ST. CHARLES COUNTY — The top election official here is demanding an apology after a county councilman chastised a staffer on Election Day for counting votes too slowly and threatened that election officials “would end up in jail.”
Kurt Bahr, the director of elections in St. Charles County, accused County Councilman Joe Brazil of “slanderous accusations and abuse of power” after Brazil sent several texts to Bahr’s deputy on Tuesday night. In a cease and desist letter sent Wednesday, Bahr ordered that Brazil not talk to any county election officials except for Bahr and the county’s legal staff.
In Brazil’s texts, sent about two hours after polls closed, he complained that conservative candidates had been defeated, including in school board elections.
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“Because this threat was made while we were in the process of tabulating, I take it as coercive to change the outcome of the election to avoid the threat of jail,” Bahr wrote.
Brazil, a longtime Republican member of the St. Charles County Council, has been a frequent critic of Bahr’s office and the county’s election process in recent months. He pushed unsuccessfully to strip Bahr’s office of funding, to reject grants from the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, and for the county to hand count ballots instead of using electronic tabulating machines.
Brazil also filed a complaint in May claiming that Bahr had tampered with and jeopardized the outcome of recent elections. His accusations echoed claims by many Republican officials nationwide since former President Donald Trump’s election loss in 2020.
Bahr, also a Republican, was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Missouri Secretary of State.
In an interview Wednesday, Brazil confirmed he sent the texts, which pledged to do a “deep dive” into Bahr’s office. But he claimed they weren’t a threat.
“This was not a threat. This was just a continuation of the banter that we have been having for the past several months,” Brazil said.
Brazil said he contacted Bahr’s deputy because he “had some very deep concerns about Tuesday’s election” and he didn’t think Bahr would respond. Chief among his concerns, he said, was Missouri’s 2022 legalization of no-excuse absentee voting.
Brazil said while he was not threatening the deputy with jail time, “Kurt should be in jail because of what he has done.”
Brazil said he would not apologize to Bahr or election staffers, nor would he comply with Bahr’s order not to talk to them.
“I don’t know what legal authority he is to say that to me, but I’ll tell you that he can (expletive) himself on that,” Brazil said. “I’m a citizen of this county, and I can talk to whoever the hell I want to.”
Bahr in an interview Wednesday said Brazil’s text was an escalation of his earlier complaints.
“This is not the first time that Councilman Brazil has made accusations against me as the election authority. However, this was more than that,” he said. “This was him being unprofessional and threatening the entire office, because he didn’t just specify that I would be in jail or my deputy would be in jail, but the entire office.”
In his letter, Bahr made note of Brazil’s claim that election officials would “end up in jail” and demanded that Brazil apologize to the entire office.
“Your final comment is the most egregious,” Bahr wrote. “You stated that you didn’t like the outcome of the election while we were still in the process of tabulating it. Your threat that the election officials in my office (all county employees) will ‘end up in jail’ cannot be ignored.”
Bahr argued that there is precedence, per the county charter, for preventing a member of the county council from speaking or attempting to interfere with the work of a St. Charles County government employee.
“The County Charter has a prohibition that members of the county council are not to communicate with members of the St. Charles County Executive’s staff,” Bahr said in an interview. “All I am asking for is that the same prohibition be extended to my employees because of Brazil’s abusive behavior.”
Neither Brazil nor Bahr say they expect the issue to come up at Monday’s County Council meeting.
“He may be ignorant of the legal implications of his text messages,” Bahr said, “but I don’t think he is ignorant enough to think that anyone will believe he wasn’t trying to intimidate my employees, abuse his power or act unprofessionally in that text message.”