KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kansas City, Missouri, Election Board is working with schools to use larger spaces like gyms so that people can be spread out and feel safer while voting.
"We lost 95 percent of our polls. Typically for an election like this, we'd have 150 polls. Now we have a lot less than 150," KCEB Democratic elections director Laurie Ealom said.
KCMO voters typically go to a senior center or a small church to vote, but in 2020, that's not a possibility.
"That's why we could have so many because some of our spaces were just as big as my office," Ealom said. "So in order to follow CDC guidelines, we had to commandeer some gymnasiums and community centers."
Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools approved the plan to use their gyms for voting.
The election board only had 28 polling locations in June. It will have 50 polling locations for this election and increase to 75 locations for November.
More poll workers will be at each location so lines don't get too long.
The KCEB said there are usually 1,000 poll workers but this year there are 850.
Workers will be wearing masks and sanitizing surfaces. Each location will have barriers around each station and single-use pencils.
For electronic voting, the styluses will be sanitized after each use.
Each poll will have masks just in case a voter doesn't have one.
There are two polling sites per ward and precinct. Voters should have received an election notification in the mail about their polling site. Voters can choose to go to their home polling site if they want to use a paper ballot. If they want to vote electronically with the ballot marking devices, they can go to any site.
Election board workers are also dealing with an influx of mail-in and absentee ballots.
"We have received over 10,000 applications, so it went up five times. We are still receiving ballots back. We anticipate 60 percent of those people will return their ballots by seven tomorrow night," Shawn Kieffer, KCEB's elections director, said.
That is likely because people are interested in the selections and concerned about COVID-19, he said.
"Tomorrow will be the final deadline. I expect that to be our very busiest of days," Kieffer said. "We're getting them late in the day, we've got to open them up, we've got to get them processed, counted. That is quite an undertaking but we have a lot of people here, so I'm hoping to get them done timely."
Kieffer said they are scanning ballots with an ultraviolet light wand as they come in, just in case someone is sick at home.
"Hopefully that will help to some degree. Yeah, that always enters our mind. We have people that are opening it, they'll have masks and gloves on and hopefully not receive any type of virus," Kieffer said.
The board expects upwards of 50,000 mail-in or absentee ballots come November and is looking to buy equipment that will help workers sort it out.
