A new bill proposes returning elections to paper ballots and counting votes by hand.
If approved, Senate Bill 98, sponsored by state Sen. Bill Eigel (R-Weldon Spring) would only allow machine voting for people with disabilities.
“We know that we'll never convince St. Louis City or St. Louis County or even St. Charles County to use hand counting of ballots without being mandated, which is the purpose of Senate Bill 98,” said Byron Keelin, president of the Freedom Principle MO, a Missouri-first 501(c)4.
Keelin was part of a group that convened with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is campaigning to replace Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee.
Lindell founded Cause for America, a national nonprofit in 2021 to enable grassroots election integrity organizations across the country, according to media reports.
“The Freedom Principal of Missouri, Cause for America Missouri and several other grassroots groups have been working around the state to educate citizens so that they can talk to their county clerks and encourage them to use the hand counting method,” Keelin told the St. Louis Record. “We're training the grassroots people on how it works so that they can all effectively meet with their county clerks and discuss the process.”
As previously reported, Lindell also met with state Sen. Jill Carter (R-Neosho) and Sen. Eigel on Jan. 5 to discuss hand counting of ballots, which a 1977 Missouri statute allows. SB 98 would mandate its use.
Efforts to address alleged election integrity issues intensified after the “Missouri Elections are Impossible to Validate” study conducted by Missouri Canvassers last year determined that Missouri’s voter rolls are inflated.
“County clerks and people say that our voting equipment in Missouri can't connect to the internet,” Keelin said. “It can. In a sense, Missouri elections are more controlled by the voting machine companies than they are by the county clerks or by the citizens.”
The report further found that of 4,917 residences surveyed, a full 25% said there were voting irregularities in the form of ghost ballots, and stolen or lost votes.
"The issue here is that we just really need to strengthen the process for cleaning up our voter rolls," Keelin said. "There are several bills going through the Senate and the House to clean up the voter rolls and that was one of the things we talked to Secretary Ashcroft about was establishing residency requirements for who can actually vote in Missouri elections and how do we get past federal requirements to remove people that haven't voted or don't live at a particular address from the voter rolls."
Missouri shifted to electronic voting as a result of the alleged influence of the electronic voting machine lobby, according to Keelin.
“If we went to hand counting the ballots, we wouldn't have to worry about whether or not machines are certified because people would be doing the tabulating by hand,” he added.