ST. CHARLES COUNTY — St. Charles County residents and officials renewed calls this week to remove the county’s elections director over last week’s delayed election results following a “technical glitch.”
Several speakers at a County Council meeting on Monday said the delayed results — blamed on a problem with a third-party website the county had contracted with — made them question vote outcomes. Others said it made the county look incompetent.
“This is ridiculous. We look like fools. St. Charles County looks like fools,” said Bob Eno, the chair of the St. Charles County Republican Party’s Central Committee. Eno, who said he was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the committee, was one of several conservative county residents to address the county council.
Others said the glitch diminished St. Charles County’s relevance on election night as thousands waited to see who would win the highly contested statewide races and other key local positions.
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On election day, a third-party vendor’s website blocked the county’s results from being available for about three hours. St. Charles County Election Authority Director Kurt Bahr said the problem did not delay the actual counting of ballots or affect the vote outcomes. The results were ultimately posted shortly after 10:30 p.m.
“Obviously, I was frustrated,” Bahr said. “We want to get this information out as quickly as possible on election night, and we were frustrated to realize that there was a problem with the vendor’s website.”
Many people who spoke at Monday’s meeting expressed doubts about the outcome of two races: County Councilman Dave Hammond’s 14-vote win over O’Fallon City Councilwoman Debbie Cook and Jen Bahr’s one-vote win over Katie Stickman for a position on the Republican Party’s Central Committee.
In St. Charles County, the central committees are highly sought-after positions that oversee party activities, identify possible election judges, recruit candidates, raise funds, and help vet potential candidate endorsements.
“The coup de gras of all of this is that his wife runs for the committee and wins by one vote, one freaking vote,” Eno said. “Think about that — what are the odds? And now we have to seat her on the committee. That is total (expletive) guys.”
Cook, the O’Fallon Councilwoman, told the Post-Dispatch that she too has doubts about the outcome. She said she is considering requesting a recount, which could cost her up to $10,000.
“I’ve run a lot of races. I’ve won some, and I’ve lost some. I know what it feels like to lose, but this doesn’t feel like that. This feels like I’ve been cheated, and you can feel the difference,” Cook said.
Bahr said the vendor, Tenex, a Florida-based election technology company, has blamed “server space issues” as the culprit. Bahr said he has asked the vendor to fix the problem before November’s general election, which is expected to have a much higher voter turnout.
County Councilman Joe Brazil doubled down on his long-standing criticism of Bahr, claiming that Bahr had tampered with the ballot tabulation machines in 2020 when they disabled the machines’ ethernet port and jeopardized the legitimacy of county, state and federal elections ever since. Those claims are unfounded, according to Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who cleared Bahr of any wrongdoing following a months-long investigation last year.
“There’s always these shenanigans that go on,” Brazil said on Monday. “There were so many things wrong with this election.”
Brazil was among those suggesting that Bahr should resign. Other county leaders disagreed.
County Councilman Tim Baker said Monday he “believes there needs to be some additional oversight of the election authority” and a comprehensive audit of Tuesday’s election results. He said the council should wait until January when new County Councilwoman Patti York is sworn in before taking action.
County Councilman Mike Elam said the council does not have the authority to remove Bahr.
“If the voters want someone else running the elections, then in August of 2026 they will have that opportunity,” Elam said. “In the meantime, he is an elected official, and I will continue to support him in his efforts until he is not the elected official anymore, and then I’ll support whoever that might be.”
Bahr said he had no intention of resigning.
