Osage is the first Missouri county in recent years to leave voting machines in the closet in favor of hand-counting election results.
Linda Rantz, co-organizer of Missouri Canvassers, assisted Osage in the transition during the most recent April 4 election.
“I helped train people who count at the polling places,” she said. “There were 44 people who were part of the team's counting. I was an official watcher, so I was there when they were returning the ballots.”
The decision to revert to hand counting was made solely by Osage County Clerk Nicci Kammerich Bouse in Linn, Mo.
“Our hope is that other county clerks will see this and be emboldened by this, particularly in some middle to smaller-sized counties within Missouri, and that they will look to do this for 2024,” said Byron Keelin, president of the Freedom Principle MO, a Missouri-first 501(c)4.
Osage isn’t the only county in Missouri that’s currently hand-counting election ballots.
Worth County has been hand counting for the past 10 years.
“There are false narratives that hand-counting will cost more money and more time,” Keelin told the St. Louis Record. “If you look at what happened in Osage, they basically counted all of the votes in the county and reported the results of the election at the same time as the voting machines did.”
Keelin also hopes that the entire state will return elections to paper ballots and counting votes by hand if and when Senate Bill 98 is approved.
“Right now, it’s stuck in the Elections Committee,” he said.
Sponsored by state Sen. Bill Eigel (R-Weldon Spring), the bill only allows machine voting for people with disabilities.
“In Osage, we had two Democrat and two Republican grassroots volunteers who were reading off the ballots, and you had all four of them marking a score sheet,” Keelin said in an interview. “Then, after they got done with a batch, they totaled up the batches. That's how it's done. It's simple and effective.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, a 1977 Missouri statute allows hand counting of ballots and, if approved, SB 98 would mandate its use.
“Osage saved a lot of money by not having to bring in a third-party contractor who would try to calibrate these machines and do all this testing that's required for electronic machines and things,” Keelin said.
The 'Missouri Elections are Impossible to Validate' study conducted by Missouri Canvassers last year found that 25% of 4,917 residences reported voting irregularities in the form of ghost ballots, and stolen or lost votes.
“County clerks and people say that our voting equipment in Missouri can't connect to the internet,” Keelin added. “It can. In a sense, Missouri elections are more controlled by the voting machine companies than they are by the county clerks or by the citizens.”