By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft says the November election confirms Missouri’s new election laws are sound and don’t keep any registered voters from casting a ballot.
Ashcroft, a Republican, says the changes in state election laws didn’t seem to disrupt voting anywhere in the state last year.
“The feedback that I’ve heard from election authorities, your county clerks, your boards of elections, that I’ve heard from voters has all been good,” Ashcroft tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “The groups that were against the election changes, they have not brought up any problems with the administration of the law to us.”
Ashcroft notes that opponents of the voter photo ID provision haven’t been able to prove anyone was denied the right to vote because of the requirement. Ashcroft insists photo identification is vital to ensuring only registered voters cast ballots.
“I think it went exactly as we thought it would. Everyone that was a registered voter was able to vote. I think it helped people to have more confidence in elections. We made it harder to cheat,” according to Ashcroft. “You want it easy to vote, harder to cheat and you want to have credible results. We did that and we will continue to do that.”
The one change Ashcroft would like to see in elections cannot be legislated. Ashcroft, the state’s top election authority, wants to see greater turnout at the polls. He says there are still too few registered voters bothering to cast ballots.
Ashcroft worries changes over the years to make voting easier have cheapened the vote.
“I don’t think it was intentional, but as we’ve made it easier to vote I think people have almost taken the idea that, well, it must not be that important,” Ashcroft speculates. “And I don’t know how we get back to really pushing this idea that voting’s important and that voting does matter and it’s not just a right. It is a right, but I would say it’s also a responsibility.”
Only about half the registered voters in Missouri cast ballots in the November election.