Chelsea Pointer is Voter Registration Coordinator for the Greene County Clerk’s Office.
She said in her first presidential election in 2020 her office received as many as 800 new registrations a day during October.
The Clerk must respond to new registrants within seven business days.
It shouldn’t be surprising that voter registration in one of the fastest growing corners of the state is a big job, and it requires more than just County Clerk staff to get it done. This is where the deputy registrars program comes in.
“The purpose of our program,” Pointer explained, “is really to create additional opportunities for the public to register to vote. Our registrars are trained and then appointed by the County Clerk’s office and charged with helping to increase and improve voter registration in Greene County.”
The ability to deputize registrars has been a statute in Missouri since 1978. Pointer works with a lot of deputized registrars from the Springfield-Greene County Library, which she reminds me has “way better hours” than the county clerk’s office. They also work with non-partisan organizations like the League of Women Voters, NAACP and the Teamsters. Local DMVs also handle registration, something many take advantage of when updating their ID. Aside from that people can always register with the county clerk staff when their office is open.
You can also register online on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website, but Pointer says people registering themselves often leave off part of an address or some other important piece of information. The deputized registrars are out in the community to help make sure people get their application completed appropriately.
Those applications always go back to Pointer and her team at the clerk’s office where they are processed. They verify and check voter information. They work with other states to share information when they know voters move and they take in information about deaths in the community. All as a part of keeping the county’s voter rolls up to date.
Joan Gentry is voter services chair for the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri.
Gentry explained, “one of the passions of the League of Women Voters is to convince people that apart of their civic responsibility and apart of maintaining our democracy is voting.”
Dr. Suzanne Walker-Pacheco and Kai Sutton share that passion too. Walker-Pacheco helps organize Paws to the Polls which promotes civic engagement on Missouri State’s campus. Sutton is president of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP. I spoke with them and Gentry on National Voter Registration Day. Their work with voters and potential voters is certainly about crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s, for one, Walker-Pacheco points out students on campus have addresses that can be more complicated than you think, but as Sutton explained their work also becomes a crash course in civics and civic engagement.
“Some people think that they can’t vote,” Sutton said, “like if you’ve been incarcerated. You don’t vote because you don’t know that you can. Or some people may have lost an ID (and feel they can’t vote).” She said that along with registering voters they address questions and misconceptions like this, and she said the “NAACP also does voter guides on some of the issues. We talk about them and how it aligns with our mission.”
The League of Women Voters produces a voter guide as well. To spite those best efforts though Sutton also said some people just don’t feel their vote counts, and it can be hard to sway someone from that position.
Walker-Pacheco said that's one reason Paws to the Polls exists and works with college students. “Once someone votes, even once,” Walter-Pacheco said, “it really predicts whether they’re going to vote again, and even just a couple times early on in early adulthood, that really predicts that they’ll be engaged civically for the rest of their life.”
For these volunteers, getting voters engaged is a huge part of making elections feel like they matter, like they have integrity and accurately represent a community, especially in non-presidential and local elections. All three point towards our August Primary where barely 21% of Greene County voters turned out. Just 15% of voters turned out for our last municipal elections in Greene County in April.
When I spoke with Chelsea Ponter from the Greene County Clerk’s office she was preparing for a registrar training. All deputy registrars are retrained and re-deputized regularly. She said it's part of what makes them so reliable.
Elections laws do change and potentially voters do need help to keep up. Recently the state added registering with a party as an option on the application, but it isn’t mandatory. Pointer said one change she’s excited about makes it easier to change your address on election day, showing up with the wrong address on file is unfortunately a common election day problem. Now as long as you are registered in Missouri and are still in the state, you can now change your address day off. That makes it a relatively easy fix. Pointer said occasionally they do have people on election day who think they’re registered and are not registered at all. They can work around a lot of problems, but not that one.
The deadline to register to vote before November’s election is October 9. If you do not hear back from the County Clerk within a week or two of registering or have any questions about your registration Pointer absolutely recommends contacting the Clerk’s office at (417) 868-4060. You can find more information on the Clerk's website.