Voter records put under microscope in Missouri sports betting amendment trial • Missouri Independent

A Cole County Circuit Court judge must soon decide whether Missouri voters will be able to  enshrine sports betting in the state’s constitution.

A lawsuit brought by two political strategists questions the validity of the signature verification process used by the Secretary of State’s Office. The proposal was certified for the November ballot after being deemed to have collected enough signatures in all but two congressional districts.

But over the course of a nearly seven-hour hearing on Thursday, both sides picked through individual voter records in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District after a petition management firm hired by the plaintiffs said it had found around 750 signatures that should have been deemed invalid — enough to drag the petition below the threshold needed to be placed on the ballot.

Attorneys representing the secretary of state and the sports betting campaign, Winning for Missouri Education, prodded at the petition management firm’s techniques.

Kevin Oglesby, a manager for National Political Consultants Inc — whose company has been investigated for misrepresenting initiative petitions they were hired to canvas for in Michigan in 2020 and 2022 — said he was granted access to petition signatures and voter registration cards through the secretary of state’s office.

With these documents, he testified that he checked through thousands of signatures and compiled a list of those he believes local election officials incorrectly counted as valid.

Marc Ellinger, a veteran Jefferson City attorney representing the plaintiffs, led Oglesby through stacks of signatures by pointing out names and asking what was wrong with the record.

Some, Oglesby said, had signatures that did not match the signature on the voter registration card. Others had different names than noted on the card. One example was someone who had been convicted of a felony and was therefore ineligible to vote.

Ellinger — who touts a focus on gaming law in his biography, including representing the Missouri Gaming Commission — handed out 12 binder-clipped stacks of names Oglesby said were “illegal.”

Assistant Attorney General Eric Kinnaw, who represented the secretary of state’s office, asked Oglesby if he knew whether those who had been deemed ineligible because of death or felony convictions could have been a qualified voter on the date they signed.

He didn’t know.

Chuck Hatfield, representing the sports betting campaign, led Oglesby back through some of the names. Some of them had not been counted in the secretary of state’s certification, he said.

Those with mismatched names were often women, he noted, pointing to a regulation that allows for those who have changed their names to be counted.

Scott Clark, deputy chief of staff for the secretary of state, testified  that there is a process local election authorities are trained on for those with mismatched names.