A far-reaching Senate bill on elections that would reinstate the presidential primary in Missouri is likely to face a few obstacles as it goes through the legislature.
A Senate committee held a hearing on the bill Thursday morning, where it received plenty of criticism.
Sen. Sandy Crawford, R-Buffalo, who is sponsoring the legislation, said it’s similar to a bill filed last year, with a few adjustments.
It includes language that would reinstate the presidential primary in Missouri. It was discontinued in 2022 when lawmakers passed a different election law. Missouri Republicans conducted a caucus for the 2024 election, while Democrats ran their own primary.
Crawford said she wasn’t a fan of reinstating the primary, but that a lot of people want it back.
“One of the things that I did hear that I thought was legitimate, if we don’t have the presidential preferential primary, there’s no way for military overseas to have any kind of a voice in the process,” Crawford said.
Sen. Jamie Burger, R-Benton, expressed concerns over paying to conduct the presidential primary, especially with the necessity of a tighter state budget.
Another section of the bill that senators scrutinized is an increase in how far away electioneering, exit polling, surveying and sampling efforts need to be from a polling place.
Current law creates a ban on those activities 25 feet away from a polling place on Election Day. The legislation increases that barrier to 50 feet.
Sen. Joe Nicola, R-Grain Valley, said he didn’t think increasing that zone to 50 feet will make much of a difference.
“There’s a lot of polling places that, 25 feet, we’re already at the edge of the sidewalk. 50 feet is going to put us in the parking lot,” Nicola said. “So I’m not really sure this is going to actually be practical, or is the point to just kind of get people away and not even show up because it’s so far away from the door?”
Sen. Doug Beck, D-Affton, requested that language go on the bill.
“It causes a lot of stress in the polling places, on our election workers,” Beck said.
A similar bill in the House has made it through the committee process. That bill was updated to remove both the presidential primary reinstatement and the expanded barrier.
Another portion of the Senate bill that received lots of feedback from senators is a policy that expands the period that someone can vote absentee without an excuse from two weeks to four weeks.
In the election law passed in 2022, lawmakers included a new two-week period of no excuse absentee voting before an election, meaning someone would not have to state a reason why they were voting early via absentee.
“I know in our last presidential election, many people on both sides of the aisle took advantage of that, and so we would like to expand that from two to four weeks,” Crawford said.
Sen. Mike Henderson, R-Desloge, agreed with Crawford and said his district is seeing larger turnouts for voting.
“I want more participation. I want as many people to vote as they can. I want to make it easy, because people nowadays are into easy,” Henderson said.
However, several other senators were not in favor of expanding no-excuse absentee voting.
“We’re making a lot of things way too easy for people and way too convenient. We’ve had an election day for decades and decades, it’s just that’s the way it’s been,” Nicola said.
All but one person testified in favor of the legislation.
Eric Fey, Democratic director of elections for St. Louis County, said the request to expand the no-excuse absentee voting period is a response to voter behavior.
“People are voting with their feet. And in St. Louis County, we had a little over half the voters vote prior to Election Day, which was a first ever,” Fey said.
The legislation is Senate Bill 836.
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