States across the country are addressing the challenge of holding an election in an environment where some voters are sure to have lingering concerns about the coronavirus. But those that rush to overreact and overhaul a system that has worked for decades are risking long-term damage to the integrity of their elections.
Missouri Republicans stand with President Trump in acknowledging that voter fraud is real, that it’s insidious, and that it threatens the foundations of our democracy. States that hold universal vote-by-mail elections, especially states that attempt to shift to universal voting by mail in a matter of months, open themselves up to rampant voter fraud.
In Missouri, we have devised a commonsense solution that ensures every citizen who wants to cast a vote can do so safely while upholding the most stringent standards of election integrity and putting a hard stop to efforts by partisans attempting to take advantage of this crisis to advance a liberal agenda.
We came together to pass, by an overwhelming majority, legislation that temporarily adds coronavirus concerns to the existing list of reasons for which a voter can obtain an absentee ballot in our state.
What our legislation does and what it does not do are equally important to the integrity of our election system in the Show-Me State.
This is not universal mail-in voting. No voter will receive a ballot without requesting one. And we expect the vast majority of voters to participate in traditional in-person voting, with safety measures in place. Our plan requires voters to return their ballots and notarized envelopes by U.S. Mail.
To avoid giving a foothold to activists looking to send us down a slippery slope, our legislation sunsets after one year. This is about finding a temporary solution to a temporary problem, not about exploiting the problem to enact a long-sought agenda to manipulate our elections.
Our approach has been vetted by the nation’s leading conservative election law experts. Heritage Foundation fellow and Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity appointee Hans von Spakovsky eloquently put it, “Certainly, even in the states that require an excuse for absentee balloting, all election officials are going to consider this coronavirus threat to be a sufficient reason to use an absentee ballot.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel outlined the dangers of universal mail-in voting in a recent op-ed, identifying ballot harvesting, where individuals can collect and return multiple voters’ ballots, and states proactively mailing ballots to all voters “eligible to cast a ballot,” which invariably includes outdated entries on the voter rolls, as policies that create a situation rife for fraud.
To know that our plan makes sense, look no further than the fact that it’s currently being challenged in court by special interests on the Left, seeking to allow unfettered access to absentee ballots for any reason, or none at all, even though the coronavirus is already a valid reason.
Just days ago, a Missouri state court threw out their suit, writing that their attempt to impose their agenda on our elections was “not limited to COVID-19 and goes far beyond the health concerns they raise.”
Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem wrote that the leftist groups bringing suit were “ask[ing] this Court to declare that every Missouri voter has a constitutional right to cast an absentee ballot for any reason — again, regardless of COVID-19 — without any signature verification, in any future election,” and that the real intent was to seek “a radical and permanent transformation of Missouri voting practices without the authorization of the Legislature.”
These tactics may fly in California or Oregon, but they will never chip away at the integrity of our elections in Missouri.
In the Show-Me State, we are demonstrating to the nation that this process does not have to be as complicated as forces on the political Left would like it to be. By making narrow, targeted adjustments that truly address this unique situation, we can protect the voter and protect the vote at the same time.
Dave Schatz is president pro tempore of the Missouri State Senate.
