Missouri state Rep. Barbara Phifer declined to run for another term and was planning to retire even though she was eligible to spend four more years in the House.
The Kirkwood Democrat chose instead to run for secretary of state. Phifer said the stakes are high enough for her to run for statewide office.
“This is the single most important statewide race in Missouri this year, and I could see that a year and a half ago,” Phifer said on an episode of St. Louis Public Radio’s Politically Speaking. “And so I told my husband, even as I was planning to retire, ‘Honey, you just need to know that if we don't have somebody on the Democratic side with experience who's running for secretary of state, I'm going to do that.”
Phifer is squaring off against Republican state Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg resident who talked about his secretary of state platform earlier this year on Politically Speaking.
Phifer and Hoskins agree on a number of issues, like making Election Day a state holiday. But they strongly diverge on Hoskins’ desire to make local election officials hand-count ballots, as opposed to using vote-counting machines.
Hoskins said that while he couldn’t necessarily force local election officials to hand-count ballots, he would provide guidance about how to tabulate votes without using machines.
“I know a lot of them are nervous and a lot of them are scared about hand-counting ballots,” Hoskins said. “It’s already in Missouri state statute — the process and procedures on hand-counting ballots. And I will provide all the education and training for any county clerk that wants to hand-count ballots.”
Phifer, on the other hand, believes that requiring county clerks to hand-count ballots will make it much more difficult to give Missourians results after polls close on Election Day.
“Do machines do a better job of tabulating than people by hand? All the evidence that I have seen would say that machines are far better at doing that statistically,” Phifer said. “How quickly is an election determined between machine tabulation and hand counting? All the evidence I've seen would say that machine counting is far more rapid statistically.”
Phifer also said she strongly opposes efforts to make the Missouri Constitution harder to amend with what’s been called a “concurrent majority.”
While there are many versions of this proposal, one that nearly passed the legislature would have required a constitutional amendment to get a majority of the statewide vote and also pass in five out of eight congressional districts.
“Whatever the state of people in the state of Missouri decide, it's the job of the secretary of state to implement that,” Phifer said. “I personally am not opposed if people decide they want to make it 53% or 55%. I may not vote that way, but that's the decision for the people of Missouri. What I adamantly oppose is this ridiculous idea of ‘concurrent majority,’ which destroys one person, one vote. And frankly, I think it's probably unconstitutional.”
Phifer also said it’s possible Republicans temporarily abandon efforts to make the Missouri Constitution harder to amend if voters approve a measure legalizing abortion later this year.
“I am going to guess that if or when it passes, Republicans will immediately try to start gathering signatures to undo that amendment, and then maybe after that, they would want to have a change to the initiative petition process,” she said.
Here’s what else Phifer discussed on the program:
- How she would handle some of the other duties of the secretary of state’s office, including providing money for local libraries.
- Even though Hoskins angered casinos and sports teams by holding up efforts to legalize sports betting, Phifer said she hasn’t heard from either of those groups about providing financial support for her campaign. Phifer, a retired United Methodist pastor, said she’s not a fan of gambling in general.
- How she would try to write ballot language in a fair manner, adding that she thought Ashcroft went over the line with how he tried to describe the abortion initiative.
