With Coronavirus and the Democratic primary-election campaign getting most of the attention lately, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas must have been feeling overlooked.
That’s the only reason I can think of why he acted like the sky was falling after a poll worker got his first and last names transposed and initially refused to let him vote at his ordinary polling location Tuesday morning.
Instead of filling out a provisional ballot or waiting the 15 or 20 minutes it would have taken to straighten out the situation through a check with officials at the Kansas City Election Board at Union Station, Lucas chose to walk out and lash the election board all day in media interviews. (He went back Tuesday afternoon and voted.)
He told The Star: “The Kansas City Election Board screwed up. 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.”
Lucas wasn’t content to write it off as a simple mistake. Oh, no. He conflated a name-transposition issue into a veritable scandal that threatened the sanctity of the nation’s election system.
He even delivered a lecture:
“A lot of us in this region are used to folks talking about voting irregularities, talking about those sorts of issues. I think the biggest threat to American elections is that Americans can’t vote…Unfortunately, that was the situation I ran into this morning.”
Now, if yesterday’s primary had dissolved into problems like what we witnessed with the Iowa caucuses, Lucas would be right to raise holy hell. But this was a case of something less than a mole hill being blown into a mountain.
Mayor Quinton Lucas was all smiles after he got a month’s worth of publicity and went back to his polling place to cast his vote Tuesday afternoon. (Kansas City Star photo)
…A few rational reflections are in order.
:: Americans can’t vote now?
Yes, we do have some problems, but overall the U.S. has good election system. The biggest problem Missouri has — and something that would warrant a shit fit from our mayor — is the Missouri Legislature’s (and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s) unwillingness to consider legalizing early voting, which many states, including hidebound Kansas, already do. THAT — not transposing a name here and there — is the biggest election-related scandal in Missouri!
(Personal confession: I like to think of myself as an honest person, but every big election, when I know it’s going to be a long ballot, I find myself going down to Union Station and telling the clerks I’m going to be out of town on Election Day and need to vote absentee…I sure hope no election officials are reading this…And, please, don’t alert them!)
:: The 20-minute wait
The average person would not have turned a simple mistake into an international incident and walked out of the polling place and immediately sought to capitalize on the error. It’s Election Day. Things happen and sometimes you have to wait for one thing or another. What makes Lucas think his time is more important than anyone else’s? Confirming it’s not, he proceeded to spend hours milking publicity out of the deal.
Who acts like that? Why, somebody who thinks he’s more important than the rest of us.
:: The Kansas City Election Board
Although this is not the most progressive election board, it is a very solid one. Routinely, KCEB officials get the vote processed in orderly fashion and deliver timely results.
Years ago, I worked as a “deputy election commissioner” at several elections (it’s akin to being a glorified observer), and I never saw a significant problem.
Shawn Kieffer, the Republican director of elections, has been effectively running the show for decades. He’s honest, patient and knows what he’s doing. We’re lucky to have a person of his experience and equanimity at the helm.
My hat is off to Shawn for the diplomatic way he handled Lucas’s whining and complaining. He didn’t pick a fight; didn’t fire back. He just let it roll off his back, content to tell The Star that filling out a provisional ballot would have been an “easy fix.”
…I hope Lucas got a good night’s sleep and gets back to breathing easier today. Yesterday’s puffing, preening and posturing didn’t serve him, or Kansas City, well.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I have to disagree that the KCBOE is a mostly decent system. My husband and I recently moved and changed our address well before the required time so that we would be able to vote in the primary. (We either had to FAX our change of address or deliver it in person or mail. Archaic. Why can’t we do this online?)
We both received voter registration cards in the mail with our new address but when we went to the polls they told me that I wasn’t registered and when they scanned my husband’s voter id card it showed our old address even though the new one was printed on the card.
It took us about 25 minutes to straighten it out and everyone there seemed confused about what to do. There are problems.
Now that is something to get exercised about…You went through the hoops, had your cards, and they still didn’t get you in the system. Bad.
When you say everyone at the polling place seemed confused about what to do, that’s not surprising. Everyone at every polling place is merely an Election Day worker, not a permanent employee. Any problem like the one you encountered can be fixed only by calling someone at the main office.
Fitz, I’ll bet you’ve been waiting for just the right time to use “hidebound” in a sentence! Seriously though, I think you nailed it.
Thanks, Bob…Nah, it just came to me. I don’t store up material with the expectation of making Kansas look bad; it unfolds naturally.
Hey, watch it, buddy, you’re treading on thin ice. I’ll sic Tracy on you.
I don’t think the mayor was out of line. And yes, as a matter of fact, he is more important than you or me — he’s the mayor.
