Missouri Republicans renew effort to raise bar for voter changes to state constitution

After a package of voting law changes failed last year, Missouri Republicans are renewing their efforts to make it harder to pass state constitutional amendments at the ballot box.

The House Elections and Elected Officials committee heard a proposal Wednesday to raise the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment from a majority vote to two-thirds. It would also increase by more than 100,000 the number of signatures required to place initiatives on the ballot.

The measures are part of a series of election law changes that Republicans made a priority last year, including the requirement of a photo ID to vote. The House passed them easily but the measures were among several items that failed to clear a divided state Senate.

The Missouri bills reflected a broad push by Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the country to tighten ballot access.

Liberal groups have had success using the ballot box to enact policies blocked by a Republican-dominated legislature. They include repeal of a lawmaker-passed right-to-work law and raising the state minimum wage.

Several successful ballot measures have been enacted through constitutional amendments, including the legalization of medical marijuana in 2018 (receiving just shy of two-thirds of the vote), changing the state redistricting process to emphasize partisan competitiveness in 2018 (receiving 62%) and expanding eligibility for Medicaid (receiving 53%) in 2020.

After the redistricting amendment, lawmakers placed a measure on the ballot repealing most of the changes. That also passed in 2020.

“Right now the threshold is too low,” said Rep. Mike Henderson, a Bonne Terre Republican pushing to raise the vote and signature-gathering thresholds.

He said the state constitution should be a “living document” but not “an ever-expanding document.”

To get a measure on the ballot, petitioners currently need to gather signatures from 8 percent of legal voters in each of two-thirds of the state’s eight Congressional districts. That is about 171,000 signatures, based on 2020 election turnout numbers, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Henderson’s legislation would raise the requirement to 10% across all eight districts, which he said would make the process fairer by giving rural voters a greater say in what made it to the ballot. The change would increase the total signatures required to about 300,000, though critics said the actual number would be greater to account for signatures that cannot be verified.

If passed, Henderson’s proposal itself would change the constitution, and require a statewide vote on this November’s ballot to go into effect. That vote would be subject to current rules, and only need a majority to pass.

He said the two-thirds vote threshold “was just a number I thought was reasonable,” and noted some recent constitutional amendments still would have cleared that bar.

Democrats have made resisting changes to the state’s election laws among their top priorities this session.

Rep. Joe Adams, a University City Democrat, called the proposal an attempt “to deny people the right to change the constitution.”

“What are you trying to fix and how is it broken?” he said. “I want to make sure Missouri residents have all the rights they currently have.”

Henderson and other lawmakers criticized the influence of out-of-state interest groups in Missouri elections. Other said some changes should be made only through the legislature.

“Do you think that bingo and marijuana belong in a constitution?” said Rep. Jeff Coleman, a Grain Valley Republican, referring to an amendment voters passed in 2018 that removed a ban on advertising bingo games. “I do not think those types of issues belong in a constitution.”

Backing the changes is a Florida-based policy group called the Opportunity Solutions Project, a 501(c)(4) which does not have to disclose its donors.It has worked on initiative-petitions in several states and fought Medicaid expansion efforts.