Kansas City News Blog

By PETER RUGG

If you’re one of those people who’s been stressing over the tiniest minutia of the presidential election, this is fair warning to stop reading now. If you choose to follow us down this rabbit hole of nonpartisan research predicting a total disaster in Missouri on November 4, please don’t blame The Pitch for the sudden urge to claw out your eyes and fill out an absentee ballot with your own blood.

According to a recent study from electionline.org, a project of the PEW Center on the States, Missouri is one of a dozen states likely to experience "difficulties" on election night. It should be noted that the PEW Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group, so please don’t think it’s trying to say anything particularly liberal or conservative with this information.

“I think the prediction for voter turnout there is 80 percent, which is sky high -- that’s an amazing thing. But it will lead to some problems,” says Dan Seligson, editor of the PEW Center on the State’s electionline.org project.

Even if you get through the very, very long lines to vote, anxious poll workers and broken voting machines, don't be surprised if you have trouble casting a ballot.

“We’re going to have some quantity of provisional ballots cast by people who registered to vote at some point, but for whatever reason wont be listed on the roles,” Seligson says. “You’re going to see a lot just because of the shear number of new voters. It’s just human error, things happen. Every year we see a lot of poll workers who aren’t very well trained or just don’t know their job all that well.”

Luckily, they’ll probably be roving teams of lawyers and partisan volunteers making sure the right people are voting.

“In 2004 there was a specter of challenges at the polls that didn’t really materialize,” he says. “But the higher the stakes the more each party will do to maximize its advantages and I think you can be sure to see a significant number of lawyers on both sides working the ground, and they’ll probably be lots of advocacy groups too, and election protection people.”

The study also listed Missouri as likely to experience problems because it tends to be a battleground state, it’s considered to have more bi-partisan tension than most states, and because of pre-election concern over how voters are being registered by outside parties like ACORN.

“It doesn’t absolutely mean you’ll have a meltdown in Missouri,” Seligson says. “But if you sat down 12 reporters and said, ‘These are the states you should watch,’ Missouri would be on that list.”

At least we won’t be alone. The study also lists Colorado, Washington D.C., Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin as other potential clusterfucks.