“Unprecedented:” Jackson County early voters wait as long as four hours to cast their vote

LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. (KCTV) - Jackson County voters had their minds set on what to mark on their ballot but they had to wait for hours, some said four-and-a-half hours, to do so.

“Unprecedented,” said Director of the Jackson County Board of Elections Tammy Brown. “We had one site in 2020, which was our COVID year, we had drive-thru COVID voters, for the voters that had covid and then we had the walk in and the lines were long then but nothing like what we’re seeing now.”

Brown said they have about 14 part-time workers managing operations at the Ranger Recreation Center. Despite the low staffing, voters knew the importance of patiently waiting.

Audrey Alexander is a Lee’s Summit resident who made her way to the polling site alongside her neighbor Marchel Alverson.

“We had said that we were going to leave at 8:30 and get here before 9 and then one of my friends said you better go earlier,” said Alexander.

Alverson, walking with crutches, thanked her neighbor for staying with her the whole time.

“She was gracious enough to bring the chair and bring me here and I said you know what I’m going to get out here now, I’m going to fight through the pain, go cast my vote because it’s important. This is a pivotal election,” said Alverson.

Janice Hill waited in line standing at first, but then her son brought her a chair.

“I expected to get done a lot sooner than we did,” she said. “I really want to see our country go in the right direction again.”

The other satellite polling site at the Fleming Meeting Hall, on SW Woods Chapel Road in Blue Springs, is closed Friday and Saturday for a scheduled event. Brown said that had caused some disruptions in operations by picking up and putting down all of their equipment between the two locations, but they are getting the work done regardless for early voters.

Some early voters were not aware of the closed location on Friday and were welcomed to lock doors and “Closed” signage on the lawn.

“Me and my wife won’t even vote because of this. If it’s so hard to vote in Jackson County we might just say no for this year. I don’t know,” said Jackson County resident Robert McDermott.

Park University Political Science Associate Professor Matt Harris is interested to see the total number of early voters in a few weeks.

“Maybe a better comparison year would be 2016 and so maybe we’ll be up from 2016,” he said. “2020 is kind of its own thing and kind of hard to characterize relative to other elections.”

Harris said the importance of voting for democracy regardless of what day voters decide is showing this year - as the line continued growing all day long on Friday in Lee’s Summit.

“Whether somebody is like, ‘I’m going to vote early or I‘m going to vote on Election Day,’ doesn’t really matter but the fact that those options are available is important, and when you see people taking advantage of it that probably shows that it does matter,” said Harris.

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