JEFFERSON CITY - Claire McCaskill’s claim that 150 public employees are being “donated’ to work on Election Day is raising new questions in light of Sunshine Law responses from officials in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas which show that not a single application or document is on file showing interest by public employees to work on election day.

The Missouri Republican Party last week filed Sunshine Law requests with St. Louis County, Jackson County, the City of St. Louis and Kansas City to determine the veracity of McCaskill’s statements that public employees were being recruited as Election Day judges rather than being donated for partisan political activity. In each response to the GOP request, officials said there is no documentation that exists confirming that public employees have voluntarily signed up to be Election Day judges.

Copies of all four responses are available at http://www.mogop.org/media/donatedworkers.pdf

Two weeks ago, McCaskill commented publicly about an apparent plan to use St. Louis and Kansas City public employees for Election Day activities: “….here (St. Louis) and in Kansas City the mayor and the county executive have donated 150 employees to work on the election on Election Day,” McCaskill said. Claire McCaskill later claimed that the employees were to work as partisan election judges, and not as campaign workers. But, the Cities and Counties produced no evidence to suggest that the public employees had voluntarily agreed to do that.

The position of election judge is a partisan position. An equal number of election judges must be present from each major political party. If 150 public employees of Kansas City and St. Louis are to serve as election judges, it appears the Democrat leaders plan to conscript them into those partisan jobs.

“Public employees should not be donated or selected to serve as partisan election day workers without their voluntary consent, and should never be coerced into serving in those positions” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “The fact that Democrat leaders have identified 150 public employees to be ‘donated’ to serve as partisan poll workers, without even asking them whether they are willing to serve, is very disturbing. It’s up to Claire McCaskill to come clean and tell Missourians the truth for a change.”

The rules of Jackson County, St. Louis County and the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City bar employees from participating in political campaigns and specifically prohibit ‘coercion’ of any taxpayer funded employees to participate in partisan political activities. The counties and cities did not produce one piece of paper showing that any public employee had voluntarily agreed to work on election day.