STUDENTS ANGERED AT POLLS

Southeast Missouri State University students Scott Jenkins and Rob Clay went to the polls Tuesday to vote for the statewide constitutional amendment on riverboat gambling. But they never got the chance.

They say a Cape Girardeau Ward 6 election judge at Franklin School refused to allow them to vote even though they had voted at the same polling place in the election last November when Cape Girardeau voters approved riverboat gambling.

"I was really mad," Jenkins, 23, said Thursday.

Cape Girardeau County Clerk Rodney Miller said, "I understand their frustration and wish it hadn't happened that particular way."

He said the two students would have been allowed to vote if their identity as registered voters could have been verified. He said such verification might have been possible had the election judge called the county clerk's office.

But he said that election judges are right not to let someone vote if there is doubt as to the identity of that individual and whether or not he or she is a registered voter.

"I am certainly not second-guessing the judges from this standpoint," said Miller.

Jenkins and Clay, 22, are seniors at Southeast. Both are from Sikeston.

Jenkins said Thursday that he and Clay live in a rented house in Cape Girardeau. He said they have lived in that house since last August.

"We registered last fall," Jenkins said.

Although registered voters, neither had their voter identification card with them when they went to the polls Tuesday.

But that didn't concern them. Jenkins and Clay said they didn't have their identification cards when they voted in November.

In that election, they were allowed to vote after showing their driver's licenses to the judges, who then checked the names with the voter registration list.

Jenkins and Clay said they had their same driver's licenses with them Tuesday. The licenses show Sikeston addresses.

Both students said they don't understand why the identification they showed was good enough in the November election, but not adequate Tuesday.

"I asked her (the election judge) to look in the computer list of registered voters. She said she would not," Jenkins said.

"She wasn't going to help us at all. She wasn't going to look up our names or anything," said Clay, who was standing in line behind Jenkins at the polling place Tuesday.

Jenkins said another election judge advised him that he needed to present a voter identification card.

Clay said they were told that they needed an identification that showed where they resided.

"We kind of walked out of there amazed because we thought that we had to have our voter identification cards," said Clay.

But Miller said Thursday that voters don't have to have their voter identification cards with them in order to vote, provided they can show alternative forms of identification such as a driver's license to verify a person's identity and address.

Jenkins said he was angered by the actions of the election judge.

"I think the lady there thought she knew what I was going to vote for and didn't want my vote basically. She stereotyped me as a student," said Jenkins.

But Miller said the fact that Jenkins and Clay are Southeast students had nothing to do with it.

"We are not trying to keep anybody from voting, but we do have to work within the laws of the system," he said.

"What we are trying to do is follow the law so we don't have a contested election," he said.