Tuesday’s presidential election wrapped up 6 weeks of voting across Missouri. And while the last two weeks indicated a strong showing by early voters, election day itself was a bit lackluster.
This year’s election is the first presidential election for which Missouri offered no-excuse absentee voting. Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon says many people chose to vote that way.
“We heard from a lot of people this time that they really appreciated having the opportunity to vote before election day, and they weren’t really aware that it had been in place for the last couple of years,” Lennon said.
Missouri first started offering no-excuse absentee voting in 2022.
But despite a strong showing by early voters in Boone County, the county’s voter turnout — 67% — was slightly lower than 2020's 70%. Still, Lennon says the county clerk’s office may look into increasing the county’s capacity for accommodating the large numbers of early voters in the future.
Lennon compared the number of no-excuse absentee votes this year to the number of absentee votes cast over the six-week period in 2020, many due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Fitting more than that number into a two-week time period was incredibly difficult from an administration standpoint,” Lennon said.
Cole County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer said his county had a similar experience.
“When no-excuse started that Tuesday we had 600 people come in and we thought that was a lot,” Korsmeyer said. “Well, then like the Monday before the election we had almost 1200 people come and vote in the no-excuse and then the Friday before that 1200 so I mean the volume of people in that short period of two weeks was just incredible.”
But in the end, Cole County had 73% voter turnout — exactly the same as four years ago.