Saint Louis, Mo. — Jay Ashcroft, a candidate for secretary of state and son of the legendary Missouri politico John Ashcroft, joined host Scott Faughn on This Week in Missouri Politics to discuss, among other things, his support for voter ID legislation.
“I just look at it as a common-sense way to protect the vote,” Ashcroft said. “It’s a simple way to move forward on that issue and someone needed to do it, and I said I was willing.”
Ashcroft has filed an initiative petition that, if approved, would place language on the 2016 ballot that would amend Missouri’s constitution to allow for photo ID requirements for voting. The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that voter ID laws violate Missouri’s constitution as written, so any new photo requirement would need to come on top of a constitutional change to survive a court battle.
Joining Faughn on the Opinion Maker panel were Rep. Robert Cornejo, Rep. Shamed Dogan, Anne Schweitzer of St. Louis Public Eye, and Blake Lawrence, legal counsel to Sen. Jamilah Nasheed. While the panel spent much of the discussion focused on voter ID laws, they also touched on cigarette taxes and much more.
You can stream full episodes of #TWMP at twmp.tv. This Week’s episode is available now!
Highlights from the show:
“Voter ID is a solution without a problem in this state. A 2014 Washington Post study that was published by a professor at Loyola Chicago Law School found that of about a billion votes cast in the United States — state, local, federal — from 2000 to 2012, only 31 allegations of voter fraud were found. Is this really a problem we need to be addressing by potentially disenfranchising over 200,000 voters?” – Lawrence on voter ID opposition
“One question I would have is, does he require a voter ID to sign his petition, because that’s something I’d be very interested in having an answer to.” – Schweitzer, on her own voter ID objections
“What we’re actually doing is helping people who are poor, who are elderly, by getting them into modern society by providing them with these ID’s. You don’t often see Republicans wanting to spend money on a program to give out free stuff. But that’s exactly what we did.” – Dogan, on giving no-cost ID’s to voters
“Kudos to Rep. Dogan. He went around to the legislature and got signatures…writing a letter to the governor to ask that [Jeff Mizanskey] be released. Once Jay Nixon saw that he had that backup with the legislature, and again we aren’t just opening the jet doors and saying get out of here.” – Cornejo on Nixon commuting Mizanskey’s sentence
Collin Reischman was the Managing Editor for The Missouri Times, and a graduate of Webster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.
