Ashcroft brings voter ID pitch to Capitol

Signature collection could start Monday on proposed amendment

Republican Jay Ashcroft, a secretary of state candidate, says he wants to gather 285,000 valid signatures on his petition to add a photo identification amendment to Missouri's Constitution.

"We do not require a photo ID for voters," Ashcroft said at a Thursday news conference. "As important as the vote is for determining the will of the people and directing the government, I felt it was important to go ahead and file an initiative petition so that we can amend the Missouri Constitution ... to allow that photo ID requirement."

Secretary of State Jason Kander approved the petition for circulation on Tuesday.

Ashcroft said his campaign to get signatures could begin as early as next Monday.

"I think this is an idea whose time really came in 2006, when it was thrown out by the Missouri Supreme Court," he said.

Lawmakers in May 2006 passed a law requiring voters to show a photo ID before they could cast ballots, but the Missouri Supreme Court ruled, 6-1, the law violated both the equal protection and right to vote clauses in the Missouri Constitution's Bill of Rights.

The October 2006 ruling also rejected the law's requirement that voters spend additional money to get copies of their birth certificates, so they could get the proper photo ID if they didn't already have a driver's or non-driver's license.

State Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, said the measure is needed to help "guarantee the integrity of elections and election results, and I think this is a key step in doing that." He is running for attorney general.

Ashcroft's proposed amendment doesn't require people to have specified photo IDs. Instead, if voters approve it, the amendment would give the Legislature the authority to create the requirement in state law.

Opponents over the years - primarily Democrats - have said the ID requirement isn't needed because there's been no proof voter fraud that would have been prevented with a required ID.

"In Boone County, we just had several people who were working on an initiative petition, who were indicted for several thousand signatures that were fraudulently obtained," Ashcroft countered.

"In St. Louis, we had a mayoral election where there were allegations of over 30 people who were voting illegally in that - which would have been enough to change who the mayor was."

Government has a duty, he added, "to make sure that every person's vote counts - that they're not going to be disenfranchised by someone illegally doing it."

State Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee's Summit, also is running for secretary of state and has sponsored a photo ID requirement for voters in the Legislature - but has been blocked from getting it passed by Democratic debates and filibusters.

Kraus said, in a news release, he supports Ashcroft's proposal.

"We require photo ID to rent a hotel room, purchase certain goods and to even to apply for certain government assistance programs," Kraus said. "It isn't too much to ask that we require the same to ensure every vote counts in Missouri."

The proposed amendment doesn't change another section of the Constitution, which says properly-registered Missourians are "entitled" to vote.

Ashcroft said other states that have added a photo ID requirement also have provided those IDs, and allowed voters without the ID to "cast a provisional ballot," then return within a specified time frame to produce the correct identification.

In Kansas,opponents estimated the ID requirement would affect several hundred thousand people - but only 120 people asked for the ID, he said.

"There clearly has to be some level of integrity with the system, to make sure that your vote counts and someone can't nullify your vote very easily with a fraudulent process," Schaefer said.

Ashcroft said his group needs to collect about 170,000 valid signatures across the state to enough signatures from six of the eight congressional districts to get the issue placed on the November 2016 ballot.

But the larger, 285,000 signature goal would show support for the idea in every part of the state.

Ashcroft grew up in Jefferson City. His father, John D. Ashcroft, served as attorney general and governor, before becoming a U.S. senator and, later, U.S. attorney general in Washington, D.C.

Jay Ashcroft is an engineer and an attorney. He lives in St. Louis County with his wife and children.