Missouri Sec. of State Challenges Biden’s Voting Rights Executive Order
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order promoting voter registration.
Biden’s Executive Order 14019 expands access to voting and accurate election information in many ways, including allowing federal agencies to share data with states that seek to establish automatic voter registration efforts and making federal workers and resources available to assist at polling locations.
Ashcroft — who’s running to be the 2024 Republican nominee for governor — is joined by two Missouri election officials and Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston (R) in asking a federal district court to block the implementation of the order.
He claims the order “constitutes federal overreach and violates the principles of federalism enshrined in the Constitution” because “it is the responsibility of the states, not the federal government, to manage voter registration and election procedures,” according to his Thursday statement.
In the statement, Ashcroft even went a step further and claimed the order “threatens the integrity of our elections.”
St. Charles County Elections Director Kurt Bahr, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, stated that the order interferes with the jobs of county election officials like him.
“Alongside Secretary Ashcroft, we are committed to protecting Missouri voters and ensuring that our elections remain free from unnecessary federal intervention,” Bahr said in the statement.
In the statement, Ashcroft insisted the lawsuit is about these principles and “not about partisan politics,” but in the complaint itself he argued the executive order is “a blatant and unlawful effort to use taxpayer money to help elect Democratic candidates, including President Biden.”
This is not the first time this order has been challenged in court.
Last month, a right-wing legal group, America First Policy Institute, sued the Biden administration alongside Texas legislators and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R). The lawsuit claims the order violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and other federal laws.
In January, Pennsylvania GOP legislators filed a lawsuit challenging Biden’s executive order and some state voting policies, invoking the radical independent state legislature theory, which argues only state legislatures can regulate federal elections. After the lawsuit was dismissed by a district court, the legislators filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in April, asking them to reopen the case.