According to one Old North resident, proponents of a ballot petition to change the way judges are selected in parts of Missouri used adolescents to deceive the public when gathering the signatures the group needs to get its initiative on the ballot.
Graham Lane, a professor at St. Louis Community College–Meramec, said he was stopped between 4:30 and 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 29 at 13th Street and North Market, near his home, by two girls, both African-American. One, whose age he estimated at 10-13 years, approached him. When he responded, he said, the other, who “might have been a year or two older,” crossed the street.
He said the girl who approached him said they were students at Carr Lane School gathering signatures and, if they gathered enough, “somebody was going to give them air conditioners for their school.”
Lane said when he asked for details about what he was being asked to sign, the girl rolled her eyes and “acted as if she had been trained to respond to this question.”
He said the sheet he was being asked to sign was tucked into a three-ring binder, and she “held it for me to sign so I couldn’t see what I was signing.”
When he asked her to see it, Lane said, he was allowed to untuck the sheet and read what it said. He remembered it had three sentences, and the gist of it was that judges would be allowed to be elected.
Lane didn’t memorize the language, but the incident struck him as odd. He told a friend, who connected him with The St. Louis American. Of current ballot initiatives with active signature-gathering campaigns, Lane’s description only could apply to the initiative submitted by James Harris
of Better Courts for Missouri.
Their petition language includes three sentences, including that, if passed, the initiative would allow voters to “select all judges through partisan elections.” This initiative is aimed to repeal the Missouri Non-Partisan Court Plan, a national model for keeping the electoral process and campaign fundraising out of the judicial process.
A call was placed to Better Courts for Missouri on Tuesday. A man who answered the phone said James Harris handled media calls but was out of town. The reporter’s phone number was left for Harris and also emailed to the email address of record for the group, but the call was not returned.
Carr Lane Visual and Performing Arts Middle School, located at 1004 N Jefferson Ave., was called. The principal, Alphonso Warfield, said the school has new air conditioning units that were installed only a year ago.
“Our school is fully air-conditioned,” Warfield said.
He said he was not aware of any student participation in any ballot effort.
“There are so many scams, I don’t let anybody talk to our kids. I don’t let anybody on the campus,” Warfield said.
The incident Lane described occurred just days before the deadline to submit signatures, which was 5 p.m. Sunday, May 2. The Missouri Secretary of State’s office said signatures had been submitted for the Better Courts for Missouri effort by deadline.
The Fired Up Missouri political website reports that Better Courts for Missouri retained Lincoln Strategy Group of Tempe, Arizona, formerly known as Sproul and Associates, to help gather signatures. The firm has done millions of dollars of work for the Republican National Committee and Republican presidential campaigns.
The firm has been investigated for allegedly destroying Democratic voter registration forms in multiple states. In Arizona, Lincoln Strategy Group employed deceptive tactics – including systematically lying about the bill – to push a ballot initiative, according to Salon.
Lisa Bragg, who worked for the company in West Virginia, told Salon, “They were asking me to be deceptive and to go behind people’s back. I thought that was wrong and sneaky.” The firm denied that and numerous similar claims by other former employees.
A call placed to Lincoln Strategy Group by The American Wednesday morning was not returned.
The signed petitions turned in by Better Courts for Missouri will now be organized and reviewed by the Secretary of State’s office and then sent on to the local election authorities so the signatures can be verified against voter registration records.
Lane now wonders how many of those signatures were gathered by adolescents under false pretenses.
He said of the girls who stopped him, “They were walking through my neighborhood with three-ring binders, and it looked like they had a whole bunch of signatures on there.”
Ken Morley, an advisor to Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund, which organized opposition to the petition effort, said, “Those leading the signature collection efforts have a history of voter fraud. We plan to inspect every single signature to protect Missouri’s non-partisan system of selecting judges against foul play.”
The Secretary of State’s Office said if it received complaints of criminal conduct, such as using a petition gatherer under the age of 18, it would notify local authorities. Contact its Elections Division at (573) 751-2301, (800) 669-8683 or elections@sos.mo.gov.