Affected voters and Boone County Clerk Wendy Noren held an awareness event with Secretary of State Robin Carnahan this afternoon to discuss an updated list of registered voters who don't have driver's licenses. The event was held as HJR 9 sits on the House Perfection Calendar and legislators have predicted that it will be sent out of the House this week.
Overall, there are nearly 230,000 Missouri registered voters who currently do not have government-issued identification. Breaking it down by county, we see a startling trend of which voters will be most impacted:
- St. Louis Co.: 51,708
- St. Louis City: 29,949
- Kansas City: 22,741
- Greene Co: 10,043
- Jackson Co: 8,866
- Boone Co: 6,055
- St. Charles Co: 5,903
- Clay Co: 5,580
HJR 9 is expensive to the voter. Voters without Missouri issued driver’s licenses will have to spend hours navigating bureaucracy to find certified copies of their birth certificate and court papers if their name has changed. In some cases voters will be stuck in a catch-22 where they can’t get a certified copy of their birth certificate without a valid driver’s license. Meanwhile other voters born outside Missouri or who have experienced natural disasters like floods and fires will be helpless because their documents were long destroyed.
HJR 9 is unnecessary and impacts nearly a quarter million Missouri voters who will be discouraged from even going to the polls because of the extra hoops they’ll have to jump through. The legislature should pay heed to the county by county numbers generated by the Secretary of State and drop HJR 9 from the House calendar today.
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