The county clerk in west-central Missouri’s Pettis County says 1,200 absentee ballots that were delivered to the Sedalia Post Office on September 21 are still missing in the mail.
Clerk Nicholas La Strada tells our Sedalia affiliate KDRO (AM 1490) that his office was bombarded with phone calls from voters last week, asking where their absentee ballot was and if they had been mailed. He says his office staff worked until midnight Saturday to reprocess 1,200 ballots, and those were delivered to the post office on Tuesday.
“My staff worked almost to 12 o’clock restuffing these ballots, because we knew that they’re not going to find these ballots,” La Strada says. “I’m not bashing the post office, but the post office needs to find our ballots.”
La Strada emphasizes that his office will not disenfranchise the rights of Pettis County voters.
He also says that if a voter receives a second ballot, his office and Missouri’s Centralized Voter Registration System will only allow them to receive the first ballot submitted. La Strada says if a second ballot is returned, it will be rejected.
Missourinet contacted the Sedalia Post Office regarding La Strada’s comments, and we were referred to the United States Post Office’s corporate communications district in St. Louis. We have not received a response yet, and will update our story when we receive one.
La Strada is telling Pettis County residents that he will make sure their votes count in November. He joined veteran morning show host Charlie Thomas in-studio at KDRO. The radio station has also received numerous calls from listeners, asking where the ballot is.
“I’ve always had confidence in the Post Office, Charlie. I’ve been been doing this business for ten years, we’ve never had this issue. Are they going to find these ballots, I hope they do,” says La Strada.
He says once the ballots were delivered to the Sedalia Post Office, they are the liability of the federal agency.
The Missouri Secretary of State’s office tells Missourinet they’re not aware of this happening in any other county.
Click here to listen to the interview between KDRO’s Charlie Thomas and Pettis County Clerk Nicholas La Strada, which was live in-studio at Benne Media Sedalia on September 30, 2020:
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