JEFFERSON CITY ā Missouriās Republican auditor criticized Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft Monday for withdrawing from a national system designed to improve the accuracy of voting rolls last year.
In a scathing report, Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said his fellow Republicanās March 2023 decision to leave the Electronic Registration Information Center will cause local election authorities to have less information to identify and correct inaccurate voter records because the office did not have a plan to replace the benefits received from membership in the coalition.
āI can respect why Secretary Ashcroft felt it was necessary to end the relationship with ERIC, but that doesnāt negate the responsibility to have a plan to replace that data so the office has a reliable way to ensure we donāt have dead voters registered in Missouri as we enter a major election year,ā Fitzpatrick wrote.
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Ashcroft, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor, alleged that the system, commonly called ERIC, had refused to require member states to participate in multistate efforts to address voter fraud and had focused on adding names to voter rolls by requiring solicitations to individuals who had already had the opportunity to register, among other complaints.
The move came as former President Donald Trump urged state election officials like Ashcroft to pull out of ERIC, calling the organization on social media a āterrible Voter Registration System that āpumps the rollsā for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up. It is a foolās game for Republicans.ā
The criticism by Fitzpatrick of another Republican statewide officeholder comes after he and Ashcroft tangled in court over a ballot initiative in 2022. Fitzpatrick, a former member of the House and former state treasurer, alleged Ashcroft had crossed a line in using his powers to write the ballot language affecting the operation of the treasurerās office.
Ashcroft is vying for the GOP nomination against Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring. Democrats seeking the top post include House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield, and southwest Missouri businessman Mike Hamra.
The latest report says county clerks and election authorities across the state urged Ashcroft to join ERIC in 2017 to āimprove the efficiency and quality of voter registration list maintenance.ā
But as the auditorās office attempted to evaluate the office, secretary of stateās office officials refused to provide key reports, forcing the auditor to obtain the information directly from ERIC, Fitzpatrick said.
The data shows during the five years the state was a member, the secretary of state and local election authorities were provided information on over 770,000 potentially duplicate voter registration records and over 21,000 deceased voter registration records.
Election administrators in Missouriās largest election jurisdiction, ŗüĄźŹÓʵ County, used ERIC reports to remove thousands of dead voters from their voter rolls alone, the audit said.
Fitzpatrick said Ashcroft did not fully evaluate the benefits received from ERIC prior to terminating the membership.
Since the departure, county clerks have publicly stated their list maintenance efforts will be less efficient and more tedious as they will have to rely on other methods to ensure the accuracy of their voter rolls.
āPublic trust in the electoral process is the cornerstone of our democratic institutions,ā Fitzpatrick said.
In addition to criticisms over withdrawing from ERIC, the audit found that Ashcroftās office refused to provide information on the officeās implementation of a new law to perform cyber security reviews of Missouriās 116 local election authorities.
Because the secretary of state refused to cooperate, audit staff were unable to obtain sufficient evidence to evaluate the steps taken by the office to comply with the new state law.
āThe law clearly provides our audit staff with the authority to receive and review this information, and itās disappointing the Secretary of Stateās Office stood in the way of our efforts to perform a thorough analysis of how the new cyber security reviews have been implemented,ā Fitzpatrick said.
āGoing forward I hope the office, and all governmental entities, will follow the law and respect the duty we have to provide taxpayers with a better understanding of how government is operating and that their tax dollars are being used efficiently,ā he added.
Ashcroft, who has met with national figures who have peddled conspiracy theories about election fraud in the wake of Trumpās 2020 loss, said in a response to the audit that local election officials have other means available to maintain voter records. He added that there is some overall value in being a member of ERIC, but that itās āvalue was less than expected.ā
Ashcroft also said releasing information to the auditor could have caused āgreat harmā to the stateās election system and that the secretary of stateās office had not violated any law.