Early voting is popular in Missouri. What took so long?

The line was longer than I expected, winding from the council chambers where the voting booths were set up, into the lobby and back around the corner. A couple of police officers eventually redirected people so the line didn’t take up so much space inside the building and went outside.

Then an election official came and told us that the line was getting even longer. There was an overflow at the satellite station on the Daniel Boone Branch of the St. Louis County Library. A few people left, but most of us stayed in line.

The voting process took about an hour. Election Day was more than two weeks away, but I was relieved to have had the opportunity to vote early in a presidential election for the first time.

Clearly, I’m not alone.

And it wasn’t just the places near me that were packed. Ten of the 14 early voting satellite locations in St. Louis County is at libraries, and they’ve all been packed, says St. Louis County Library Director Kristen Sorth.

“We know that people feel comfortable coming to the library to get a book, to participate in a program, to seek help, to have questions answered and to vote,” Sorth said. “I’ve spent the last few days visiting our branches and the sound of cheers from the room every time they have a first-time voter feels very real.”

Across the St. Louis region had nearly 200,000 people vote early Wednesday. We don’t actually call it “early voting” in Missouri. When lawmakers passed the bill to allow it, the phrase bothered some Republicans. Instead, this is called “no-excuse absentee voting,” which means that in order to get an early vote, you don’t have to come up with a reason. You just show up and vote.

That’s the way it should be. That’s how it’s been in states around Missouri and in much of the country for years.

There are only three states – Mississippi, Alabama and New Hampshire – that do not have some form of early voting, according to the Movement Advancement Projectan impartial think tank. For the longest time, however, the Missouri legislature rejected attempts to enact early voting as a way to increase participation in the democratic process.

That should have happened back in 2013. That was the year former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat, commissioned a bipartisan group to study early voting and come up with a series of proposals. The proposals were in line with what most states already did and close to what Missouri does now — at least two weeks of early voting, including weekends, with the option to mail an absentee ballot or vote at a satellite location.

“Whether it’s Republicans, Democrats, rural voters, urban voters — everybody wants to see us get this done,” Kander said at the time.

The Republicans refused. Then they put a convoluted amendment on the ballot to authorize a short early vote. It did not have bipartisan support and the effort failed.

It took the pandemic — when the Legislature allowed some mail-in voting — for the idea of ​​early voting to gain steam in Missouri. Guess what happened? People loved it. More voted. The roof did not collapse. Afterward, Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller, a Republican, and Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon, a Democrat, wrote an op-ed in the Post-Dispatch urging lawmakers to make early voting a reality in Missouri.

“This increase in absentee voting was beneficial to both our offices and our voters. It allowed local election officials to provide good service directly to voters, and by spreading the voting process over several days, it reduced the risk of a single major problem should influence the election,” they wrote. “The November election provided further confirmation of our premise that allowing more voters to vote absentee directly, especially in person, contributed to the success of the election. It is incredibly important that all voters continue to have access to absentee voting going forward.”

Lawmakers listened and passed the 2022 bill that allowed me to stand in line with my neighbors a few weeks ago and cast an early vote. My suspicion, based on voting patterns, is that the majority of people in line were Republicans. And guess what? They were happy to have the opportunity to vote early. So were the people in the republican hearth in St. Charles County, where more than 70,000 people, and counting, have voted early.

On Thursday, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, a Democrat, the Legislature to expand early voting and allow more days for what is clearly a popular addition to democracy in Missouri.

Depending on the outcome of the election, Americans are sure to be inundated with voting conspiracy theories in the coming weeks. But on this issue, the jury seems to be out: Early voting works.

I hope it is here to stay.