting problem here is almost a no-brainer," said Dave Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. "We have a very good chance of extending the time it takes to count the vote" past midnight or later.

Robertson stopped short of predicting a situation in Missouri along the lines of the disputed Florida vote in the 2000 race, which was decided by the US Supreme Court in a ruling that determined the presidency. But he would not rule it out, particularly because Republican McCain and Democrat Obama "both have armies of lawyers" combing the state, looking for irregularities.

Across the country, the study by electionline.org warned that while "many of the old machines, laws, and procedures that were blamed for the problems in 2000 are gone," new machines, new laws, and voting procedures "have themselves raised questions that continue to fuel controversy and concern as November approaches."

The report likened the voting system to plumbing that has been patched and replaced but not tested. On Election Day, the report states, "voters will crank the pressure sky-high."

That prediction could have been made specifically about Missouri. While the state voted for President Bush by solid margins in the last two elections and McCain has made repeated visits, Obama drew an eye-opening 100,000 people to a rally beneath the gleaming Gateway Arch last weekend.

The state's farmland interior and the southern region, which hugs the Arkansas line and the Ozark Mountains, is reliably conservative, a balance to the more liberal urban areas of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbia, home of the University of Missouri. In the pollster.com average of recent polls, Obama, at 48.5 percent, holds a slight edge over McCain's 46.9 percent, but the race is well within the 3-percentage-point margin of error.

Compared with other swing states such as Florida and Ohio, which award 27 and 20 electoral votes, respectively, Missouri carries a relatively modest 11 electoral votes. But it's easy to understand why both candidates see it as a prize worth contesting.

Straddling the geographical border between the North and South, Missouri is considered close to the psychological center of the nation. It is also considered a bellwether state; in 1956, Democrat Adlai Stevenson was the last modern presidential candidate who won Missouri but not the White House.

Robertson said he believes the biggest voting problems may occur not in the reliable Republican countryside, but in the cities - particularly St. Louis, a Democratic stronghold - where he expects long lines and where election officials might run out of ballots.

"There is going to be high turnout, and high energy, especially in areas that have a high African-American population," he said. "St. Louis has the reputation of not being the most efficient election board in the state."

The only way a legal challenge to the vote can be avoided is if McCain or Obama scores a decisive win in Missouri by at least 5 percentage points, Robertson said.

At the state Election Authority headquarters in downtown St. Louis, a converted, 1960s-era bank that still has teller windows and a huge conference table, a steady flow of voters trooped to the second floor to cast absentee ballots. During an hourlong visit last week, the small polling station was crowded and the handful of touch-screen voting machines were continually in use.

Matthew Potter, deputy elections director in St. Louis, said he and his team have been working 14-hour days, including weekends, to process new voter registrations and prepare the voter rolls in time for Nov. 4. Though he expected a heavy workload leading up to the election, "this by far has trumped any election" since he took the job three years ago.

"We knew we needed to prepare for this," Potter said, pausing to direct a small cluster of voters to the polling stations. Still, "there will be problems on Election Day. You have to be ready for it."