Greene County clerk denies Springfield woman a chance to vote due to missing postmark

A Springfield woman is crying foul after being told by the Greene County Clerk's Office she won't be able to vote in Tuesday's presidential election — and that the office discarded the envelope used to justify the decision.

The county's top election official, however, says his office just followed the law after what appears to be an unfortunate processing error by the U.S. Postal Service.

Miranda Higgins, a 21-year-old Central High graduate currently attending New York University, told the News-Leader this week that she dropped off a voter registration application, along with a request for an absentee ballot, at a New York City post office the afternoon of Oct. 11. She said she didn't expect any issues — she was one day ahead of the deadline by which the state of Missouri requires registration applications be postmarked.

Three weeks later, on Tuesday, Higgins received a piece of mail from the clerk's office. She assumed it would be her absentee ballot. Instead, it was a letter telling her she wasn't getting a ballot because she wasn't a registered voter.

"Your application was received w/your absentee request after the deadline," read a handwritten explanation. "It will be processed."

Knowing Miranda needed to go to class, her mother, Deanna Higgins, reached out to to the clerk's office on her behalf. Deanna Higgins said an employee named Sandy gave her differing explanations for the rejection during multiple phone calls.

First, Deanna Higgins said, the employee said the office goes by when applications are received, not postmarked — suggesting a violation of state law, which deems applications valid if postmarked by the deadline. Then the employee said the envelope the application arrived in didn't have a postmark, Deanna said. The employee later said the application and the request for an absentee ballot had been received by the office on separate days, Deanna said, which seemed to contradict the letter Miranda received saying the two arrived together.

A "livid" Deanna Higgins contacted the News-Leader after also reaching out to the Missouri Secretary of State's office, which she said promised to look into the situation but has failed to contact her since.

"It's very upsetting to me as an American that my daughter is being denied the right to vote," Deanna Higgins said. "We hear about problems with voter fraud, but Greene County is allowed to practice election fraud and no one cares."

On Wednesday evening, Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller told the News-Leader that his office had told Deanna Higgins the issue was a lack of postmark.

"The reason we could not accept her registration is that Missouri state statute states that the registration is considered completed as of the date the application is postmarked per RSMo 115.151.2," he said. "Without the postmark we have to use the date received in the office to ensure we are following the law regarding the postmark being the date of registration for mailed in registrations."

USPS spokesman John Friess told the News-Leader Thursday that all mail is supposed to get a postmark, but that mistakes are inevitable given the volume of mail.

"Anything that is accepted by the Postal Service is supposed to get a postmark," Friess said. "Is it 100 percent foolproof? No."

Friess said he couldn't conclude anything without seeing the envelope in question.

Miranda Higgins and her mother would like to see it, too. But the envelope with the absent postmark is gone.

Clerk's Office Election Coordinator Madison McFarland said Miranda Higgins' registration application arrived at the office on Oct. 19. She provided the News-Leader with a copy of the small portion of the envelope that had been stamped with the date upon arrival.

McFarland said the rest of the envelope had been discarded, which is typical procedure for the office. If Higgins' envelope had been postmarked, only the postmark portion would have been kept, she said.

McFarland said mail arriving at the office without a postmark isn't "a daily occurrence, but it is not rare."

Schoeller said the office has "to follow the law as it's written."

"If there was any way that I could help in that situation I would, it's just that there's no prescription in the law to be able to do that," he said.

Miranda Higgins told the News-Leader she knows mailing her registration application earlier could have prevented the situation entirely. She said that was complicated by the fact that she was abroad until recently and was unsure whether she needed to get a new state ID upon turning 21.

She called the situation "very frustrating."

"I was slightly too young to vote in the last [presidential] election, so I've been looking forward to this one."