Live updates: Voters line up at Arrowhead, Kansas City polling places on Election Day
On a much-anticipated Election Day, voters arrived before dawn at Arrowhead Stadium, where Chiefs Coach Andy Reid cast his ballot before 6:30 a.m.
There, as elsewhere in the Kansas City metropolitan area, lines that formed before the polls opened soon melted away. Later in the morning, voters at many polling places in Kansas City and Johnson County easily walked in and out without waiting long.
By 9 a.m., between 500 and 1,000 voters had voted at Arrowhead, which was designated as a polling site this year, Chiefs team president Mark Donovan said.
The line at the stadium appeared to be moving quickly. Voters kept their distance from one another, cheerleaders posed for photographs and workers set up a free meal station outside through World Central Kitchen.
“The overwhelming response has been we’ve got to vote here more often,” Donovan said. “This is a great setup. We wish more people knew about it today. The one message I would ask for everyone’s help on — we’ve had a great turnout; we’ve had people pretty steady through here; but we got a lot more capacity. If you’re eligible to vote at Arrowhead, please come out.”
Registered voters who live in the Kansas City, Missouri, portion of Jackson County are eligible to cast their vote at the stadium.
Record turnout is expected on both sides of the state line, where thousands of voters have already cast ballots via mail, in-person, absentee or early voting.
Polling locations in Missouri opened at 6 a.m. and will remain open until 7 p.m.
In Kansas, state law requires polling locations to be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but counties are allowed to operate polls from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Johnson County polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The Star will be reporting live updates from the polls throughout the day.
Readers can send story tips, photos and observations to reporter Glenn E. Rice at grice@kcstar.com. Tag The Star on Twitter at @KCStar.
Voter turnout
Across the country, election officials have anticipated large turnout as voters elect the president, and in Kansas, a new U.S. senator.
The Kansas Secretary of State’s office urged voters on Tuesday to ignore robocalls telling them not to vote.
“We are receiving reports of robocalls telling voters to stay home. Disregard these calls. If you have not already voted, today is the day! Polls in Kansas close at 7:00 p.m. local time,” according to a tweet from the office.
In Kansas City, at the Tony Aguirre Community Center, 2050 W. Pennway Street, hundreds of voters were in line by 6 a.m. when the polls opened. The earliest said they had arrived at 4:30 a.m.
Ioanna Gryaki and Paul Hunter, both 25, stood about 50 people back in a snaking line outside the community center. They were spending their seven-year anniversary together at the polls.
Gryaki, who planned to vote for Biden, said she was feeling anxious, but also hopeful because the early voting numbers have already shown good turnout. There’s a lot at stake, including basic human rights, she said.
She has mixed emotions about Biden, since he wasn’t her first pick. But she said now he’s the only option for her.
“I’m excited to vote for Biden,” Hunter interjected. “I’m excited to vote for democracy.”
Tanner Minyard, 27, waited in line Tuesday morning to cast his second vote for Trump.
“I think he’s done a great job,” Minyard said. “I mean, his comments on his Twitter aren’t the best.”
The economy is a priority for Minyard, and he believes the incumbent had done “a solid job” handling the country’s finances.
Manuel Hernandez, 68, voted early so he could volunteer on Election Day. He said he’s been seeing people from the neighborhood coming out to vote who he’s never seen at the polls before. He’s also seeing more young people voting.
“It’s like a whole new ballgame,” he said.
“It’s about your future, not mine,” he tells them. “You need some representation.”
As he’s spoken with voters in the area leading up to the election, Hernandez said, the two main concerns he’s heard are about COVID-19 and healthcare.
Victoria Anderson, 41, was among the Kansas City voters impressed with how smoothly things went Tuesday. She cast her ballot in the middle of the day at African-Centered Prep Elementary School on Swope Parkway so she would not have to deal with long lines, she said.
“I was kind of shocked as quick as it was,” said Anderson, a law student at the University of Missouri - Kansas City.
Hours earlier, on Tuesday morning, hundreds of people gathered at the elementary school to vote. The power went out there briefly after a nearby car crash.
COVID-19 procedures
Curbside voting at Union Station has been constantly busy, with as many 40 vehicles in line at times, said Shawn Kieffer, the Republican director with the Kansas City Election Board.
Election officials offer the curbside balloting for voters who have been diagnosed with the COVID-19 virus.
