Iron County reports wrong Medicaid vote tally
A voter drops an absentee ballot into the ballot box on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016, on the first day of absentee voting in St. Louis County for the Nov. 8 election. The absentee voting office, located at 3232 Laclede Station Road, is the only St. Louis County location for in-person absentee voting. Photo by Christian Gooden, cgooden@post-dispatch.com
Christian Gooden •
JEFFERSON CITY — When Iron County reported its Tuesday primary vote tally, returns showed only 134 voters in the county of roughly 10,000 people had weighed in on Medicaid expansion.
Iron County Clerk Stephanie Lebron told the Post-Dispatch Thursday she sent the wrong figures to the Missouri secretary of state early Wednesday morning.
She said state officials called her “immediately to advise me of the discrepancy.”
“I made a mistake,” she said. “I will own it.
“I may have been looking at the wrong thing,” Lebron said. “It could’ve easily been operator error.”
By comparison, neighboring Reynolds County, with a population of about 6,500, reported 1,957 total votes on the Medicaid expansion question, Constitutional Amendment 2.
Lebron said Thursday an official vote tally for the county could be certified as early as Friday.
She said that, according to unofficial county returns, out of 2,294 votes cast, 988, or 43%, had supported Medicaid expansion with a yes vote.
Lebron said 1,306 individuals, or 57%, had voted “no.”
A manual recount in one county precinct could change those numbers, she said.
Iron County is about an hour and a half south of St. Louis and is home to some of the state’s most well-known natural attractions, including Elephant Rocks, and the state’s highest point, Taum Sauk Mountain.
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