The Kansas City Star’s endorsement in the election for Missouri secretary of state | Opinion

Here is the candidate we endorse for secretary of state in Missouri for the general election. For more information about the Nov. 5 election, check out our Voter Guide, a collaboration between The Kansas City Star and the KC Media Collective. See all our published endorsements on our Elections Recommendations page.

In the election for Missouri secretary of state, we endorse Democrat Barbara Phifer.

Republican Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg would be wrong for Missouri. He’s a 2020 presidential election denier, which would be bad enough, but he wants the job that includes broad oversight of elections in the state.

He insists Missourians “have their heads in the sand” if they don’t see voting fraud in the state, but can provide no evidence of such misfeasance. For the record: There is no evidence of widespread voter irregularities in Missouri, or any other state for that matter.

He wants to use paper ballots only, unaware, perhaps, that paper ballots were widely used when there was election fraud in the state.

Hoskins is a charter member of the state Senate Freedom Caucus, the group largely responsible for the dysfunction in the state legislature. He would bring more chaos to Jefferson City.

“This is one of those positions that does not make policy, so much as it administers the law,” Phifer told us — accurately. She’s also worried about current Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s attempt to influence petition voting in the state by writing misleading ballot summaries.

“If you cannot trust what you read, you do not have democracy. And if you don’t have access to information, you don’t have democracy,” she said.

Phifer is correct. Ashcroft has turned the secretary of state’s office into a politicized laughingstock, and Denny Hoskins would make it worse. Phifer is the only choice here.

Carl Herman Freese is the Libertarian in the race. Jerome Bauer is the Green Party nominee.