Jay Ashcroft took over $40,000 from election-denying group, made state’s election regulations less reliable

Missouri gubernatorial candidate and sitting Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) received over $40,000 in campaign donations from election-denying lobbyists who urged him to drop Missouri from an election security nonprofit, emails show.

According to documents obtained by American Oversight and published in January, Ashcroft received several emails from members of Verity Vote, an elections “research and investigation” organization that has routinely sowed doubt in the 2020 presidential election results. These emails point to a virtual meeting that Ashcroft attended, where members of Verity Vote gave a presentation to the sitting secretary of state in February 2023.

An email written by Patricia Chandler and forwarded by Verity Vote’s founder Heather Honey proves that the dialogue between Verity Vote and Ashcroft was specifically aimed at convincing Ashcroft to remove Missouri from participating in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).

Chandler wrote:

“It’s clear that we share the same broad vision for better, cheaper, and safer data management for our voter rolls and DMV private data.

We’re pleased to see you understand that Missouri really has two legitimate choices:

1. 1. Reform ERIC
   2. Return Control and Management of State Data Back to the States

We believe with a more detailed understanding of the available alternatives today combined with an effective messaging campaign, states who champion path 2 will have better results.”

ERIC is a nonprofit organization founded by a bipartisan group of election officials in 2012 that helps states who enroll maintain voting data and detect illegal voting. According to ERIC’s website, 24 states and Washington D.C. are currently members of ERIC.

Honey and Verity Vote have ties to former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a leading figure in the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Mitchell was also part of the infamous phone call where Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,779 votes, which was the amount of votes Trump lost by in Georgia.

Six days after the email exchange, Ashcroft spoke about ERIC to other Republican secretaries of state at a conference hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the same think tank that crafted the GOP’s roadmap Project 2025. On March 6, 2023, Ashcroft announced that Missouri was withdrawing from ERIC, citing several reasons including that ERIC encourages eligible voters to register to vote.

“ERIC focuses on adding names to voters rolls,” Ashcroft wrote. “By requiring a solicitation to individuals who already had an opportunity to register to vote and made the conscious decision not to be registered.”

This January, Ashcroft’s decision was criticized by Missouri’s State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, who argued that Ashcroft had not consulted stakeholders or have a plan to replace the benefits of being a member of ERIC.

“As a result, the SOS and local election authorities (LEAs) will have less assurance that the voter rolls of the state are reliable, and will have less useful and timely information for updating voter registration lists,” Fitzpatrick wrote in an official report.

According to an itemized receipt from the Missouri Ethics Commission, Ashcroft accepted a $25,000 donation to his Committee for Liberty PAC on April, 9 2023 from Chandler. Over the next 14 months, Ashcroft would accept a total of $42,427.54 from Chandler.

In a recent debate with his opponent Bill Eigel, Ashcroft also described himself as a Christian nationalist after being given a full definition of the term.