Williams is on a list of permanently disabled voters who automatically receive applications to vote absentee. She said she had no idea why two other applications were filled out in her name.

“I didn’t fill out but one,” Williams said. “I mailed mine in. It was mailed to me and I filled it back out.”

Oscar Mitchell, 76, lives in a senior housing complex outside the 78th District, but the complex falls within the boundaries of the St. Louis’ 5th Ward, where Rodney Hubbard Sr. was running to be the Democratic committeeman. (He, too, lost the Election Day tally but won his race on the strength of the absentee vote, where he bested Rasheen Aldridge, 231-96.)

Mitchell didn’t remember filling out two applications. As he looked over the one marked “duplicate” by the election board, he was surprised.

Then he recalled that a few months before the election, Penny and Rodney Hubbard visited his apartment complex. He said they asked him to sign a piece of paper that he thought was a change of address form, not an application to vote absentee.

“I didn’t know I was signing for no absentee,” Mitchell told a reporter. “Absolutely not.”

Dubious pretenses