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

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

Then a poll worker came and told us that the line would get even longer. An overflow occurred at the satellite station at 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 still 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.

Apparently I'm not alone.

And it wasn't just the places near me that were full. Ten of St. Louis County's 14 satellite early voting sites are located in libraries, and they are all full, says Kristen Sorth, director of the St. Louis County Library.

“We know that people feel comfortable coming to the library to read a book, participate in a program, seek help, answer questions and vote,” Sorth told me. “I've spent the last few days visiting our branches and the cheer that comes from the room every time they have a first-time voter feels very right.”

Across the St. Louis region, nearly 200,000 people had voted early as of Wednesday. We don’t actually call it “early voting” in Missouri. When the Legislature passed the bill to allow this, that phrase was bothersome to some Republicans. Instead, this is called “no-excuse absentee voting,” which means you don’t have to give a reason for voting early. You just show up and vote.

It is as it should be. This has been the case for years in the states surrounding Missouri and in large parts of the country.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonpartisan think tank, there are only three states — Mississippi, Alabama and New Hampshire — that do not have any form of early voting. But Missouri lawmakers have long resisted attempts to introduce early voting to increase participation in the democratic process.

It should have happened in 2013. This year, former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat, commissioned a bipartisan group to study early voting and develop a series of proposals. The proposals were in line with what most states were already doing and were close to what Missouri is doing now — at least two weeks of early voting, including on weekends, with the option to mail absentee ballots or vote at a satellite location.

“Republicans, Democrats, rural voters, city voters – everyone wants us to do this,” Kander said at the time.

Republicans balked. Then they put a complicated amendment on the ballot to authorize a short early voting period. There was no bipartisan support and the effort failed.

It took the pandemic — when lawmakers allowed some mail-in voting — for the idea of ​​early voting to gain traction in Missouri. Guess what happened? People loved it. More people voted. The roof didn't collapse. Afterwards, Shane Schoeller, a Republican in Greene County, and Brianna Lennon, a Democrat, in Boone County, wrote an editorial in the Post-Dispatch urging lawmakers to make early voting a reality in Missouri.

“This increase in absentee voting has been beneficial to both our offices and our voters. “It allowed local election authorities to provide good service directly to voters and, by breaking up the voting process over multiple days, reduced the risk that a single major issue would impact the election,” they wrote. “The November election further confirmed our belief that giving more voters the opportunity to vote directly, particularly in person, by mail, contributed to the success of the election. It is incredibly important that all voters continue to have access to postal voting in the future.”

The Legislature listened and in 2022 passed the bill that allowed me to stand in line with my neighbors and vote early a few weeks ago. Based on my voting habits, I suspect that the majority of people in line were Republicans. And guess what? They were happy to have the opportunity to vote early. That also applied to people in the Republican stronghold of St. Charles County, where more than 70,000 people – and counting – voted early.

On Thursday, Sam Page, a St. Louis County Democrat, called on 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 election conspiracy theories in the coming weeks. But on this issue the jury seems to be of the same opinion: early voting works.

I hope it stays here.