Two county clerks report being contacted by the DOJ seeking access to election machines made by Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the center of false allegations of vote rigging during the 2020 presidential election
By: Jason Hancock
Missouri Independent
The U.S. Department of Justice has been reaching out to Missouri election officials requesting access to voting equipment used in the 2020 presidential election.
According to a memo produced by the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities, at least two county clerks have been contacted in recent weeks by Andrew McCoy “Mac” Warner, a DOJ official. While serving as West Virginia’s secretary of state, Warner falsely claimed the CIA and FBI colluded with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump.
The memo was shared with election officials across the state and obtained by The Independent through a public records request.
Warner requested Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis and McDonald County Clerk Jessica Cole allow the DOJ to “access, physically inspect and perhaps take physical custody” of election equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems that was used in the November 2020 election, according to the memo.
In an interview with The Independent, Davis said he informed the DOJ his office purchased new equipment and no longer has the machines used in the 2020 election. But even if he had those machines, Davis said it would be illegal for him to allow anyone access to them.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “The laws prohibit us from allowing anybody to touch our equipment.”
Davis said he’s not sure why the DOJ wants to access machines used in the 2020 election, which Trump won in Missouri with 57% of the vote. But after the call from the DOJ, Davis said he was also contacted by former Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft urging him to comply with the DOJ request.
In a statement included in the memo, Cole said custody, maintenance, preparation, testing and storage of election equipment are the responsibility of the local election authority. Allowing unauthorized access, she said, is a crime.
“These safeguards exist to protect the security, accuracy and integrity of our elections,” she said.
Livingston County Clerk Sherry Parks, who serves as president of the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities, echoed Cole’s point in an email to The Independent, noting that while “robust pre- and post-election equipment testing is open to the public for observation, it is illegal to allow unauthorized access or tampering to election equipment.”
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
Ashcroft, who in July was appointed by the governor to serve as an administrative law judge, said in a brief interview on Tuesday: “If I were involved, it was a request from someone to help connect people together. And it would have been something that I’d done on my own time, not during work hours. And it would have just been, ‘Hey, do you know someone? Can you give me their number?’ That sort of thing.”
A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Denny Hoskins said in an email to The Independent that Hoskins was contacted by the DOJ hoping to speak with local election officials “for more information and context. Our office referred them to the clerks directly.”
In recent months, the DOJ has been contacting states demanding access to sensitive election and voting data. The department has sent letters to at least nine states asking for information related to voter list maintenance in the states under the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, according to Stateline.
The focus on Dominion machines harkens back to the web of baseless conspiracy theories spread by Trump supporters in the years following his 2020 defeat that the company was at the heart of a scheme designed to rig the presidential election.
Those lies about a stolen election helped fuel the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and continue to percolate through Trump’s political base even after he won a second term last year.
Dominion won a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News in 2023 after the network repeatedly promoted lies that the company’s machines had been used to flip votes away from Trump in an effort to help Biden win the White House.
More recently, right-wing cable channel Newsmax agreed in August to pay Dominion $67 million to settle a libel lawsuit based on similar false claims of election rigging.
Davis, who still uses Dominion machines, said he knows there are some people who question the integrity of the 2020 election.
“But it’s been proven, especially here in Jasper County and in the State of Missouri, that our election results are the results of the elections,” he said. “It’s proven that the machines count the ballots correctly.”