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ST. CHARLES — The county’s chief election official said on Friday the department would work more closely with health officials in an effort to keep voters safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We learn from every election and make changes based on what worked, didn’t work and what can be improved upon,” St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr said Friday in an email. “This election is no different.”

When the Election Authority begins training judges for the April 2021 election, he said, it will work with the health department to determine appropriate policies for poll workers.

Voters here blasted county officials on Friday, incensed after revelations this week that an election judge tested positive for COVID-19 and worked the polls nevertheless.

St. Charles city resident Leah Bross, 41, said she felt “pretty safe” when she voted, a little after 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Blanchette Park Memorial Hall polling station. But when she learned of the judge breaking quarantine, she became more and more frustrated.

“I can’t believe they weren’t screening people who were going to be working in the polls,” she said.

County officials said on Thursday that the poll worker, an elections judge supervisor, tested positive for COVID-19, broke quarantine, staffed the Blanchette Park precinct on Tuesday, and later died.

The supervisor, who has not been named, received a positive test from a private lab on Oct. 30, the county health department said. The lab told the supervisor to quarantine for 14 days. But the supervisor “nevertheless failed to follow the advice” and worked Election Day at Blanchette Park, 1900 West Randolph Street.

The county said 1,858 voters were at the site that day. It’s unclear if any were directly exposed to the employee. All nine election workers who also staffed that location on Tuesday have been advised to quarantine and seek testing.

Mary Enger, director of communications for St. Charles County, said in an email Friday that the poll worker was a female, but the county would not release any other information about her. Enger said the supervisor’s cause of death has not been determined.

Voters at the precinct who spoke to the Post-Dispatch generally expressed surprise and frustration.

Resident Tracy Simpson, 48, said she voted early Tuesday morning at Blanchette Park. Simpson said she found the situation aggravating, though believes that people are taking some risk anytime they leave their house now.

She said she will monitor for symptoms, and if they appear, she will isolate and seek testing.

“Obviously this person should have quarantined like they were supposed to,” Simpson said.

Bahr said in a phone interview with the Associated Press that the election judge died in her sleep after a 15-hour shift at the polls.

He said the woman had previously worked several other elections, as had her sister at a different polling site. It was the sister who called Bahr’s office Wednesday to let him know of the woman’s death.

But Bahr said the sister didn’t know of the COVID-19 diagnosis.

“She was just as shocked," Bahr told the AP. "The family was unaware she had tested positive. As far as I understand, the only person that knew was the spouse of the judge.”

Bahr said that as an election judge, the woman would have shown up around 5 a.m. to help prepare the polling place; worked the entire time the polls were open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.; then spent about an hour wrapping up.

She died in her sleep either late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Bahr said.

Another judge who worked at the Blanchette Park site called Bahr’s office to “try to figure out who it was” that had the illness, he said. “That judge more or less said nobody appeared sick. Nobody had symptoms.”

County health officials are urging the precinct's other judges to be tested for the virus, Enger said. Contact tracing efforts have begun.

Bahr said the county is not recommending testing for those who voted at the precinct because their potential exposure was limited. He said most voters were inside for only 10-15 minutes and most of that time, they were alone filling out their ballots.

Bahr said the county had plenty of judges on standby Tuesday, so he wasn’t sure why the woman felt compelled to work. The job pays $175 for the day, but he suspected civic responsibility, not money, was her motivation.

Still, he wished she had made a different choice.

“Obviously it’s disheartening to find out that one, she passed, and two, that she knew she was sick and chose to work anyway,” Bahr said. 

Updated at 9:15 p.m. Saturday with information from the Associated Press.