Voters in two Missouri counties sent ballots with misleading amendment language

Missouri voters in Buchanan and Vernon Counties were sent absentee ballots with misleading wording on a GOP-backed measure seeking to replace a redistricting process approved at the polls in 2018.

Last month, Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled that the Amendment 3 summary language was “insufficient and unfair.” She ordered it rewritten because it failed to inform voters the measure would effectively reverse rules “Missourians overwhelmingly adopted two years ago to combat political gerrymandering.”

The Missouri Court of Appeals subsequently approved a more limited rewrite than the revision ordered by Joyce.

But Buchanan County Clerk Mary Baack-Garvey said roughly 1,700 absentee voters in her northwest Missouri county were sent ballots with the original language on the proposed amendment.

“We are mailing a corrected, amended letter to everybody we mailed a ballot to yesterday,” Baack-Garvey said Wednesday.

Absentee voters who cast ballots in-person on Tuesday were presented with the wrong amendment language, but election workers gave voters copies of the correct language on Wednesday, Baack-Garvey said.

She said freshly printed ballots will arrive in the county clerk’s office Wednesday morning.

Vernon County Clerk Mike Buehler confirmed that his office also mailed ballots with the wrong language but would not say how many voters in southwest Missouri were affected.

“We are in the process right now of taking care of all of it,” Buehler said.

Baack-Garvey and Buehler said the ballots they distributed contained language sent to them by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office.

Maura Browning, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, denied that Ashcroft was involved in the matter.

“We have no role in the printing of ballots,” Browning said.

“We provided the ballot language on Aug. 24 when we certified the election results, and we also provided . . . the amendment certification that included the court-written Amendment 3 language.”

The finalized wording still lists the redistricting changes third of three bullet points in the summary. It is preceded on the ballot by provisions lowering the limit on lobbying gifts from $5 to $0 and reducing campaign contributions for senate candidates by $100.

Jane Frick of St. Joseph was reviewing the sample ballot on the Buchanan County Clerk’s website on Tuesday when she realized it still contained the outdated amendment summary.

“I was appalled when I read the original language that our secretary of state put on the ballot. It’s extraordinarily misleading,” Frick said.

“If I were the secretary of state, even if I lost a court case, I would make sure that I got the word out to every one of the county clerks or the registration authorities to double-check your ballot and make sure that you have the right language.”

This story has been updated to report the correct number of absentee ballots in Buchanan County sent to voters with incorrect language.

This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 10:36 AM.