Will Missouri risk lives and force in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic?

Missouri’s refusal to protect voters’ health and safety is a national shame that grows more outrageous by the day.

Before adjourning, Missouri lawmakers must — at an absolute minimum — enable no-excuse absentee voting for the August and November elections. To do anything less will endanger voters and poll workers, who will face possible exposure to the coronavirus at the voting booth.

Picture it: In November, when many expect COVID-19 cases to surge, hundreds of thousands of voters will be required by our state government to stand in long lines simply to cast a ballot. It’s appalling and unnecessary.

In Wisconsin, at least 67 people tested positive for the coronavirus after voting April 7. It isn’t yet known how many cases are directly related to casting ballots — voters have regular lives, after all — but even the possibility that some voters caught a potentially fatal disease from doing their civic duty should concern even the most cynical legislators here.

Count Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Gov. Mike Parson among those cynics. Neither has stepped forward to ask lawmakers to approve no-excuse absentee balloting, claiming the question is “political,” which is a patently ridiculous assertion.

Recently, Ashcroft provided personal protective equipment to some election boards in advance of June elections. The distribution gives the game away: Missouri’s secretary of state knows that in-person voting is unsafe. Instead of taking reasonable steps to let voters cast ballots from their homes, he wants poll workers, many of them elderly, to risk sickness and death.

Ashcroft’s indecision has left local election officials confused: Is fear of COVID-19 a valid excuse to vote absentee or not? State action could clear that up. To date? Crickets.

“The problem is our chief election official and the governor have not taken any interest in making that determination clear,” Missouri Voter Protection Coalition coordinator Denise Lieberman said.

“Instead, they’ve left the determination to local election authorities. … What we are seeing is variation from one jurisdiction to the next,” she said.

Some voters may take matters into their own hands and simply lie in order to vote absentee. We can’t encourage lawless behavior — lying on an absentee ballot envelope is a felony — but we sympathize with Missouri voters who will risk jail to make their views known.

“Voters need to have the confidence that they can safely cast an absentee ballot without being at risk for prosecution,” Lieberman said.

A lawsuit is now in the Missouri courts, seeking to force election authorities to allow no-excuse absentee ballots this year. “So long as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, voting cannot proceed as usual,” the plaintiffs say.

Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri NAACP, says it plainly: “This lawsuit is about saving lives.” If lawmakers fail to act, the courts will have to protect Missourians.

And the federal government could step in. In April, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and others introduced the VoteSafe Act, which would, among other things, require every state to offer early voting and no-excuse absentee voting in November. Washington would provide $5 billion to help implement the act.

“The American people deserve a comprehensive solution to ensure that voting is safe and accessible,” she said. She’s right. Senators from Kansas and Missouri — particularly Roy Blunt, a former Missouri secretary of state — should endorse the bill and work for its passage.

Local election boards could play a role, too. In Johnson County — indeed, in most of Kansas — all registered voters will receive an application for a mail-in ballot for elections later this year. The Kansas City Election Board has apparently not considered such an option, citing the cost of sending out ballots.

But what is the price of a vote? Americans have fought and died to protect the ballot.. Now those charged with overseeing it are tossing it aside for partisan reasons.

No one should fear full, free and fair elections. Missouri election authorities must do everything within their power to assure all of the above this year.