Missouri politicians make appearances at Mike Lindell’s Election Crime Bureau event

As the first day of Mike Lindell’s Election Crime Bureau Summit concluded, several high profile guests could be spotted in the crowd.

Apart from national figures such as Steve Bannon, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn and Lou Dobbs, Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel and U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison of the state’s 7th Congressional District made appearances.

Burlison was featured on Bannon’s War Room streaming channel, which was broadcasting live from the event. He spoke about holding bureaucrats responsible through funding cuts.

“I would use the Holman Rule and cut some funding because that’s the only way you’re going to send a message to these phony bureaucrats,” Burlison told Bannon.

Eigel spent time speaking with guests and constituents in attendance at the event. He said that he had previously met many of the grassroots organizers through other encounters.

“The folks I’m meeting here are interested in ensuring that the elections that we’re conducting in the state of Missouri are accountable and transparent, and I think that’s a great thing,” Eigel said.

How Missouri stacks up in Lindell’s rating of election security

Six hours of Wednesday’s event were spent hearing speakers from all 50 states evaluate the security of their elections. Missouri ranked 51/100, according to the event's rating, a sharp increase from both the 2018 and 2020 elections.

States were ranked on their use of single day voting, paper and hand counted ballots, voter ID requirements, precinct-level ballot counting, local voter registration management and the ability to fully audit the vote. States lost points for using ballot drop boxes, mail-in voting and ranked choice voting.

Missouri’s recent implementation of strict voter ID laws and single day voting coupled with new restrictions on mail-in voting caused its score to rise 16 points, up from 34/100 in the 2020 election.

More: Election conspiracy theories, talk of divine mandate at Mike Lindell's Springfield event

Representing Missouri in this segment, Linda Rantz, a member of conservative election integrity groups Missouri Canvassers and Cause of America, championed the implementation of hand-counted paper ballots in Osage County in April.

“We want everyone in the country to understand, human beings can count ballots,” Rantz said. "They can do it accurately, they can do it the same day. And I will tell you, it saves a lot of money, no matter what they're saying.”

However, in May, Nicci Kammerich, the county clerk and election authority in Osage County, sent a letter to the editor of The Unterrified Democrat, a local print newspaper founded in 1866, about the experience.

“A majority of our election judges raised concern of hand count and asked to please not do hand count again or they will have to quit being an election judge, as it is very overwhelming and time consuming,” Kammerich wrote.

She consulted with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft about conducting an accurate hand-counted election. According to her letter, he recommended that they test their results using a voting machine. Kammerich is unsure that the county will continue using the hand-count system.

“After considering all factors of this election and comparing it to other elections that are similar, I fear that if we were to continue hand counting, it would cost us more in time, money, losing volunteers, and accuracy of votes,” Kammerich wrote.

All Missouri counties are required to hand count all of the ballots from 5% of their precincts in each election, to spot-check the accuracy of the voting machines. According to Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon, that process usually takes more than 8 hours for fewer than 2,000 ballots.

At the Mike Lindell Moment of Truth Summit last year, Lindell urged attendees en masse to request the cast vote records for their states. County clerks around the country were inundated with requests for these documents just prior to the 2022 general election.

A cast vote record is an electronic representation of how voters voted, and Lindell’s supporters hoped they would reveal algorithms that stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump. However, experts say that these documents can’t be used to detect such a pattern and have little use to anyone other than researchers or auditors.

Lindell specifically called out Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller by name for filing a lawsuit against Laurie Huddleston, one of many people overloading his office with requests for cast vote records. Schoeller is one of the candidates for Missouri Secretary of State in 2024.

More: Greene County Clerk asks judge to rule on release of data sought by 2020 election deniers

“A nice lady went to get the cast vote records, and they charged her,” Lindell said. “That guy pressed charges. A guy named Shane Schoeller or something, and now he’s running for Secretary of State?”

If he had his way, Lindell would like to see all the voting machines melted down and turned into prison bars, as one T-shirt sold at the event proudly proclaims.

In lieu of voting machines, Lindell and other speakers at the event want to bring back hand-counted paper ballots across the country. This system is currently used in France, a fact touted by Lindell.

He told attendees that he consulted with election authorities across the globe to devise his plan to secure elections immediately. This plan will be revealed on Thursday at 1pm, both at the event and live-streamed on FrankSpeech.com.

Speakers ignite the crowd with calls to fight

A panel composed of Bannon, Lindell, Flynn and Kurt Olsen delivered an evening address to onlookers, rallying supporters to fight for election security.

Bannon and Lindell led the crowd in chants of “USA,” “Trump” and “Fight” — three words well suited to summarize the theme of their discussion.

What began as a call to secure elections quickly blossomed into a pseudo Trump rally, with the panel weighing in on his recent indictments and the opposing candidates. Repeatedly calling him “our great real President Donald Trump,” Bannon placed Trump’s historical importance next to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Alluding to a divine mandate to secure elections, Flynn compared this mission to warfare, casting the crowd as soldiers. Flynn, a former Trump advisor, was promised a return to status by the former president, if he is reelected in 2024.

“It's like disciples, if you want to put it in biblical terms,” Flynn said. “You are apostles. You're anointed to go back out to your states, and activate as many people as you can.”

Following this panel, Lou Dobbs, a former reporter for Fox News, delivered an address on the State of the Nation. This was Dobbs' first speaking engagement since Fox News dismissed him in February 2021, following the filing of a defamation lawsuit against the news network by the voting machine company Dominion.

Dobbs accused former President Barack Obama of being President Biden’s puppetmaster, while also taking jabs at Republicans he called RINOs — "Republicans in name only."

“The RINOs are simply collaborators with the Marxist party that some call the Democrat Party,” Dobbs said.

He and other speakers took repeated shots at the news media, saying all outlets who disagree with their belief that the 2020 election was stolen are fake news.

“These journalists, in some cases, are really screwed up people,” said former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Missouri politicians appear at Mike Lindell’s Election Crime Bureau