As the polls close in St. Louis and across Missouri, here’s a link to the Missouri Secretary of State’s web tally of voting results.
It has the results for all state-wide candidates, Congress and the Legislature, as well as amendments and propositions.
John G. Carlton is an editorial writer who covers health care, science, the environment and public utilities. Before joining the editorial page, "Doc" was the newspaper's medical writer for four years. He has also worked at newspapers in Connecticut and New York. He's fond of heavy sarcasm and light anti-tank weapons. He lives in west St. Louis County with his wife, Martha Madigan, their daughter Ana and an overly enthusiastic Australian Shepherd dog, Savannah.
When will the results for President and Vice President be certified?
How many provisional ballots were cast?
Have any of the provisional ballots cast in areas supporting Democratic candidates been counted?
I heard some 18,000 provisional ballots were cast in the St. Louis area, and about one third traditionally have been counted in the past. There may be as many as 6,000 or more votes out there which haven’t been counted.
What are the procedures used to determine whether any provisdional ballot cast will be counted? Are those procedures mandated by federal or state law, or up to the local election boards (which are run by Republicans)?
Is the Post looking into any of these questions?
Four years ago, the Optical Scan voting machines in my precinct in Des Peres broke down. If we wanted some printed record of our votes, we were told to fill out the ballots, to place the ballots in a sleeve, and to deposit the sleeve containing the ballot into a box marked “Provisional Ballots.”
Has this stuff happened again? I’m still not completely certain my votes were counted in 2004. If the same thing happened this year in a heavy Democratic voting precinct or precincts polling place, what assurances do we have that these ballots would be entered into another machine and properly counted?