On Your Side: County clerks say they turned away many unregistered voters
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - We don’t know how many, but county clerks tell On Your Side workers turned away people at the polls because they were not registered to vote.
One person tells On Your Side they were registered and did not get a ballot.
“Some of the amendments affect me personally,” said Mia Thimesch. “It was my first time. It’s just sad.”
20-year-old Mia Thimesch in Christian County thought she’d be a first-time voter. She told us she registered last year at the DMV. She did not get to vote when she went to her polling place with her driver’s license.
“I don’t know if it’s a system error or something else happened,” she said.
We asked that question. A spokesperson from the Missouri Department of Revenue told On Your Side that Thimesch declined to register when she got her license.
“It’s a he said, she said.”
Thimesch says she had a voter ID card but tore it up Tuesday night and threw it away.
“I was like, what’s the point of this if I can’t even vote?” she asked.
“We had about 2,300 phone calls yesterday,” said Paula Brumfield, Christian County Clerk.
A change of address is easy for a registered voter to update, but Brumfield had to tell some that it was too late.
“We don’t want to turn a voter away, but if they’re not in the system in the state of Missouri, then we can’t find them,” she said.
“You have to be registered to vote four weeks in advance,” said Jay Ashcroft, Missouri Secretary of State. “We had people that were calling up saying hey I just registered, where do I vote? They can vote in the future, but we need to do the process that you are who you say you are.”
On Your Side heard from a few veterans in Greene, Christian, and Stone Counties who say they had to show multiple IDs. Ashcroft said if you had a problem at the poll, tell your county clerk and call his office.
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