County clerk takes heat for voting snags
By Tim Rowden
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/10/2006

Optical-scan and touch-screen voting machines were supposed to ensure efficiency and fairness in this week's elections, but a shortage of ballots in Jefferson County and an ill-fated decision to photocopy extras left county election judges tallying the ballots by hand Tuesday.

As a result, the county clerk's office could not post final election results until early Wednesday morning.

This election was the third over which County Clerk Janet McMillian has presided and the third in a row to be marked by problems.

Some of the problems Tuesday appeared to be at the polling place at Cedar Hill Lutheran Church, which ran out of ballots early in the day and needed to be restocked. The poll then ran out of ballots again and was provided with photocopies.
The photocopied ballots could not be fed through the county's optical-scan ballot reader and were counted by hand.

McMillian, who was defeated in her re-election bid Tuesday by former state representative Wes Wagner, blamed the shortage on a higher-than-expected turnout. Nearly 60 percent of registered voters in the county made it to the polls Tuesday.

But Wagner, who won the election by a vote of 38,401 to 30,607, said McMillian had failed to prepare adequately for the high turnout, despite early predictions and polarizing statewide ballot issues, including the stem cell initiative, tobacco tax and minimum wage increase.

"Several polling locations closed temporarily or shut down because of the lack of ballots," Wagner said. "Cedar Hill ran out around 11 a.m. or noon. Several people said they had tried to vote and there were no ballots, then they came back at a later time and there were no ballots and they were fed up and went home. People were disenfranchised."

McMillian said her office had ballots printed and distributed on the basis of the number of active voters in each precinct but failed to account for the number of usually inactive voters who also turned out to vote.

"I think using active and inactive probably would have covered it," she said.

McMillian was appointed to the county clerk's post last year after the death of longtime County Clerk Eleanor Koch Rehm.

She took the post just as major changes were being made to county voting procedures and was blamed for various glitches that accompanied those changes and errors made at county polling places.

Having endured nearly constant criticism since taking office, McMillian said she was neither surprised nor particularly disappointed by the outcome of Tuesday's election.

"National politics always can reverberate down to the local races, but local races for Republicans in this county have never been that high and mighty," she said. "I was pretty much of a realist all along. I'm happy I did as well as I did."
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