Well, thanks and welcome to.

Next up.

This is where we interview community leaders and.

Today, Ray Hartmann and I will be talking to the secretary of State, J. Ashcroft, before Tuesday's Missouri primary.

Secretary Ashcroft welcome to nine PBS.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me.

Everybody get out and vote.

That's the plan.

But first, however, we do want to talk about some of the changes that will happen, not Tuesday, but in November.

Here at nine PBS, we've summarized them.

And here they are.

Earlier this summer, Missouri governor person signed House Bill 1878, which modifies Missouri election laws.

Two major changes include replacing the presidential primaries with a series of caucuses and now requiring registered voters to provide photo ID when casting their ballots.

Which will take effect on August 28th after the primaries but before November's election.

Some other modifications coming into play this voting season will be allowing absentee ballots to be cast without an excuse up to two weeks prior to the election but only in person at your local election authority.

As the House bill no longer allows the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots, you can still cast your vote electronically, although machines are not allowed direct Internet connection.

And come January 2024 the paper ballot will be the only official ballot, and the use of electronic vote counting machines will no longer be used local election authorities are prohibited from accepting private donations in most cases, and anyone who solicits more than ten voter applications must register with the Secretary of State every two years.

With dozens of provisions over 58 pages.

House Bill 1878 got some attention, particularly by voting rights groups who claim voter ID requirements disproportionately affect minorities.

The young and the elderly Governor person said in 2010 years prior, Missouri had conducted free, fair and secure elections.

But with changing technologies and new emerging threats, we want to ensure they remain that way.

There you have it.

Some of the changes in House Bill 1878.

But Secretary Ashcroft think it's important to point out that those changes are not in effect for next Tuesday.

Correct?

That is correct.

If you're registered you can vote show up on Tuesday.

Don't worry about what we're going to say to all the November election You know, among some of the changes that we might want to discuss for November anyway is that people if they don't have one right now, will have to get a voter ID, some sort of photo ID, Right now, I think on Tuesday, I can vote with my utility bill.

That will not be the case in November, correct?

Yes.

In on four August, we prefer on Tuesday that you show your driver's license.

That makes it easier for you to scan in and pull up your information for using the poll books.

But if you have a utility bill or something else like that, you'll still be able to vote on August 2nd.

I should.

There is a little bit of a misperception about the photo I.D.

law, even when it goes into effect in November.

The law is actually true that if you're registered, you can vote.

If you don't want to vote a provisional ballot You need to have that government issued photo ID.

But if for some reason you don't have that government issued photo ID, you are still allowed to vote a provisional ballot that's put inside that security outlook.

You fill out information about yourself that they can use to verify your identity.

Once the polls close and you get a little pull tab so you can make sure whether or not that ballot was counted.

So if you want to get the normal ballots nontraditional, you need to have that photo I.D.

But if you don't have it, as long as you're registered, you'll still be able to vote.

And our office is happy to get a free photo I.D.

for the purposes of voting.

Include any necessary documentation for free for Missourians Mr. Ashcroft.

Mr. Secretary?

I don't know.

Mr. Secretary.

All right.

All right.

All right.

All right.

Come here.

Call me J. Ari, Let's at about four weeks after the election in November, 20, 20, you made this statement that Missouri showed the rest of the country how to how to do this.

And the legislation and I realize you were it was the legislature passed it, not you, but the legislature basically seems to have undone some of the things that we showed the nation what to do.

What is your if and I understand the arguments about technology, whatever, but what does it make a lot of sense that we showed the nation what to do and then we undid what we showed them?

Well, I think first and foremost, what we showed the nation most specifically was that people could go to vote in person during a global pandemic.

They could do it safely.

We could get results quickly and they could be results that people could trust I think any time you want to have an election before you kind of focus on photo I.D.

or paper ballots or things that are legitimate discussion points what you need to decide is what do you need to have an election?

You need to have access.

You want to be able to make sure that every voter can vote.

You need to have security.

You want to make sure that it's hard to cheat.

And I think more so since really the 20, 16 and 20, 20 election, we're realizing that we need to do more to make sure that, yes, we have that access, yes, we have that security.

But we also have the necessary transparency and processes.

So people trust the results so that regardless of their person wins or loses or their issue passes or fails, they trust it.

And I think was what we did in this election, Bill.

We did a lot of things like that.

We access wise for the two weeks before the election.

You can go vote in person without a reason for voting absentee.

We think some people will really like that.

We made it more more stringent with regard to the photo ID, but we also made sure that if you were registered, you could vote with regard to the provisional ballots.

We looked at the cyber side and said, you know what?

Let's make sure that we're having penetration testing and cybersecurity testing of our election authorities.

Let's make sure that nobody has to rely on just this electronic black box, if you will, and hope that it recorded their vote correctly.

That's make sure there's a paper ballot and if there's a challenge, let's pull them out.

