Why are the lines so long at the polls?

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - If you’ve voted early in the 2024 election, there’s a chance you’ve waited in a long line before casting your ballot.

That poses a question many are asking: why are the lines at the polls so long?

The Democratic Director for the St. Louis County Board of Elections, Eric Fey, said it’s due to the length of the ballot.

Fey said when planning for the election started at the beginning of the year, they knew there would be a high demand, but what they didn’t know was how long this year’s ballot would be.

“So we knew the demand would be there. I’m not sure we expected this level of demand,” Fey said. “We doubled the number of locations. We put extra election workers at each location. So we knew the demand would be there for sure.”

Fey said that ballot length may be something the public or Missouri General Assembly thinks about for the future.

“Does this make sense to put all of this stuff on this ballot? I mean what we are asking voters to do, you know, may border on the unreasonable, frankly, but it’s there now, and we are doing it,” he said.

Fey encourages voters to take a look at the sample ballot before coming to vote. He said that can help speed up the process.

You can find sample ballots for the city and county on its Board of Elections website.

Copyright 2024 KMOV. All rights reserved.