By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has led Missouri out of a consortium of states formed to fight voter fraud.
Ashcroft, a Republican, says the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, has strayed from its original mission. Ashcroft complains that some states in the group focused too heavily on adding to voter registration rolls at the expense of cracking down on voter fraud.
“Those states seem to want to prioritize trying to fill our voter rolls with people that didn’t want to vote as opposed to making sure our voter rolls are clean and going after people that would cheat,” Ashcroft tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post in a phone interview.
Missouri left ERIC, along with Florida and West Virginia.
Ashcroft flatly denies allegations that he led Missouri out of ERIC to appease former President Donald Trump and his claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Ashcroft rejects the assessment of critics who claim Missouri was merely doing the bidding of Trump.
“But they’re acting like we responded to what he said,” Ashcroft says, referring to a Trump social media post critical of ERIC. “And, in truth, he didn’t put that out on social media until an hour-and-a-half, two hours after we had made our decision.”
As for the claims that voter fraud was rampant in the 2020 presidential election, Ashcroft says it is known some states failed to provide an accurate count.
“I think it’s a travesty that there were certain states that didn’t follow their own laws,” Ashcroft asserts. “That should never be allowed to happen.”
Ashcroft claims Pennsylvania didn’t follow its own election laws, that George abdicated signature requirements on absentee ballots, and that Wisconsin used illegal ballot drop boxes during the 2020 presidential election. Ashcroft will not say whether he believes Trump actually won.
Ashcroft flatly denies allegations that Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia left ERIC at the behest of Trump.
“And it seems really interesting to me that everybody seems to be doing their best not to have to defend ERIC’s inactions on things that they should have been fixed,” according to Ashcroft.
Ashcroft says he wanted ERIC to incorporate better data protection, focus less on voter registration rolls and more on voter fraud, and remove non-voting members from its board.
“It’s awfully suspicious that no one will answer why what we wanted to do was bad for ERIC or bad for elections,” Ashcroft says. “And it sure seems like they’re scared to death of admitting that they refused to make ERIC better and it’s their fault that these three states left.”
Ashcroft says ERIC’s governing documents should contain safeguards for the data it receives from Missouri and other states and a promise that it will not be shared with third parties. Ashcroft objects to a requirement that states continue to ask residents to register to vote who have refused when asked at their local department of motor vehicles. He would also like ERIC to no longer sit non-voting members, some of whom Ashcroft contends are partisan, such as David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.