‘We gotta do better:’ Why wasn’t Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas allowed to vote?

Kansas City’s mayor couldn’t vote Tuesday morning in Missouri’s presidential primary.

In a tweet, Mayor Quinton Lucas said he was turned away at the polls. “I wasn’t in the system even though I’ve voted there for 11 years,” he said. By early afternoon, more than 460,000 people had viewed the tweet and an accompanying video.

“It’s really not okay,” Lucas later tweeted. He promised to follow up with election officials. “If the mayor can get turned away, think about everyone else... We gotta do better.”

Lucas is right. But as it turns out, the full story is a little more complicated.

An election official said Lucas was turned away because a poll worker transposed the mayor’s name, from “Quinton Lucas” to “Lucas Quinton” when checking the registration in a computerized pollbook. The name wasn’t there.

It seems like an odd error for any poll worker to make. Lucas has been in the news, after all. You’d think that someone charged with checking voter registration would have recognized the mayor and tried a little harder to find him in the pollbook, or asked for more help.

On Tuesday afternoon, Lucas said he was recognized at the polling place, but it didn’t make any difference. “Let’s find a way that we don’t actually screw up people’s names,” he said. “To me, that is … the original sin here. That’s what we need to try to avoid.”

There is no indication this error is common. But it will correctly lead many Kansas City voters to wonder if similar mistakes by part-time poll workers happen more often than they should. The city’s election board should investigate the incident and provide a full report before the April 7 election.

At the same time, the mayor could have used the snafu as a teachable moment by casting a provisional ballot. They’re used to resolve confusion over a voter’s registration.

In an email, Republican election director Shawn Kieffer said a provisional ballot might have been an “easy fix.”

Lucas called that preposterous. “The Kansas City election board screwed up,” he said. “Suggesting to someone they should stick around for 20, 25, 30 minutes while the election board fixes its own mistake because they couldn’t read my name? That’s kind of ridiculous.”

Broadly speaking, he’s right. At the same time, had Lucas cast a provisional ballot, it would have sent a message about the importance of the tool in other elections.

Too often, voting in Missouri is a confusing mess, largely because of changing rules concerning identification and registration. While you need identification to cast a ballot, you do not need a photo ID.

New addresses, a lack of voting history, older poll workers, digital confusion and human error also hinder the voting process. The lack of early voting in Missouri contributes to the problem.

Missouri should make it easier to register and vote. But voters should know their rights and understand how to use them.

Register. Know your polling place. If you’re denied a ballot there, demand a provisional ballot. You should take steps to make sure the ballot is verified and counted.

And yes, the election board must do its part by studying this troubling incident in detail. Sadly, most voters who are turned away from the polls don’t generate headlines or attract hundreds of thousands of eyeballs on Twitter. Lucas has the ability to rectify this situation, but the average voter doesn’t have the same resources or megaphone.

This was an embarrassing stumble, but it’s also an opportunity to make improvements and ensure that similar mistakes don’t happen again.