Missouri lawmakers consider making ballot initiatives harder for voters to pass

Missouri voters would be asked to make it harder for themselves to amend the state’s constitution under a raft of bills Republicans are pushing through the state legislature.

The bills target the ballot initiative process, in the wake of several liberal ballot measures that voters have approved in the past two election cycles.

Since 2018, ballot initiatives in Missouri have led voters to legalize medical marijuana, overturn a right-to-work law and expand eligibility for Medicaid.

Voters also approved, with 62% in support, the 2018 Clean Missouri measure that included redistricting reforms set to go into effect after the 2020 Census. Lawmakers undid that last year by winning voter approval of a ballot measure that repealed Clean Missouri.

Republican lawmakers say the legislation is necessary because the ballot initiative process has allowed outside interest groups too much of a role. The initiative process’ defenders, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Missouri Budget Project, say the measures would limit the ability of citizens to participate in the democratic process.

Last year’s two ballot measures drew close to $20 million in campaign contributions.

House Republicans on Feb. 17 passed through the elections committee a series of bills that raise the threshold for an initiative to make it onto the statewide ballot, and be voted into law.

To qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot, supporters currently need valid signatures from 8% of voters in six of Missouri’s eight Congressional districts. Those measures include last year’s Medicaid expansion proposal and medical marijuana legalization. Once on the ballot, the measures require a simple majority of votes to pass.

Lawmakers in both chambers are now considering proposals to raise the signature requirement to anywhere from 10% to 15% of voters, in all Congressional districts. The bills would also raise the bar for voter approval. Various bills would require majorities of 60%, two-thirds or a simple majority of all registered voters rather than voters who cast ballots.

Also under consideration is requiring the General Assembly to approve a constitutional amendment before it becomes a ballot measure, or raising the bar for voter approval if an initiative does not pass the statehouse.

Other measures would raise the filing fee for initiative petitions to $500 per cover sheet — or referendum sent to the Secretary of State for approval before it goes out for signatures. Another would prohibit judges from changing the language on ballot initiatives.

A Cole County judge did that last year on the ballot measure to repeal Clean Missouri.

The original Clean Missouri initiative made substantive changes to the redistricting process and required a nonpartisan state demographer to draw new lines, with a priority placed on partisan fairness and competitiveness.

Opponents slammed the initiative as intended to favor Democrats for state seats. Republican lawmakers passed another proposed constitutional amendment to repeal the initiative, putting it before voters for last November’s ballot.

In a legal challenge to the repeal, Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled that the summary of the amendment was “insufficient and unfair.” She said it failed to inform voters that adoption would “eliminate redistricting rules Missourians overwhelmingly adopted two years ago to combat political gerrymandering and replace them with a redistricting process similar in substance to the one they just voted to abandon.”

Joyce rewrote the summary. When state officials appealed, the Missouri Court of Appeals made further changes, undoing some of Joyce’s alterations. That amendment passed with 51% of the vote in November.

If approved by the General Assembly, the measures dealing with signature requirements and voting majorities would also be constitutional amendments that would have to go before Missouri voters.

Rep. Joe Adams, a Democrat from University City, pointed out that proponents of the measure that raises the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments to a supermajority of Missouri voters needs only a simple majority to gain approval under current law.

“If we’re going to change that kind of percentage, then it should be approved by that kind of percentage,” he said to the House elections committee Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Committee chairman Rep. Dan Shaul, a Republican from Imperial, on Feb 17 combined several of the measures into one bill, before the committee voted along party lines to advance it to the House.

He said he did not intend to make it burdensome on campaign volunteers and initiative proponents, many of whom testified to the committee last week that collecting signatures is already a labor intensive process. The committee received hundreds of public comments on the bills.

The bill “just protects our constitution slightly more,” Shaul said.

This story was originally published February 17, 2021 at 7:02 PM.