Let's publicly call them and let's make sure people trust the process But here we are going back to the paper ballot and we're issuing jettisoning the touchscreen, you know, the electronic electronics, which seems a little bit funny, doesn't it, in a nation where everybody's walking around with a an iPhone and electronics are really, you know, quite a thing in 2022 and now we're going back to papyrus J Well what we're really doing and what you'll see is see it in Saint Louis and you're seeing it in most other jurisdictions we're going to do a combination of the touchscreen so that we have the ease of use that people are used to using them.

If you need to, you can zoom in to make it larger but instead of having your vote just tabulated on that computer, we can't really see what's happening.

You will get a paper ballot printed out.

So you can make sure that what you touched on that screen is what's put on that ballot.

We need to have credibility in the process.

And one of the difficulties with elections that they can be different than, you know, people bring up electronic banking or other areas.

We both want to have security, but we also want to have the secret ballot.

It's not for me to know how Ray votes.

That's his secrecy there with banking.

You don't have the same secrecy.

So if there's a problem because you don't have that anonymity, there's a trail with what we do with elections, the ability to have a trail without anonymity is quite the same.

So we want to have the good points of the touchscreen, especially because we need to have some electronic ability for people that are definitely able that really couldn't fill out just a number to pencil on on a ballot for various reasons.

But we like that hard copy that.

When if there's any dispute open up the locked box, bring in the witnesses and let's count them.

Joe, did people in Missouri not trust this election I mean, we all know the national situation.

We don't have to rehash.

You are one of the one of the first people who came out and said Joe Biden is our president.

Now, I assume you have you changed?

Is that your positions?

But I'll give you a saying because some people have checked.

I'm pretty sure he still occupies the White House.

All right.

But I guess my question.

I'll go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No, it's a valid question.

But one of the things that I think is really become clear in 20, 16 and 2020 is just because you do it well.

Does it mean people understand it was done well?

Well, go ahead.

OK, so the point is the people I think you'll agree, at least in this election, maybe not the 60, but in 20, the people who are most concerned about the outcome are the Republicans.

I mean, you know, that's that's not a news story in Missouri.

Donald Trump won by 50 plus points and he had the lowest victory margin.

And I happen to be talking to the guy who had the biggest one you won by 24 points you were the only one to hit 60.

So it's kind of what did you think.

Well was this really not a fair election.

I mean does do Republicans in Missouri with that kind of outcome really think that they should be distrusting Missouri's elections?

Well I'm glad you think so.

Highly relevant.

No, I'm just saying it's the fact you want it's like you won by 24 point.

I can't imagine many of your supporters distrusted that result.

You know, I traveled every county in the state every year.

I think it's incumbent upon me as a statewide official.

And in 16 hours hearing from more your side of the spectrum about concerns in since 2020 I have been hearing from my side of the spectrum not to be antagonistic or anything that's not concerns and I think I think when they see things happen in other states where we see that other states did not follow their own laws at times that makes them have concerns.

And I want to do what I can while we're making sure we have good access, while we're making sure that we have the proper security to ensure that they trust the results once they lose trust in the process, it's very difficult to get it back.

So as long as I can continue to prove all three of those attributes at the same time, I think that's what ought to be done.

But forever and a day.

Don't you think that there are going to be politicians like Hillary in 2016 or Stacey Abrams in 2018 or Donald Trump of 2020 who are going to cast doubt on the election process because they lost and and and and politicians and candidates will say what they say.

My job I believe is to run the administration of elections so that if people are honest, whether they like me or don't like me, whether they like the administration or not, they will say that that was fair and I am just continuing to strive to do that in a way that protects accessibility, security and believability.

At 2020 was a once in a century challenge for people who hold the office for four secretaries of state.

I'd rather not repeat it.

Right I can understand that talk about what your office did to be nimble to adjust to the pandemic.

What did you what were some of the things that and this is this is a chance for you to say what did you do out of the ordinary to to adjust to the pandemic.

Well, I mean, probably the first thing that comes to mind the last week of April, first week of May, or maybe the first two weeks of May, I don't remember.

I traveled to every election authority in the state and ten business days I was driving one car and another individuals.

The secretary of state's office was driving a panel van, and we were delivering PPE that either our office had purchased or we had gotten delivered.

So we were delivering masks and gloves and hand sanitizers and things like that to local election authorities trying to make sure people would know that the facilities that they would vote in were secure.

I think we saw a major we sent out close to if if not, did a mailer to maybe every household in the state that we had a registered voter in making sure they knew about the voting law changes how they could vote by mail, how they could vote absentee, how they could vote absentee in person or Election Day or be safe, flew around the state in August trying to get out all the media markets, just working with election authorities to make sure they had within a week we moved the the April elections.

We had the March presidential preference primary right when COVID was kind of being understood right before it kind of was accelerating.

