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Some Missouri Voters Mistakenly Receive Letter Saying They're Ineligible to Vote

The problem was first discovered about Oct. 15, when some voters who received the letter called to say they had received it in error, Democratic Director Eric Fey said Thursday night.

By Jeremy Kohler

An election official in St. Louis County said Thursday night that officials mistakenly sent letters to 253 voters telling them they were ineligible to vote on Nov. 6.

The Board of Elections revised the number on Thursday night after saying earlier in the day that the number had been 600.

The problem was first discovered about Oct. 15, when some voters who received the letter called to say they had received it in error, Democratic Director Eric Fey said Thursday night.

Fey said about 150 people who had called to point out the error over the past few weeks had been added back to the rolls, but the problem did not trigger any additional investigation by the board until a reporter asked about it on Thursday.

Fey said the board for the first time on Thursday looked into the 1,500 letters it had sent, and generated a list of voters who should not have received the letter. Republican Director Rick Stream called the newspaper back to say that number was 600, and that the board still needed to contact almost all of them.

But Fey called later to say that the number Stream provided had been an estimate, not an actual count, and the real number was 253.

Fey said that meant there were still 103 people in St. Louis County who still did not know they had received a letter in error. And he said he was "99 percent" sure that was the full extent of the problem. Any voter who received the letter was asked to call the election board at 314-615-1800.

Stream said earlier Thursday that the board should have acted more quickly to notify voters of the mistake. He said the error was committed while processing voter registration forms that came in after Missouri's Oct. 10 deadline.

The board sent letters to 1,500 voters indicating that their registrations had been received too late for the Nov. 6 election but that their names would be added to the rolls for future elections.

Fey said the problem was attributable to a single election worker who did not know that voter registration forms postmarked or signed by Oct. 10 should be counted, even if they arrived at the board office a few days later.

Stream said Thursday morning that the board had not issued voter registration cards to voters who got letters in error. The cards are usually issued as part of an automatic system, "and we didn't ensure that those changes were put into that automated system," Stream said.

But Fey said later Thursday night that the board had actually issued voter registration cards to the 150 voters who had called in and had been identified as receiving a letter in error.

After a Post-Dispatch story about the problem was published online Thursday, one St. Louis County voter said she contacted the board to express her outrage.

And another voter took to social media to post a picture of the letter, suggesting it was fake and an attempt to suppress voters.

The letter wasn't fake, it was just wrong, Stream said.

It was the second snafu at the election board in recent days. Last week, the board acknowledged it had to reissue sample ballots to 12 percent of registered voters because the first version had errors.

In 2016, issues that plagued voting at more than 60 polling places led to a two-week suspension for Fey and the resignation of Republican Gary Fuhr. The board did not accept Fuhr's resignation, and he retired later that year.

(c)2018 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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