With only Virginia license, Clay Chastain can’t vote for himself for Kansas City mayor

Kansas City mayoral candidate Clay Chastain intended to cast a vote for himself Friday morning, but was denied an absentee ballot when he was unable to meet Missouri’s new voter ID requirements.

“I’m on the ballot, but now you’re saying I can’t vote for myself?” Chastain said to workers at the Kansas City Election Board office at Union Station. To cast a vote, they told him, he needed a valid, state-issued photo ID card like a Missouri driver’s license or a current U.S. passport.

But Chastain, who lives most of the time in Bedford, Virginia, has no Missouri photo ID or unexpired passport. He has a Virginia driver’s license, but that won’t cut it under the tougher voter ID restrictions that Missouri imposed last year.

Chastain was not pleased to hear the news that, unless he obtained the proper documents, his only option was to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day, which would only count if he could later prove he was who he said he was.

“When I vote, I want my vote to count. It should count if I am allowed to get my name on the ballot,” he told the workers.

Take it up with the Secretary of State, one of them said..

It was the second time in as many days that the perennially unsuccessful candidate’s political ambitions had been stymied by the unbending rules of officialdom.

On Thursday, he was arrested for trespassing at City Hall. The building’s head of security called police when, as Chastain tells it, Chastain refused to comply with an order that he not bring campaign fliers into the building.

Chastain said he had no intention of distributing the forbidden fliers inside City Hall, unless someone asked for one. His aim that day, he said, was to call out Mayor Quinton Lucas during the city council’s public comment period for his alleged refusal to debate. He had with him a life-sized sign depicting the mayor that he intended to use as a visual aid.

They are the only two candidate’s for mayor on the ballot in this year’s election. Two write-in candidates have declared.

But the security chief said he couldn’t take the fliers upstairs with him, and if he left them behind at the security checkpoint they would be thrown in the garbage. When Chastain refused to budge, the cops were called.

This is Chastain’s account. A detailed police report was not available, but a police spokesman verified the arrest and Chastain provided The Star with a copy of his ticket.

“I was handcuffed to the paddy wagon,” Chastain said of his trip to the police station at 27th Street and Prospect Avenue, where he was booked and released without bond.

He discussed those events at a news conference that he’d called for Friday morning under the clock at Union Station — before he planned to cast his absentee ballot. The Star’s reporter was the only member of the news media who attended.

Afterwards, Chastain took the escalator downstairs to the election office, where he had announced he would cast his absentee ballot for the primary. Those with an excuse for why they wouldn’t be able to vote on Election Day have been allowed to vote absentee in person as of this week.

Chastain’s excuse is that he couldn’t be sure whether he would be in Kansas City on Election Day. His critics have long questioned whether a non-resident ought to be eligible to run for office or sponsor ballot issues in Kansas City — of which he has done both many times since moving away from Kansas City 20 years ago, first to Athens, Tennessee, and now a small town in western Virginia.

But Chastain maintains that he also lives part of the year in Kansas City at a house his sister owns in the 3500 block of Genessee Street.

That’s the address listed on his trespassing ticket that sets his court date as March 28. He plans to be in town for that.