Election boards said Frank White recall timeline was too tight. Are they ready?
As Jackson County residents decide whether they will vote to recall County Executive Frank White on Sept. 30, the Jackson County and Kansas City election boards say they’re on track for the vote despite limits on time and resources.
Polling sites in Missouri and nationwide are mostly held in the same public buildings every year, and poll workers are mostly experienced volunteers. But running an unexpected special election tests the strength of these traditions, requiring election officials to recruit creatively – and fast – because the arrangements aren’t already accounted for in existing contracts.
After a series of legal battles this summer amid calls for White’s resignation, a Jackson County judge set September 30 as the date for the special recall election.
The recall election will be the first of its kind in Jackson County since recall procedures were added to the county charter.
However, election officials say their duty to voters is the same as it would be in a scheduled general or presidential election.
“We pay the same attention to the level of detail for a recall election as we do a presidential,” Lauri Ealom, Democratic director of the Kansas City Election Board, told The Star. “This is our Super Bowl… they’re all big deals to us because this is what our expectation is of ourselves.”
Both the JCEB and the KCEB declined to comment on whether they plan to participate in further legal action around the recall vote and its mandated date.
Startup costs
For Kansas City residents, early voting in the recall election began by mail Aug. 16 and in person at the KCEB headquarters at 4407 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. on Aug. 19.
For residents of Jackson County outside of Kansas City, early voting also began Aug. 19 at board headquarters at 110 N. Liberty St. in Independence. A second satellite site for early voting will open Sept.16 at the Woods Chapel Community of Christ Church at 500 NE Woods Chapel Road in Lee’s Summit.
The Kansas City Election Board, which oversees voting within Kansas City limits, will receive about $900,000 from the general fund in the Jackson County budget about three weeks before the election, Ealom and KCEB Republican Director Shawn Kieffer said. The Jackson County Election Board will receive $1.2 million.
Without this advance funding from the county, both election boards may lack the money needed to pay for an election up front, Ealom said.
“I’m sure we’ll get a check,” Ealom said. “We’ll get paid. But it may not be in the time frame that we would like for it to happen.”
In Jackson County, Brown and JCEB Democratic Director Sara Zorich told The Star that they expect their funding from the county to fully cover election costs, but that unusually high voter turnout could create last-minute costs.
The unprecedented nature of the election leaves a lot of variables unknown.
“Our main concern is just the flow of voting that’s going to happen over the next six weeks,” Kieffer said. “Are people going to use our no-excuse absentee ballots? Are they going to show up on Election Day? Are they going to vote absentee? We haven’t experienced a recall in a long time, so we just don’t know how to anticipate the turnout.”
Finding polling places
During the special election, both the KCEB and JCEB have had to work outside of their normal contracts with the public buildings that usually serve as poll places. Both bodies say extra early voting sites and flexibility within schools have been key in rebuilding this network on short notice.
“Polling places are not as easy to define as they once were,” Ealom said. “The climate…is not as safe as it used to seem.”
According to Missouri law, election officials can commandeer any publicly-owned, tax-funded building as a polling place, though private buildings such as churches can also voluntarily function as poll places.
To this end, the Kansas City Election Board has mostly relied on existing relationships with schools, churches and libraries. Officials at KCEB sent contracts to established polling places in September 2024 to hold availability for 2025 elections.
For the Jackson County election board, 50 of 103 typical polling places are in schools, Brown said in an August hearing.
However, since school calendars in the city and county are generally set at the beginning of the calendar year, the special recall election was scheduled regardless of teacher in-service days, student class schedules and other events, Kieffer said.
“We had to call around and see who would be available to be a polling place that day before we even started the process,” Kieffer said. “When you pick an odd election date, we start over from scratch.”
At this point, schools can’t ensure that class won’t be in session at the same time as members of the public are lining up to vote, both the JCEB and KCEB noted.
“Some of the voting areas in the schools, where we usually set up the polling equipment, needed to be relocated because of previously scheduled student activities,” Zorich said. “These may seem like minor problems, but these types of changes can create other issues.”
Instead, Kansas City schools - many of which started classes this week - will have to get creative to balance both environments.
“If the kids will be there, we can pick a spot in the facility that is the furthest away from the children,” Ealom said. “It’s common courtesy. Schools have a lot going on.”
Ensuring accessibility supports are fully available at every poll place has also been difficult on a condensed timeline, Ealom and Kieffer said.
“We have to basically be prepared to service the entire city in all the various ways and meet all of their various needs,” Ealom said. “...It’s a big event, and we have to ensure that each event is stocked and has the tools available for those who may be differently abled.”
Building an election team
The Jackson County and Kansas City Election Boards previously said that recruiting enough poll workers ahead of the special election may be a difficult task. JCEB Republican Director Tammy Brown testified Aug. 1 that the board would need to reach out to at least 1,000 former volunteers to assemble enough available poll workers and judges.
As of September, Zorich and Brown told The Star, JCEB has secured 806 pollworkers, which she said is standard.
The KCEB has also recruited enough poll workers to fully staff both the September and November elections, Ealom said. Instead, the board is focusing on continuing to administer an expanded early voting program.
Most of the judges signed up in September are returning or experienced volunteers, Kieffer and Ealom said.
Fully training all of the poll workers for a scheduled election usually takes 4-5 weeks, Kieffer said. This time, KCEB is simultaneously training judges for both the special election and the November 4 general election in different sessions, with most volunteer judges signed up to work both elections.
What’s next
The results of the recall election will take effect immediately once a majority vote is established.
If White is recalled, a temporary replacement will be appointed by either county legislators or a judge until voters can elect a new county executive in November 2026. At least one former candidate – Kansas City attorney Stacy Lake, who lost to White in the Democratic primary for County Executive in 2022 – has announced plans to run at that point.
White recently released a statement saying he would not run for County Executive in 2026, citing recovery from kidney cancer, but hinted last week in an interview with KCUR that he would consider re-running in 2026 if recalled this month.
Since 2019, the county executive has been paid an annual salary of $149,718.
