A former Missouri election-integrity director has sued Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and the state, alleging he was fired after reporting suspected misconduct inside the office that oversees elections. The claims are unproven, and Hoskins’ office told The Associated Press it could not comment on pending personnel litigation.

Nicholas La Strada’s petition filed in Cole County Circuit Court seeks damages and other relief under Missouri’s public-employee whistleblower law. La Strada, a former Pettis County clerk whom Hoskins hired in January 2025, says he was dismissed effective May 1, 2026, after raising objections involving the state voter-registration system, a certified municipal-election result and public spending connected to a local ballot question.

What the lawsuit alleges

The filing says an April meeting included discussion of creating a false anonymous submission about Missouri’s centralized voter-registration database for use in a federal Help America Vote Act proceeding. La Strada alleges other participants discussed concealing the submission’s source with a burner phone and an internet-address scrambler. According to the petition, he reported the conversation to Hoskins, later testified in the federal proceeding and was fired soon afterward.

La Strada also alleges Hoskins’ office improperly directed a retabulation of write-in votes after officials had certified a one-vote city-council result in Marshall. The retabulation produced a different winner, the lawsuit says. A detailed account by the Missouri Independent reports that La Strada contends only a court could order such a change after certification.

A third allegation concerns St. Louis County’s use of public money for a mailer opposing Proposition B in April 2025. The petition says La Strada warned Hoskins that the expenditure appeared to violate election law. Those assertions, like the lawsuit’s other claims, have not been resolved by a judge or jury.

Missouri Revised Statute 105.055 bars public employers from disciplining employees for disclosures they reasonably believe show legal violations, mismanagement, abuse of authority or waste of public resources. In a civil case, an employee must first show by clear and convincing evidence that a protected report was made or was about to be made; the employer then must demonstrate that the discipline did not result from that report.

The same statute allows an employee alleging retaliation to bring a civil action within one year and permits a court to award actual damages, litigation costs and reasonable attorney fees. It also provides an administrative appeal route for state employees. Those provisions establish potential remedies; they do not establish that retaliation occurred in this case.

The dispute therefore is not simply whether La Strada made serious allegations. It will turn on evidence about what was said, what he reported, why Hoskins removed him and whether the reported conduct falls within the statute. The AP reported that the election-integrity director position remains vacant. The lawsuit now puts the office’s internal handling of those election questions—and the stated reason for La Strada’s firing—before a state court.