Voters line up at a Columbia polling site on Nov. 8, 2022 (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).
A Missouri Senate committee heard testimony once again on Monday about raising the bar on the process for passing initiative petitions.
Initiatives petitions are measures proposed by citizens that appear on the ballot after an appropriate number of signatures are collected from voters. Republican senators led last year’s unsuccessful push to change the initiative petition process by adding additional barriers for an amendment to be added to Missouri’s Constitution.
Monday’s hearing before the Senate’s Committee on Local Government, Elections and Pensions focused on four resolutions that would redefine how Missourians can alter the state’s highest body of law.
Currently, the Missouri Constitution requires initiative petitions seeking to amend the constitution to have signatures equal to 8% of the legal voters in two-thirds of the eight congressional districts. Initiative petitions seeking to propose laws must have signatures equal to 5% of the legal voters in two-thirds of the eight congressional districts.
State Sen. Jason Bean, a Republican from Holcomb, is sponsoring a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution that would require petitioners to gather signatures from 15% of voters in all of the congressional districts. Petitioners wanting to propose laws would need signatures from 10% of voters from all congressional districts.
“Our state constitution is a sacred document … efforts to (change it) so should have a strong support across all of Missouri,” Bean said.
If any of the proposed resolutions pass the legislature, changes would also have to be approved by Missouri voters next year.
Bean’s legislation would nearly double the required amount of signatures in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District, which includes Boone County, to bring proposed laws and amendments to the ballot.
The resolution would also raise the bar to pass initiative petitions. Amendments are enacted when they receive a majority of votes under current law.
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The legislation would still require amendments to garner a simple majority of voters to pass, but adds a requirement that the number of votes cast in favor is at least 35% of the total number of ballots cast in the election.
An example of how this rule works comes from Ballotpedia: if 100,000 people voted in the election, but only 60,000 voted on the measure in question, the measure would require at least 35,000 “yes” votes for approval, even though 30,000 would be a simple majority.
State Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, labeled the 35% requirement as “an impossible threshold.”
The figure is pulled from Nebraska’s initiative petition process. Bean was unable to say how the 35% minimum had affected initiative petitions in the state during questioning from Nurrenbern.
The threshold would also entangle individual matters with larger elections.
“You can have a situation where a measure wouldn’t pass, even if 100% of the voters voted in favor of it, if they didn’t represent 35% of the people that actually came out in that election,” said Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, a nonpartisan advocacy group.
Three initiative petitions went into effect from the 2024 general election: removal of the state abortion ban (Amendment 3), increase the minimum wage and require paid sick leave (Prop A), and legalization of sports betting (Amendment 2).
If Bean’s proposed amendment was in effect during the 2024 election, only one district in the state would have had enough signatures to put Amendment 3 on the ballot.
Republicans view the current initiative process as a vehicle for progressive forces to supplant Missouri’s Republican supermajority.
“I’ve become convinced (initiative petition) in its current form is being used to hijack our state constitution to corrupt Missouri,” said Dave Robertson, a citizen from Jefferson County who said he has been involved in grassroots politics.
He argued the process is “abused as a vehicle to further an agenda that is at odds with the vast majority of our legislature and most people of this state.”
Other initiative petition resolutions under consideration in the Senate seek to limit the role of foreign interference in Missouri’s initiative petition process. All four resolutions raise questions of representation.
Under Bean’s proposed amendment, votes from small districts would carry more weight than votes from more populous districts.
Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican rom Ash Grove and sponsor of a similar initiative petition bill, opened his remarks with a reference to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” an allegorical tale of barnyard animals organizing to create a more equitable farm.
Jeff Smith, representing the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, turned Moon’s reference.
“The propaganda slogan was ‘four legs good, two legs bad,’” he said. “We shouldn’t be saying rural voters good, suburban voters bad, or exurban voters good, urban voters bad.”
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.
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