I disagree with you on this one. He didn’t take the provisional ballot because – as a politician who wants a future – his record of voting matters to people, and if he casts a provisional ballot, the records won’t show that Mayor Lucas voted in the primaries. He provided two separate – legal – methods of voter identification to the election worker, and was still turned away. Further, his comments are dead accurate – how many people turned away from the polls are personally called with both the determination of the error, and that they could now come vote?? And that while Mayor Lucas has the luxury of being able to go back to vote, many others can’t take additional time off work for a second trip to the polls, or have a second ride to the polls, etc. A significant portion of people won’t know to ask for a provisional ballot, or have the guts to stand up to an election worker to say “I have rights.”
I’m glad Mayor Lucas got the national headlines for this, as silly and singular as it might have been. Voter suppression is real, it’s literally a documented 2020 game plan of the republicans. Our system is broken, and it needs to be fixed.
Where did you get the idea he wouldn’t have gotten credit for voting in the primary if he had filled out a provisional ballot?
I just spoke with an election board official who said that, indeed, he would have been credited with voting in the primary.
…And let it be spread out upon the record (as my good friend Ollie Gates used to say when he was on the Park Board), this was NOT voter suppression.
I have been disappointed with the new Mayor so far. Capitulating to the downtown developers on a couple of projects, no clear message on the ongoing murder rate and now this. I’m sure there are a few other little things I’ve forgotten.
On his reaction, I’m sure I could go back and find a quote about the Chiefs parade or other event that caused some inconvenience with Lucas saying something like “I know this is going to inconvenience bus riders, downtown workers, etc. but this is what happens when we win the Super Bowl.” Suck it up Mayor, you had more than 20 minutes to spare to ride in the parade – that didn’t seem to bother him.
Could have gone out for a short nap in his car while things got sorted out, right?
Ha! That’s a great one, Bob…
I disagree big-time. I’m glad the mayor made an issue of it and I’m also glad he didn’t vote a provisional ballot either. There was no need for him to do that! He’s a registered voter and he had the required ID with him.
For several years I worked with the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition in regard to Missouri’s discriminatory photo ID voter law — I’m not going to describe here how it was discriminatory, but it damn well was — and I’ve worked as a nonpartisan Voter Protection volunteer at the polls since the 2016 election to make sure people are able to vote. You have no idea how subtle and how rampant voter suppression is throughout this country. And, of course, it’s directed at people of color and lower-income people. (If you’re willing to spend the time, watch the newest version of the Greg Palast film, “Best Election Money Can Buy.” Kris Kobach has some great scenes.)
I can tell you that most people who encountered what Mayor Lucas encountered would have simply turned around and gone home. Election workers — and Kansas City is blessed to have mainly fine ones! — are the ones calling the shots at the polls and it can be very intimidating. I register high school seniors and new citizens to vote and the voting process itself can be scary for new voters. I’m afraid that if many of those folks were challenged the way the mayor was, they’d have walked out the door and never again tried to vote.
The mayor knew to challenge the situation and, by doing so, he brought attention to what can happen and to the need for election workers to be on their toes. I applaud him and I thank him.
As an aside, I know you were a strong Justus supporter, Fitz, and we’re each entitled to our choices and to criticize their opponents, but it has seemed to me that you’ve gone out of your way to take cheap shots at Mayor Lucas. This one, in particular, saying he “must have been feeling overlooked” because he made an issue of not being able to vote, is a really cheap shot. And “acting like the sky was falling” because he wasn’t able to vote? Damn right — the sky IS falling if you’re a registered voter and you’re not allowed to vote. Our vote is our voice, by god, and we’re gonna use it!
Let’s see a black man walks into a polling place and the older white poll worker checks the computer and tells the black man he is not in the system……nothing new just business as usual limiting the minority vote, like that has never happened before. A mistake was made, but that mistake takes on a completely different tone if all your life barriers have been put in place to limit minority voting. Fitz, your white privilege is showing, you had the time to call the main election office, no worry about getting back to one of your 3 jobs that does not give you time off to vote. You just called, no hoops to jump through, no worry about catching the bus to one of your jobs, you had the time to call.
You missed the entire cultural issue, but you don’t know any different.
That was the Mayor’s statement, and believable to a lay person. Perhaps it is matched up later, but knowing our system, it’s not far fetched to imagine the vote wouldn’t be attributed to him. I don’t know you personally, as several other people here seem to, but I agree with them regarding your privilege showing.
Well now, that’s interesting: THE MAYOR was the source of the erroneous statement that if he voted provisionally, it wouldn’t be counted.
I guess he, like you, also didn’t bother to check that out with the election board. One phone call…816-842-4820.
That only tends to confirm my contention that he went out of his way to show up the election board.
Hey, Quinton Lucas is a nice guy — I’ve met him and talked with him a couple of times — but this was a cheap shot at the election board, which is a big, convenient target. And I agree with Dan (above) who called Lucas out for his capitulation to developers (after talking a different game in the campaign) and his (and the police department’s) failure so far to devise a strategy that attempts to address the murder rate.
Finally, about my “privilege” (always safe to throw down an arm’s-length insult to somebody you don’t know), if you get to know me you can come over to my mansion and have some caviar and a Nathan’s hot dog.
We will now close this lively discussion…