Missouri Secretary of State Talks Election Integrity

Missouri’s Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is passionate about election integrity, and he has a clear idea of what it looks like: citizenship verification, hand-counted ballots, clean voting rolls, and absolutely no machines.

Hoskins, who formerly served in the state’s Legislature, assumed the office of secretary of state in January—a position that holds wide-reaching authority to issue rules and guidance for how elections are conducted.

He told The Daily Signal that he beat opponents in the Republican primary by doubling down on promises to aggressively audit the electoral system.

“I really focused on election integrity, as far as auditing the voter rolls,” he said. “I said that I wanted to hire a director of election integrity to really focus on election integrity matters in the state of Missouri. And I said I didn’t trust the machines. I’ve always said I believe the most secure elections are in person on election day with a photo ID and a paper ballot.”

No Machines—Just Paper Ballots

Hoskins explained that he views any system connected to the internet as fundamentally vulnerable to attacks from bad actors, and that hand counting ballots is a safer system.

“We did [hand counting] before we had the machines in the state of Missouri. We’ve done it in some special elections, municipal elections in the state of Missouri,” said Hoskins. “I do have questions about the machines, and we saw in Puerto Rico in their primary election in the Summer of 2024 they had software issues where the ballots, the vote count, didn’t turn out the same when they hand counted the ballots.”

Hoskins added that his office regularly receives cyberattacks—a reason for his opposition to voting machines.

“We have foreign governments and foreign entities trying to hack into our election systems at the secretary of state office every day,” Hoskins said. “We have foreign hackers trying to influence and hack into our systems every day in the state of Missouri.”

Complying With Trump’s Priorities

Hoskins entered his office at a time of great litigation over the issue of who decides how elections are held.

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the federal U.S. Election Assistance Commission to implement proof-of-citizenship requirements. The order also conditions federal election-related funds on whether or not states comply with policies such as citizenship verification.

The order is being challenged in court cases by multiple states and progressive organizations. And White House attempts to help oversee regulate elections may be difficult due to the constitution granting states powers over the time, place, and manner of congressional elections.

But in the meantime, Hoskins says his state is getting on the same page as Trump, even though the White House can’t do everything.

“I think it’s always going to be a patchwork [of different regulations across the country] because every state has different election laws,” Hoskins said. “I mean, we don’t want the federal government to control our elections. We want that done on the state and local level. And so, we’re always going to follow state law first, but we are trying to comply with every one of Trump’s election executive orders.”

He continued, “There’s some things that we already do. Trump called for paper ballots. That’s already the law in the state of Missouri.”

In November, 68.4% of Missouri voters voted for Amendment 7, a constitutional ballot measure to ban ranked choice voting and require proof of citizenship. Hoskins wants to make these changes happen.

“I prefer legislative action as far as requiring proof of citizenship to vote, but with Missouri passing Amendment seven last November to change our law to say only citizens can vote, I think it’s upon me as a chief election officer [to figure out] how are we going to make that happen.” he said.

Right now, Hoskins is focused on cleaning out the state’s voter rolls—a practice he thinks is vital for maintaining trust in the system.

“We can just continue to clean up our voter rolls. It’s not a one and done, in my opinion. It’s ongoing voter list maintenance of making sure we only have eligible voters on the voter rolls in the state of Missouri,” he told The Daily Signal.

The other big fight Hoskins is focused on is initiative petition reform—making it harder for groups to push and fund constitutional ballot measures. Hoskins supports the Missouri Legislature’s current work to create a higher threshold for a constitutional amendment measure.

Hoskins said that outside groups have abused the system to push left-wing ballot initiatives in the state.

”We had Amendment 3, which was the pro-abortion ballot issue. We had millions of dollars pour in from not only out of state, but out of country,” Hoskins told The Daily Signal. 

The Missouri state legislature is currently advancing legislation to raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments by referendum, as opposed to the simple majority currently required. The legislation will require voter approval.

 In November, three ballot measures led to the legalization of sports gambling, an increase in the minimum wage, and a constitutional codification of the right to abortion in the Missouri Constitution.

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