Of course there was no fraud

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft effectively admitted last week that his party has concocted from whole cloth the assertion that election fraud was rampant in the 2020 election and therefore justifies the draconian new voting restrictions that Republicans have been jamming through state legislatures around the country.

There was minimal to no discernible fraud. The effect on the election outcome was nil.

But to hear Republican leaders around the country talk about it, election irregularities and fraud required immediate action. The election was stolen. President Donald Trump was robbed of his rightful second term.

It was utter nonsense. But the stolen-election myth has been repeated so often that nearly 60 percent of Republicans accept it as fact.

Ashcroft now acknowledges the myth. As Missourians headed into the 2020 election, Ashcroft gave a speech in which he bragged about how, under his watch, the state had conducted four “safe, secure elections” last year. They were fraud-free, by his own admission.

Yet Ashcroft sees the need to prevent future nonexistent fraud. “I feel really good about the security we have at the state level,” he told lawmakers in February. He now wants lawmakers to revive a photo ID requirement before voters may cast a ballot. As the Post-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson reported, Ashcroft also wants county election officials to be required to purge their voter rolls.

At least Ashcroft, who plans to run for governor in 2024, is honest about what’s really going on here. It’s not because something happened. It’s because something might happen—such as increased voter participation that could undermine Republican domination.