Polls Open In Missouri Gay Marriage Vote

(Kansas City, Missouri)  Less than 20 percent of eligible voters today will decide if the Missouri state constitution should be amended to ban same-sex marriage. 

Polls opened at 6:00 am local time in the Missouri primary making the state the first in the nation to vote on the contentious issue.

The Missouri Secretary of State's office predicts about 37 percent of eligible voters will go to the polls today. That would be a larger turnout than 2000 or 2002.

With only a simple majority needed, the amendment could be decided by about 19 percent of the state's electorate.

"I'm concerned about the gay-marriage issue," said Genice O'Neile, of Joplin, as she was leaving the clerk's office after checking her polling place. "I'm gay, and I wanted to make sure that my vote would count."

Herbie Poppe cast an absentee ballot because he is a truck driver and would be out of town today.  "I wanted to vote on the marriage amendment," he said. "It's only the second time I've ever voted. But I'm a Christian, and I thought it was important."

Going into a Pineville polling station Tabitha Fregia said she still was not sure which candidates will receive her vote, but she knows how she'll vote on the gay-marriage issue.

"I have friends who are homosexual, but I'm also a Christian," Fregia said. "God did not intend men to marry men or women to marry women."

Those in favor of the amendment say its necessary to prevent judges from overturning the law. Opponents say Missouri law is already discriminatory -- and a constitutional amendment would make matters worse.

The proposed amendment has prompted national gay-rights groups to send more than $100,000 to the Missouri organization fighting the ban, and they expect to spend millions of dollars around the country before the general election. Supporters have raised just a few thousand dollars but think public sentiment in this Midwestern state is on their side.

National groups expect Missouri's vote to be a test of which campaign strategies work, and which don't, as the battle spreads to ballot boxes.

"We have definitely prioritized fighting back on these ballot measures that are happening across the country," said Seth Kilbourn, national field director for the Washington D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights organization that has sent about $112,000 to the Missouri opposition.