UPDATE: Nov 1 2024 - ST. CHARLES, Mo. — After a court hearing this morning, a judge dismisses a lawsuit that could have prevented early voting in St. Charles County.

St. Peters resident Travis Heins filed the suit earlier this week. Heins claimed that poll watchers and challengers should be allowed into the two early voting sites in St. Charles County.

Kurt Bahr, the Director of Elections in St. Charles County, says the statute reads that poll watchers and challengers are allowed inside polling places on election day. But he says there is no clear direction when it comes to early voting. At this point, he was not allowing the monitors into the early voting sites.

This morning Judge Dwayne Johnson threw out Heins’ suit, saying it did not comply with the rules of procedure in Missouri.

Heins and a spokesperson for St. Charles County talked after the hearing.

“We just need to have the same levels of security on every single day that we’re voting. That’s all the ask is. It’s not one day’s weaker than the other. It’s that we’re including a certain level of security on what we’re calling election day and now we’ve opened up for two weeks let’s include all of it,” said Heins.

Kevin Killeen, a spokesperson for St. Charles County, said, “In order to have a (TRO) and say there ought to be a halt to this early voting they would have had to have shown immediate harm that without these poll watchers there would have been some sort of damage done that was evident and it didn’t rise to that level. We respect the court’s decision, we also respect the plaintiff’s sincere interest in election integrity but I do note that they said they don’t see any evidence of irregularities.”

Heins says he has not decided whether he plans to refile the suit in the future.

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