And then we moved municipal elections to June.

I don't know if that's ever happened in the history of the state, but we needed to make sure that we would have enough poll workers and that we'd be ready for the election.

We had we had talked to the governor to make sure that if we needed National Guard individuals that wouldn't be in uniform to help work the polls to make sure that that could be done working with local election authorities to find them larger polling places and finding when we could make sure that we were spreading people out.

And if we used the same polling place, how do we move people through the polling place so that they're not forcing it to just all the same concerns every business owner has?

Exactly now, you say we some of that legislature was down for some of this some of those initiatives you had to take in your office, right.

I mean, it.

Was what but it was we everything we did was legal under the law.

OK, but the point is, if what do you think?

I mean, that's a position that's somewhat challenged I'm not saying they should, but they could.

What were your reaction if Illinois or California or New York sued Missouri, saying, you know, Jay Ashcroft didn't follow his own laws?

Because that's what, you know, Missouri did as part of the Texas lawsuit against Pennsylvania.

Was there a part of you at all as a secretary of state, aside from your role as a Republican, that, you know, you really like seeing states sue one another on the allegation that those other states might not have followed their laws?

Well, actually, I don't think it was an allegation because the appellate court in Pennsylvania actually held that the Constitution had been violate.

So it's kind of interesting.

Evidently, the appellate court in Pennsylvania found that the attorney general of Missouri was correct, that Pennsylvania had not followed the law and I mean.

Did they have a Supreme Court there, too?

I do not know if the Supreme Court has ruled on it yet.

No court in Pennsylvania overruled that position.

I think I don't know if that's gone through the court yet.

I believe the appellate court decision was either was maybe earlier this year or was late last year.

So I don't know if it's gone through the full process, but I don't think I heard this.

OK at that time.

The courts have ruled in Pennsylvania obviously, that it was OK, so.

Well, go ahead.

No, they didn't write that.

They ruled that the original lawsuit they ruled that the lawsuit was too early.

And in the secondary lawsuit, it ruled that it was too late.

I don't believe they ever got to the merits until this lawsuit where the appellate court actually held that the law is inviolate.

We don't want to be.

Let me ask you about voter ID.

Sure.

So you heard in the piece before the program that there are some who believe that if you're elderly or you're young, you're minority, you may have a more difficult opportunity in getting a photo ID.

What will your office do to address those concerns?

Well, let me let me reiterate, I don't mean to be rude, but in the video, they said you couldn't vote if you didn't have your photo ID, which is not true.

We do have provisional ballots that are required to be counted once identity identification or your identity has been verified.

So the proper thing to say is if you're registered, you can vote.

If you don't have that government issued photo I.D., you'll have to use that provisional ballot.

But more importantly, to your direct question, our office is happy to provide a non driver's license in Missouri, non driver's license, which is a form of ID that's approved under the law for free to people that do not have it.

We are happy and have provided underlying documents to people that need them.

Birth certificates may be more happen, more often happens with women.

They might need a wedding certificate or a divorce decree because their name changed after a marital status change.

We help roughly a thousand, maybe more people a year do that.

We're happy to help anybody in the state of Missouri to do it.

It used to be under the law that if you didn't have your photo ID, you would sign a statement and then we would get those statements.

Everybody that showed up and signed a statement that didn't have their photo ID we would send them a letter letting them know that we'd like to help them.

Here's a phone number, here's how to contact you.

Let us help you so we're happy to help.

And if anybody doesn't have that I.D., go to our Web site, S.O.S., Dot Mo, not G-o-v. Let us know.

You know, we would love to help you.

I want to get back to this and I don't want to relitigate.

22.

I seriously, I just want to understand the principle short of sovereignty, OK?

And that is Missouri is a sovereign state and I just editorialize.

I'd be curious I'd be surprised if you disagree with this that other states should not be suing Missouri, whether it's about its gun laws or about it's about its, you know, abortion issues or about voting factors.

Isn't there a principle at least there used to be.

I think that we are sovereign states and one state doesn't have any business suing another.

You're our chief election official, right?

I mean, I think that we that any Illinois has a right to sue us over your actions.

I don't understand it.

Can you explain?

Well, what I would say is we are sovereigns, but we're sovereigns that are underneath the supremacy of the we have a federal form of federalism a federal form of government.

And there are definitely times that states sewage.

It's probably not as common as you see people get sued for car accidents.

But it does happen sometimes.

They have good reasons.

Sometimes they don't.

I was not a part of that lawsuit.

I just thought it was interesting that you pointed out why would they do that over alleged things?

Well, it turns out at least the appellate court, Pennsylvania, said they were right.

It's still alleged.

I mean, there's still two sites that argument, but I don't want to go back to it.

I just curious.

But we'll move on just to clarify, because this is an issue.

There are 27 Secretary of state's election.

Yours is not one of them.

