Missouri SOS Ashcroft condemns how 4 states ran elections, sparking Democratic backlash
On a day when loyalists to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol during Congressional debate on certification of Electoral College results, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft condemned several states for their conduct of the 2020 elections..
Ashcroft, a Republican and the state’s top election official, leveled the criticisms Wednesday in an address to the Missouri House on the first day of the General Assembly’s annual session.
“Some government officials even in this chamber wish that Missouri would embrace and mimic election processes that we have seen in states like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,” Ashcroft said. “These states failed to conduct their elections in such a manner that neither successful nor unsuccessful candidates can demonstrably verify the results.”
Ashcroft added: “More importantly the people of these jurisdictions are denied the confidence of knowing that their votes in fact determined the outcome.”
Trump and some Republicans have leveled baseless allegations of fraud in the elections, but courts have consistently rejected challenges to the results.
The states named by Ashcroft are are likely targets for Republican objections in Congress to the certification of their Electoral College votes. Congress was debating an objection to Arizona’s votes before Trump loyalists breached the building.
Ashcroft, a hardline conservative, extolled Missouri’s election, however. He praised officials, poll workers and voters for holding “safe, secure elections.”
Amid the pandemic, Missouri lawmakers temporarily expanded advance absentee voting in 2020. Ashcroft opposes efforts to permanently expand mail voting.
It wasn’t clear whether Ashcroft was aware of the situation in the U.S. Capitol when he spoke. His comments were part of his duty as secretary of state to preside over the opening of the General Assembly’s annual session.
Ashcroft’s speech sparked an immediate backlash from Democrats. “Shameful that the Secretary of State would hijack a day that’s supposed to be a bipartisan celebration of our democratic republic for his own political ends,” the Missouri House Democratic Caucus tweeted.
House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat, denounced efforts to undermine the election results. In her opening speech, she criticized U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who plans to object to the certification of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
Referring to him as Missouri’s junior senator, Quade said Hawley was one of many who had embraced the “dangerous claim” that Trump won the election.
Hawley and others, she said, are among those “who know the truth but are willing to scream the lie – shattering all democratic standards – to keep their side in power, democracy be damned.”
