Jefferson County Clerk candidate Brent Myers on April 29 filed two pre-election challenges with the 23rd judicial circuit court, alleging his opponent, Steve Wyatt Earp, does not meet the minimum requirements to run in the Aug. 4 primaries.
Brent Myers
Myers and Earp filed with the Republican Party for the county clerk and central township committeeman positions.
Another Republican challenger, Jaclyn Riebold of Cedar Hill, is on the Aug. 4 ballot for the county clerk seat. One Democrat, Tracy Johnson of Herculaneum, is also vying for the position.
The clerk’s office serves as the election authority for the county, accepting candidate filings and coordinating elections and ballot issues. The office also provides licensing and notary services, along with maintaining public records such as campaign finance disclosures and tax levy certifications.
The county clerk is paid an annual salary of $86,120.
Myers, 46, of Hillsboro alleges Earp does not meet the residency requirements laid out in the Jefferson County Home Rule Charter. The charter requires candidates to live in the county for at least one year before filing for office, among other requirements. Myers alleges Earp lived, voted and paid taxes in St. Louis County last year, making him ineligible to run in the Aug. 4 election.
A hearing regarding the challenges is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, May 19, at the Jefferson County Courthouse, with Judge Joseph Alfred Rathert presiding.
Earp, 50, said he has complied with the law for registering for office. He said he moved to Hillsboro in late January 2025 and is renting a home on Redbird Lane. He owns a home in Oakville, which he is rehabbing and plans to transfer the ownership of it to his daughter, he said.
Earp said the challenges are an attempt to thwart the will of voters.
According to court documents, as of Monday morning, Earp has yet to be served in the two cases. Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department deputies first attempted to reach him on April 30, noting a car in the driveway of the home on Redbird Lane. Deputies again tried on March 6 and were unable to serve Earp.
“On advice of counsel, I can’t get into the details of the case; it will be argued in court,” Earp said. “Ultimately, this is an attempt by my opponents to not face me in the election, to not give the argument to the voters on the issue of hand counting. Both my opponents believe we should switch our electoral system away from electronic tabulators that we’ve had for a long time in Jefferson County and go to hand counting. Logistically, financially and just for accuracy purposes, it is really not a tenable position.”
Myers said previously, when he announced his candidacy, that his primary goal if he’s elected would be to ensure the county has secure elections. He said he wanted to revert to manually tallying all results on election day and stop using electronic ballot scanners.
Myers told the Leader on May 8 that his opinion on hand counting has changed. While he still maintains that hand counting is the most accurate way to conduct an election, he acknowledges the vast amount of work required to do so without ballot scanners.
“It’s going to take a lot of manpower to do that, and I’m estimating probably around 3,000 people. We don’t have that,” Myers said. “Election fraud has been on my mind for a number of years, and it could happen quickly. It could happen in one election. We could lose everything. So, for me, I just want to make sure that we don’t have any shenanigans in our elections.
“I still think (hand counting) is the most secure thing we can do, but we just don’t have the manpower to do it at this time.”
Myers said one reason he decided to challenge Earp’s qualifications for running in Jefferson County is due to a 2009 St. Louis jury ruling finding Earp guilty on two felony counts of stealing from an election campaign.
Earp was accused of overbilling St. Louis Community College while providing consulting services on a 2006 tax-rate proposal campaign. The jury recommended a six-year prison sentence, but a judge waived the sentence and Earp served five years on probation.
“When you have someone who has a history of two felony convictions related to an election campaign, and he wants to be in charge of the elections in Jefferson County, that’s a problem,” Myers said. “We need honest people in the office.”
Earp said the case was expunged in 2022, fully removing the charges from his records.
“For nearly 20 years, I have consistently maintained my innocence,” Earp said. “The reality is that my opponents are afraid of voters hearing my message about the dangers of hand-counting ballots and fundamentally changing an election system that already works. That is the real reason these challenges are being filed.”
Allegations
In his challenges for the county clerk and committeeman seats, Myers makes numerous allegations against Earp.
Myers is representing himself in the two challenges, saying it was difficult to find a lawyer who would take the case because of politics and the cost.
“This is tough, but I’m going to do my best,” he said.
Myers claims Earp changed his voter registration from St. Louis County to Jefferson County on Oct. 6, 2025. He also alleges Earp voted in St. Louis County on April 8, 2025, citing results from a St. Louis County Election Board open records request.
On the same day he filed for the clerk position, Myers alleges Earp received a traffic citation in Lake St. Louis, providing an address for a home on Hickory Hills Drive in Oakville.
Myers alleges Earp paid personal property taxes for vehicles in St. Louis County for the 2025 tax year on Jan. 6.
“Property taxes are paid in the county where you reside on the day of Jan. 1 of that year,” Earp said in an email to the Leader. “On Jan. 1 (2025), I was still a resident of St. Louis County.”
On May 7, Jefferson County Assessor Bob Boyer said he had no personal property assessment records for Earp. The deadline for filing a 2026 personal property assessment list in the county was March 1.
“He has not filed an assessment list for the 2026 assessment year,” Boyer said in a written statement to the Leader. “The last record I have of Steve W Earp is from 2015 at a residence in De Soto. The last personal property tax bill paid in Jefferson County by Mr. Earp was in 2014.”
Reason for running
Earp, a political consultant, said he moved to Hillsboro with no intent to run for office. He said he was motivated to file for candidacy when state Rep. Ken Waller died on Aug. 24, 2025.
Waller was elected Jefferson County’s first county executive in 2010 after the county made the switch to a charter form of government. He served in that role from 2011-2018 and then was the county clerk from 2019-2022.
He was elected as state representative for District 114 in 2022 and was serving his second term in that office at the time of his death.
“He was a guy who typically helped find candidates, good candidates, for these races,” Earp said. “It was on his to-do list to find someone for that office. Losing him, we lost that resource. We got down to the 11th hour, we didn’t have a candidate, and we have two hand counters coming in the office. So, I stepped forward because the integrity of our elections is that important.
“I thought, ‘I know what I’m doing. We can’t jeopardize our elections to an experimental system.’”
Earp said he’s worked with political candidates and on campaigns for more than 25 years.
“I was there, 10 feet away, when Kit Bond was banging on the podium in the Ramada downtown in 1998, talking about election fraud,” he said. “I ran Adam Schwadron’s campaign for secretary of state. That was an entire campaign about election security and tightening up our ship.”
Earp has two children, Sophia, 19, and Dempsey, 18, and two stepchildren, Morgan and Jacob. His partner, Rose Ghattas of Hannibal, is running for state representative for District 5.