The Editorial Board
Missouri voters in recent years have used the ballot initiative process to rein in the worst instincts of an increasingly radical-right state Legislature. Voters have amended the state constitution to expand Medicaid coverage, to legalize recreational marijuana and sports wagering and -- most crucially -- to restore reasonable reproductive rights, reversing the Handmaid's Tale hellscape that lawmakers imposed on Missouri women after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
In each of those cases, the issue was put on the ballot by activists collecting signatures, generally over the opposition of the state's ruling Republicans, and then passed by voters statewide.
You would think the GOP supermajority in Jefferson City, pondering this clear evidence that they are too far right for even the decidedly conservative voters of this state, might be moved to moderate their stances. Instead, they're on the verge of opting for Plan B: making it realistically impossible for voters to amend the state constitution.
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It's nothing less than a power grab by politicians against their own constituents. Those constituents (of both parties) should register their opposition before it's too late.
The agenda for the special legislative session continuing this week is two-fold. As recently discussed in this space, legislators are obediently carrying out President Donald Trump's plainly corrupt orders to stack next year's midterm elections with an unprecedented mid-decade regerrymandering stunt designed to snatch away one of Missouri's two Democrat-held U.S. House seats.
Separately, they are also planning to move the goalposts for passage of citizen-initiative constitutional amendments to a distance of, roughly, the orbit of Jupiter.
Should the latter scheme pass this week, it will mean that, in order to change the state constitution, voter-initiated ballot measures won't merely have to win a majority of votes statewide, as is the current system. They will also have to win a majority in each of the state's eight (soon-to-be-regerrymandered) congressional districts.
The goal is clearly to undermine the voters in the state's two big urban centers, St. Louis and Kansas City -- which both happen to be mostly Democratic -- effectively giving veto power to the more sparsely populated outstate regions. By some calculations, it will mean upward of 95% of the state's voters could support a constitutional amendment and still see it fall to defeat.
In case that isn't appalling enough, consider this: The measure, if passed, would apply only to constitutional amendments that are put on the ballot by petition signatures from the public. When legislators put constitutional amendments on the ballot via a legislative vote (one of the two ways to launch such ballot measures), those amendments will still require only a simple majority statewide to pass.
Rules for thee but not for me, says Missouri's ruling party.
An initial House vote Monday on the measure passed mostly along party lines, but with five dissenting votes from Republicans. Even within a GOP that can (and usually does) do virtually any hyper-partisan thing it wants in Missouri, some within the party apparently understand this isn't something they should be doing.
The only positive thing that can be said about this measure is that it applies only to constitutional amendments and not to other ballot measures. Residents would still be able to change state law via citizen-initiated ballot measures passed with a simple majority, as they did last year in passing a referendum raising the state minimum wage and establishing sick-leave rights.
But that's not much of a comfort because, unlike a constitutional amendment, ballot measures that merely change state statutes can be rolled back at will by the Legislature -- which, in their infinite contempt for the voters, is exactly what lawmakers did earlier this year regarding that referendum.
The current measure to make it almost impossible to pass citizen-led constitutional amendments will, if legislators approve it this week, have to also be approved by voters statewide. That particular referendum, to set an impossibly high bar for future amendments, would itself require only a simple majority vote statewide. In a real way, it would represent the voters' last chance to protect their voice in a fair vote.
Don't wait for that final showdown. Voters of conscience should loudly inform their state lawmakers, now, that this bid to put Missouri's constitution outside the reach of Missouri's voters is unacceptable.
Contact information for both Missouri House and Senate members is available at senate.mo.gov/legislookup.
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