Rep. Barbara Phifer, D-St. Louis, has received her party’s nomination for Secretary of State. Phifer is basing her campaign on the name of the southwest Missouri town where her family’s farm was before she was born – Fair Play – and uses that against current Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft for the reason she’s running for higher office.
“We have a situation in the Secretary of State’s office right now where the current Secretary of State has been willing to lie on ballot language and we just can’t have that,” Phifer said. “So, I’m running to make sure that every citizen in Missouri knows that there is fair play.”
Phifer expresses concern about ballot language, stating that Missouri needs to have a secretary of state that will be honest, impartial, fair, and provide accurate information when there is a ballot question. Regarding current Secretary Ashcroft, Phifer said that Missouri currently does not have that, and she’s worried that Missouri will not in the future, either.
Court challenges have occurred over the years when the state has had Republican and Democratic secretaries of state.
She takes issue with her Republican opponent – Sen. Denny Hoskins’ campaign promise to hand count ballots if elected.
“Shane Schoeller told me that, just in Greene County, if they were going to do hand counting on the November ballot, it would be something like over 5 million individual things that they would have to hand count,” she said.
Hoskins strongly believes that the state should not rely on electronic voting machines. Phifer said his comment is a scare tactic.
“This is a strategy to induce chaos in voting,” said Phifer. “It’s not about making our voting safer. It’s simply to destroy democracy.”
Not only is Hoskins basing his campaign on hand counting every ballot, he also wants video surveillance at Missouri polling sites. Phifer disapproves.
“It’s the chaos caucus. Want to destroy democracy? You do things like that,” she explained. “Also, there’s just a very pragmatic thing. Who’s going to pay for that? How are we going to be surveilled? Who’s in charge? It’s great to spout nonsense, but it falls apart when you really look at what it’s all about.”
Phifer was elected to her first two-year term as a state representative in 2020. Prior to that, she served as a United Methodist pastor for more than four decades, including for five years in South America.
She takes on Republican Denny Hoskins and Libertarian Carl Herman Freese in November.
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