“This is not something that we anticipated,” Kieffer said. “The turnout on this has caught up as it has with most people totally as a surprise.”
Additional voting machines have been placed outside and the curbside balloting is expected to go a bit faster, he said.
At Knox Presbyterian in Overland Park, voters trickled in during the first few hours, with no long lines and no long wait. Given how many people have already voted, election workers expected about 50 voters an hour.
For COVID-19 safety, each voter was handed an individually-wrapped stylus to use when voting. Poll workers checking in voters sat behind plastic see-through barriers at tables inside the doors of the church’s fellowship hall.
Cannon Crane, 23, of Overland Park, who works in estate sales, voted for Joe Biden. This was his second presidential election.
“I voted last time he (Trump) won,” he said. “If everybody had voted for Hillary it wouldn’t have been a problem. This wouldn’t be as urgent.”
Hoping for peace
During a rally Tuesday afternoon with police and the mayor’s office, numerous clergy members called for peace in Kansas City, regardless of the outcome of the election.
“On today, where emotions are hot, and the love of many seems cold, we’re here to simply say, ‘Hate won’t win,’” the Rev. Darron Edwards, pastor of the United Believers Community Church, said at Mill Creek Park by the Country Club Plaza.
Speaking to reporters outside Arrowhead Stadium Tuesday morning, Mayor Quinton Lucas said the city does not anticipate any voter intimidation at the polls. Officials from the local U.S. attorney’s office, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office and the Kansas City Police Department were out to respond to calls. On Monday, police said every uniformed officer would be available to respond to civil unrest or attempts at voter intimidation.
Dressed in a red sweater and a black mask, Lucas said Election Day should be a national holiday.
“I think this is a lot more important, perhaps, than recognizing Columbus Day, for example,” Lucas said.
At about 7:23 a.m., the National World War I Museum, which was designated as a polling place on Election Day, tweeted that the building had been defaced with graffiti. An accompanying photo showed an exterior wall marked with red spray paint, including the words “ Fight for Revolution,” “Don’t Vote,” and a crude hammer and sickle.
The museum condemned the vandalism. “Our democracy is something that generations of veterans, including those in WWI, have fought to defend,” the museum’s tweet said. “We hope you’ll vote today & make your voice heard.”
Tuesday afternoon, about a half-dozen businesses on the Plaza were boarding up windows as a precaution after thousands of protesters converged there in the spring to rail against systemic racism and police brutality.
At the Joe E. Amayo Sr. Argentine Community Center in Kansas City, Kansas, Jennifer Cook, 36, a registered Democrat, voted in the afternoon before she went to work.
She was shocked when Trump won in 2016 because none of her friends supported him, which kept her in a “little bubble.”
Of the Senate race in Kansas between Democrat Barbara Bollier and Republican Roger Marshall, Cook said she voted for Bollier, but “I wasn’t super-wowed by either of them.” The presidential race was the most important to her.
Early turnout numbers
Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt said voter turnout was expected to reach 80%. In Kansas City, election officials think about 65% of voters will cast ballots.
“We think lines could be heavy at the end of the day and of course, anybody standing in line at 7 o’clock will get to vote and we will wait for them for as long as it takes,” Kieffer said.
As of last week nearly half of all registered voters in Johnson County, some 215,362, had already cast their ballots. A record number of residents registered to vote this fall, totaling 451,963, Schmidt said.
Kansas election officials predicted that the state will see record-setting turnout for this year’s presidential election. The Kansas Secretary of State’s office said it anticipates 70% of Kansas voters will participate in the election. It anticipates that about 1.35 million Kansans will cast a ballot.
Although Missouri, unlike Kansas, does not allow advance voting, thousands of Kansas Citians had already cast ballots by the middle of October.
After Sept. 22, when “in-person absentee” voting began across Missouri, Kansas Citians cast ballots at Union Station at a rate of nearly 1,000 per day — 10 times more than in a typical election year.
For official information about voting, contact your local election office.
Kansas City Election Board: Call 816-842-4820 or send email to kceb@kceb.org.
Johnson County Election Office: Call 913-715-6800 or send email to election@jocoelection.org.
For information about voting elsewhere in Kansas, contact the office of the Kansas Secretary of State at 800-262-8683.
In Missouri, contact the office of the Missouri Secretary of State at 573-751-4936.
Includes reporting by The Star’s Eric Adler.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 6:06 AM.
