On Monday, a Missouri Senate committee heard testimony again about raising the bar for passing initiative petitions.
Initiative petitions are measures proposed by citizens and placed on the ballot after a sufficient number of signatures are collected from voters. Last year, Republican senators led an unsuccessful effort to change the initiative petition process by imposing additional barriers to adding an amendment to Missouri’s constitution.
The Senate Committee on Local Government, Elections, and Pensions held a hearing on Monday to discuss four resolutions that would change how Missourians can amend the state’s highest body of law.
Currently, initiative petitions seeking to amend the Missouri Constitution must have signatures from 8% of legal voters in two-thirds of the eight congressional districts. Initiative petitions attempting to propose legislation must have signatures from 5% of 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 obtain signatures from 15% of voters in all congressional districts. Petitioners seeking to propose legislation would need the signatures of 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,” said Bean.
If any of the proposed resolutions pass the legislature, changes must also be approved by Missouri voters next year.
Bean’s legislation would nearly double the number of signatures required to get proposed laws and amendments on the ballot in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District, which includes Boone County.
The resolution would also raise the bar for passing initiative petitions. Amendments are adopted when they receive a majority of votes under current law.
The legislation requires amendments to pass with a simple majority of voters, but it also requires that the number of votes cast in favor be at least 35% of the total number of ballots cast in the election.
Ballotpedia provides an example of how this rule works: if 100,000 people voted in the election but only 60,000 voted on the measure in question, the measure would need at least 35,000 “yes” votes to pass, despite the fact that 30,000 is a simple majority.
State Senator Maggie Nurrenbern, a Democrat from Kansas City, described the 35% requirement as “an impossible threshold.”
The figure is based on Nebraska’s initiative petition process. Bean was unable to explain how the 35% minimum had affected initiative petitions in the state when questioned by Nurrenbern.
The threshold would also entangle individual issues with larger elections.
“You can have a situation where a measure would not pass, even if 100% of the voters voted in favor of it, if they didn’t represent 35% of the people who actually came out in that election,” said Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, a nonpartisan advocacy organization.
Three initiative petitions went into effect with the 2024 general election: repealing the state abortion ban (Amendment 3), raising the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave (Prop A), and legalizing sports betting (Amendment 2).
If Bean’s proposed amendment had been in effect during the 2024 election, only one district in the state would have collected enough signatures to place Amendment 3 on the ballot.
Republicans see the current initiative process as a way for progressive forces to replace Missouri’s Republican supermajority.
“I’ve become convinced that (initiative petition) in its current form is being used to hijack our state constitution and corrupt Missouri,” said Dave Robertson, a Jefferson County resident who has been involved in grassroots politics.
He claimed that the procedure was “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 aim to limit foreign interference in Missouri’s initiative petition system. All four resolutions raise questions about representation.
Bean’s proposed amendment would give votes from smaller districts more weight than votes from larger districts.
Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove and sponsor of a similar initiative petition bill, began his remarks with a reference to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” an allegorical tale of barnyard animals banding together to create a more equitable farm.
Jeff Smith of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri responded to Moon’s reference.
“The propaganda slogan was ‘four legs good, two legs bad,'” he elaborated.” “We shouldn’t be saying rural voters good, suburban voters bad, or exurban voters good, urban voters bad.”
