Moniteau County is among those voting districts which must have the November election ballots reprinted. The ballot reprinting is due to a decision handed down from the Western District State Appeals Court.
A wording change ordered in a proposal for early voting means that any ballots already printed in Missouri must be reprinted. But according to Moniteau County Clerk Anita Groepper, reprinting the ballots is not the end of the required changes. Since computers entered the voting process, the software must be rewritten for the scanners and the electronic vote tabulators.
"Because of the wording changes, the position changes for ballot items," Groepper said. "That means two separate software programs have to be rewritten."
Groepper estimates the costs to the county for the ballot changes to be about $10,000. Asked if the state is going to pick up the costs, she said, "The county clerks would like that, but the state has said no." She agreed with other county clerks in the state that something should be done about this problem.
"The legislature needs to address this and come up with something to prevent this from happening," Groepper said. "I think it has to be done through legislative action."
In the meantime, the county taxpayers are stuck with the cost of the reprinting and software changes.