Kansas City area voting features long lines — and also short ones

A crushing turnout for Tuesday’s elections — nationwide and across the Kansas City area — produced hours of waiting in line for many Missouri voters.

Among the longest lines was the one stretching out of Northland Cathedral Church in Kansas City, North, where voters at midday reported waits of 3 to 3  1/2 hours.

The church at 101 N.W. 99th St. had five precincts voting there. The Chouteau 17th precinct has the largest population but was voting in the smallest room available.

“We’ve never had waits that long. But the turnout for this election was just unprecedented,” said Clay County election director Patty Lamb. “This is my fifth presidential election, and it has to be bigger than any other.”

Although many Missourians waited more than a hour at polling places, Kansas voters typically whizzed through Tuesday in a few minutes, thanks to the Sunflower State allowing early voting, unlike Missouri.

Election officials locally and elsewhere expected the turnout would set records, despite earlier concerns that unhappy voters might stay home.

With one of the nastiest election seasons finally behind them, area voters mostly got along, enjoyed the mild weather and reported few big problems casting their ballots.

Even many of the thousands waiting at Northland Cathedral maintained good spirits, Lamb said.

About 4 p.m., she showed up with extra election workers and electronic poll tablets to speed up the processing of voters. “I apologized,” Lamb said, “and everyone I talked to was very, very kind.”

At Hawthorn Hill Elementary School in Lee’s Summit, voter Justin Walker waited in line two hours with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. And he was good with that.

He attributed his wait to “actually a combination of a couple of good things,” Walker said. “High turnout, that’s good,” and voters were taking their time with a lengthy Missouri ballot.

“I didn’t see anyone peel away from the line” at Hawthorn Hill, he said. “It was pretty amazing. You become friends with the person in front of you and the person behind.”

Voters and election workers at many locations observed that the turnout of young voters appeared higher than what many analysts had expected.

They included Austin Belzer, voting in his first presidential election.

The 20-year-old Raytown High School graduate had prepared for it, researching not just the presidential contest but even state and city amendments. At the Grace and Holy Trinity Church polling place in downtown Kansas City, he found himself explaining some of the ballot issues to an older couple behind him.

Waiting more than an hour in line, he made sure other voters knew that they could pull sample ballots up on their phones to study measures before voting.

Preparing for this moment wasn’t easy for him. A “civil war among friends” broke out as they argued over the candidates on social media. Many had asked, “What’s the point?”

The turnout Tuesday suggested the point was huge. And his social media channels showed more friends than he expected saying, “I voted.”

The ballot in Kansas was smaller. But the real catalyst for shorter lines and quicker voting there was the state enabling Kansans to vote earlier.

In Johnson County, the number of registered voters was up over 400,000 for the first time in history, said Nathan Carter, administrator at the Johnson County Election Office. And yet on Tuesday, when news media arrived to get footage of polling places “they found mostly empty hallways.”

That’s because 43 percent of all registered voters in the county — more than 180,600 in all — had cast their ballots before Election Day. In Wyandotte County, the advanced vote was 30 percent, easily setting a county record, said election commissioner Bruce Newby.

More impressive, Newby said, was that 90 percent of Wyandotte Countians who requested mail-in ballots returned them in time.

“I’m delighted there were that many people engaged,” Newby said.

Early voting proposals have come and gone in Missouri, where most county clerks are thought to resist the idea.

Tuesday’s delays likely will reignite the topic.

At the end of the day for voters still waiting at Northland Cathedral, election judge Paula Stevens allowed everyone in line at 7 p.m. to stay and cast ballots. The voting was expected to wrap up in another hour.

“My take on it is everybody’s very passionate about the issues this time,” Stevens said. “That’s why they showed up.”

In random visits to area polls and in interviews with election officials, The Star found little evidence that poll watchers supporting Donald Trump were out en masse to monitor for irregularities. The Republican candidate had urged such monitoring around the country.

But as with any election, problems surfaced here and there.

That Amanda Steele’s name was absent from the rolls at a Blue Springs precinct may have not changed one outcome. But to her it was devastating.

“I’m not an emotional person, but this means a lot to me,” said Steele, 27, who recently moved from Platte County but said she mailed in the necessary documents to Jackson County.

It wasn’t until she left the voting place and took to Twitter that Steele said she learned about provisional ballots. They’re available at polling places so that, for voters who do prove eligible, their ballots can be filled out and tallied later.

She didn’t know. And neither, apparently, did the poll workers.

She marched back and demanded that they look for a provisional ballot. Volunteers found the forms in a box, and an election judge helped Steele fill out her ballot.

But not knowing until weeks from now whether or not her vote will count, Steele returned to her car and cried.

“It’s a weird thing as an American,” said Steele, who runs a nonprofit. “There’s power behind your vote.”

This story was originally published November 8, 2016 at 9:44 PM with the headline "Kansas City area voting features long lines — and also short ones."