Sen. Kit Bond: Investigate Missouri voter fraud

Human Events, Nov 17, 2000 by Carney, Timothy P

Judge Ordered St. Louis Precincts Kept Open After Voting Deadline Passed

Many people in the city of St. Louis, Mo., voted after the legal 7:00 p.m. voting deadline had passed last Tuesday because Missouri Circuit Court Judge Evelyn Baker about an hour earlier ordered that polling places be kept open.

That ruling was reversed at 7:45 p.m. by a three-judge panel of state appeals court judges. But there are allegations from many critics, including a U.S. senator, that polling places remained open even after that. Two days after the polls had finally closed, it was still undetermined how many late votes had actually been cast.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Mo., voting booths were left unsupervised for periods of time.

Finally, in both cities, as well as in regions of St. Louis County outside the city proper, people were permitted to vote even though their names were not on the rolls of registered voters.

St. Louis and Kansas City are heavily Democratic. Nonetheless, the Missouri Republican Party does not plan to contest the close elections in which Republican Sen. John Ashcroft and gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jim Talent (R.-Mo.) were defeated.

Republican Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.), however, has requested a criminal investigation of voter fraud in St. Louis. Republicans and Democrats agree on where the scandal started: A significant number of people showed up to vote in precincts in St. Louis when they were not registered to vote in those precincts.

Judge Baker's Order Reversed

The city's Board of Election Commissioners had removed 33,000 names from the voting rolls pursuant to a state law that requires a periodic canvass of voters to confirm their name and address. This spring, the city's Board of Election Commissioners conducted such a canvass by mail. In cases where a voter indicated that he had moved out of the city, or where the Post Office indicated that the voter no longer lived at that address, the person was placed on an "inactive voter" roster.

When someone arriving at a polling place on Tuesday turned out not to be listed on the precinct's register, an election official called the election board to see if the person was on the roster of "inactive voters." If the person was listed on the inactive voter roster, and could confirm that he still lived in St. Louis, he was permitted to vote, either at his new polling place or at the Board of Election Commissioners.

If the person was not on the inactive voter roster, he was denied the right to vote, and told he could appeal this at the Board of Election Commissioners. At the board, the prospective voter had to convince a circuit court judge that he had in fact registered, and was entitled to vote but that the government itself had somehow lost his registration.

During the day, 233 voters who were not registered and were not on the roster of "inactive voters" were able to persuade judges to let them vote.

Late in the afternoon, Democratic congressional candidate William Lacy Clay, his sister, a staffer and a prospective voter filed a petition with Judge Baker asking her to order that the polls be kept open in the city of St. Louis an extra three hours to 10:00 p.m.

(Baker, the first female African-American judge in Missouri, had been appointed by Sen. Bond when he was governor.)

At 6 p.m., she granted the petition, ordering the polls to stay open citywide until 10:00 p.m., and the Board of Election Commissioners to stay open until 11:59 p.m. Had her order never been overturned, people in St. Louis would have been given an extra five hours to vote.

Shortly after the judge issued her order, according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, recorded phone calls went out to households in St. Louis. The recording told voters to go out and vote-and that the polls would now be open until 10 p.m. and the Board of Elections until midnight.

The voice on the recording identified himself as the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The local Bond/Ashcroft Senate office received, and recorded, the call at 8: 19 p.m.

Additionally, circuit court judges in St. Louis City and county, and in Kansas City, were issuing orders allowing some people to vote who had not registered at all.

The Bush campaign immediately went to U.S. District Court to try to have Judge Baker's order reversed. Federal District Judge Rodney Sippel-a former chief of staff for House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D.Mo.)-rejected any appeal on the grounds that this was a state, not a federal, matter.

Lawyers for Bush's campaign, together with the Board of Election Commissioners, then went to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District. A three-judge panel presided over by Judge Larry Crahan, and including Judges Kathianne Crane and George Draper, at 7:45 quashed Judge Baker's order to keep the polls open late.

All polling places were ordered to shut down immediately. At what time the polls actually closed, and how many people voted after 7:00 p.m., "is impossible to determine," says Kevin Coan, the Republican director for the Board of Election Commissioners.