And among the issues in other states are whether legislatures should be able to overrule people such as Brad Raffensperger in Georgia or people like yourself.

What do you think?

Do you have a general sense as our secretary of state about whether you're your jurisdiction, shall we say, as the chief election officials should be something that it could be overruled?

Well, the Missouri Constitution says that I'm that I'm in charge of elections to the extent extant provided by statute.

And the legislature has the authority with the signature of the governor or with enough of a majority to change statutes.

So I am required to follow statute and statutes in how to run elections, how I run my office.

So, you know, without a better factual basis, the legislature gets to write the rules.

And as a member of the executive, I implement.

Hey, I'd like to ask you something about the change in the next presidential election.

Missourians will no longer have a primary.

They're going to vote through caucuses.

Is this similar to what goes on in Iowa, for example?

Well well, first off, this is another area where there's a lot of confusion.

Missourians have actually been choosing the delegates to choose the presidential candidate.

My caucus, we have had a presidential preference primary.

I think that was March 15th in 20, 20 but then Missouri actually has also had a set of caucuses.

And in the caucuses they determine who the delegates are and the election has not actually necessarily been binding.

And I just told the legislature testified a number of times.

I don't think it makes sense for us to both have a caucus and to have an election.

If we're going to have an election, get rid of the caucus and make the election binding and make it determine who the actual delegates are or get rid of it and do it through the caucus.

I think it's wrong that we've kind of been misleading people and telling them to vote in the primary and the presidential preference primary when it was the caucuses that really made the decision.

I just don't think we ought to do that.

Let people vote in Missouri.

They should know that their votes matter and the sum total of their votes will determine the outcome.

And so people will gather in church basements or wherever like they do in Iowa.

Is that as long as we're still a caucus state, they will caucus and the parties will do that.

There's been some talk from legislators about wanting to revisit the issue.

And what I told them is if you want to get rid of the caucus and have an election where the election actually picks the delegates, where the votes matter, I'm fine with that.

But I'm not in favor of ever having elections in this state where your vote doesn't really matter.

I think.

And so as a as a right now a we're a caucus state.

Yes.

As well as of August 28 will be a caucus state when the law goes into effect.

Right now we are a caucus state in that that's how we pick our delegates.

But we pretend to be a primary state, which I think is disingenuous.

At the risk of, you know, kissing me a slander, I'll say I agree with you, which you.

Don't need.

That's going to hurt me in the next election.

I was going to say.

That's a that's a poison pill.

Right?

There they are.

I, I do.

I think you're right.

I probably would have gone with the chose in the primary system over the caucus system just because I think those caucuses are so funky.

I don't really think it makes that much difference.

I think what does make a difference is the assault.

And let's face it, it's by the former president of what many of us call the big lie ad and electronic is do you really as you're obviously expert on this, do you really think electronic voting systems were in any way rigged in 2020 or that there's really a obviously I'm sure you don't say anything about dominion but I mean do you really believe that a look to back to what a Charlie's early point that in 2022 we can't have security of electronic voting machines.

You know what I really said is let's decrease the attack service I'm an engineer I have a couple of degrees in engineering did data privacy wireless was an attorney why don't we do something like we're doing with this law where we have the ease of use of the touch screens where if people have a physical disability that would make it so they can't fill it out by hand or something.

We make sure they still have the full right to vote and then let's have an actual paper ballot so that we know it's as whether or not it's easy or hard, whether it's likely or not.

Let's not even worry.

Let's not have to worry about.

Let's just remove that from the equation.

So in the future, we don't have to be worried about it because they could that we have that paper ballot.

And then let's require that our tabulation equipment not only not be connected to the Internet, but let's make sure that it's incapable and let's disassemble publicly and just be done with it.

Let's not have to worry about it in the future.

If if if we're not having the electronics do it, if we have the paper ballot, if it's fully set apart and we can prove that, then we don't have to worry about let's reduce the number of things we have to worry about and kind of focus on the things we do have to worry about and do a better job of that.

We have about 30 seconds to go I'm sorry, guys.

About 30 seconds to go.

What we've been talking about now with those changes, again, that's for November and beyond.

Tuesday's primary day and the existing rules are the rules that people Secretary Ashcroft have been dealing with for the past ten or so years.

Yeah.

If you're registered, get out vote.

You can vote and your vote will make the difference.

Well, Secretary of State John Ashcroft, thank you very much for joining Ray and me on this edition of Next Up.

We appreciate it.

And with this, good bye.

We hope you can join us again sometime in the future.

Thank you very much.

Have a great day.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, Jay.

Thanks, Ray.

And thank you for joining us.

Stay safe out there and we'll see you next week.

Next Thursday, we'll be talking to Jason Kander, former secretary of state, will join Wendy and me.

Next up.

Donnybrook is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Paterson Foundation and the members of nine PBS.