Republicans push for stricter voter ID law to replace measure invalidated by court

A week after the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a portion of the state’s photo voter ID law, a Republican lawmaker hopes to reinstate the measure with stricter provisions.

A bill sponsored by Rep. John Simmons, R-Washington, would completely eliminate Missourians’ ability to cast a regular ballot without a state-approved photo ID.

The proposal is a response to a ruling on the state’s current photo ID law, handed down by the Supreme Court last Tuesday.

That law said Missourians who come to the polls without a state-approved photo ID could vote only after signing an affidavit under the penalty of perjury. A 5-2 majority of the court found the affidavit to be “misleading,” and therefore unconstitutional. Justices made clear that Missourians could vote with other non-photo state-approved IDs like a utility bill, college ID or bank statement.

The Supreme Court noted that leaving the option of casting a provisional ballot if the voter did not own a state-approved photo ID didn’t ensure that the voter’s ballot would be counted. That’s because the voter’s signature would have to match their signature in the state’s voter registration database.

“The record reflects the signature-matching process could result in an over-rejection of legitimate signatures, as there is no training or uniform standards election officials follow,” Judge Mary Russell wrote in the opinion.

The two dissenting judges said that if the affidavit was misleading, the court should remove the option to vote with a non-photo ID altogether.

Simmons’ legislation follows the dissenting judges’ lead.

His proposal allows those without state-approved photo ID to cast provisional ballots, to be counted only if the voters returned to the polling place the same day with a Missouri driver’s or non-driver’s license or if the voters’ signature matches the signature in the registration database.

The bill “has been in the works for many months,” Simmons said, during a Wednesday public hearing. “It’s turned into a timely bill, in lieu of the unfortunate recent Missouri Supreme Court decision regarding voter ID provisions.”

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who said the ruling “eviscerated” the voter ID law, testified in favor of Simmons’ bill Wednesday. When the Missouri legislature passed the voter ID law in 2016, Ashcroft was one of its most vocal supporters.

Ashcroft noted that the 2016 law required the state to provide photo IDs free of charge. He said that in the last year, his office helped over 1,000 Missourians get non-drivers licenses.

“The tagline for all of our advertisements has always been if you’re registered to vote, you can vote,” Ashcroft said. “We want people to get those free IDs. We want to provide them to them, but we don’t want someone to not show up because they don’t have that.”

Opponents of the legislation said the photo ID requirement violates the Missouri Constitution, in the same way the 2016 law did. They also took issue with a provision in the bill that would no longer require the Secretary of State’s office to notify Missourians of changes to the voter ID requirements.

“Stripping the statutory provision requiring them to effectively notify voters will only sow further confusion and further disenfranchisement,” Denise Lieberman, a voting rights attorney who testified on behalf of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, said.

Lieberman was joined by Missouri chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in finding Simmons’ change unnecessary. Both groups were parties to different lawsuits challenging the 2016 law.

“This committee is trying to pass a bill that has no legitimate purpose,” Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the Missouri state conference of the NAACP, said during the hearing.

Along with the voter ID changes, this bill also gives the Secretary of State’s office subpoena power when a complaint is filed against a candidate. It also requires candidates filing with the Secretary of State to give their filing fee to the party treasurers and sets requirements for absentee voters to establish their identity.

*This story has been clarified to include how provisional ballots will be counted.

This story was originally published January 22, 2020 at 4:29 PM.