Republican infighting kills effort to make it harder for voters to change Missouri law

Takeaways:

• Missouri Republicans’ plan to raise the threshold for passing initiative petitions failed amid intraparty discord and a Democratic filibuster.
• The bill aimed to make passing initiative petitions harder ahead of a potential November vote on allowing access to abortion.
• Republicans couldn’t agree on an approach to passing the bill, effectively killing it in the final hours of the legislative session.

After years of effort, Missouri Republicans were poised to take a step toward making it harder for initiative petitions to pass.

For the majority of the spring, Republicans seemed on the same page about a plan they would send to voters on the August ballot.

Then the little, fragile unity that remained among Republicans crumbled in the final days and hours of the legislative session.

The bill would have asked voters to raise the threshold to pass initiative petitions from a simple majority to a level that would have, essentially, let just 25% of voters defeat a ballot measure.

If approved by voters, the proposal would put one of the few forms of direct democracy available to Missourians further out of reach. Missourians have used the initiative petition process to pass policies that lawmakers won’t — things like medical and recreational marijuana, Medicaid expansion and stricter ethics rules for lawmakers.

Republican lawmakers targeted the initiative process for years. Their urgency picked up this year when they tried to raise the bar for a ballot measure to put abortion rights in the Missouri Constitution ahead of the November general election .

But the proposal’s demise came after Democrats in the Senate filibustered the measure for over 50 hours , highlighting the discord among the majority of the Republican Party and a faction of hard-right members known as the Freedom Caucus.

Some members insisted on including extra language in the provision that would have asked voters if they wanted to bar noncitizens from voting on initiative petitions and prohibit foreign governments from supporting or opposing initiative campaigns. Both are already illegal.

Critics characterized that “ballot candy” as a way to trick voters into backing the Republicans’ effort to change the rules on what voters could pass. And Republicans in the General Assembly who backed including that extra language in that measure conceded the language was ballot candy intended to garner more voter support.

Democrats break filibuster record over ballot candy

Earlier in the legislative session, Democrats struck a deal with Republicans that removed the ballot candy.

But after it was stripped in order for the bill to pass the Senate, the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Jefferson County, asked the House to add that language back in.

“We were well on our way to this issue being on the ballot for people to easily digest and understand exactly what they were voting on,” Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, a Democrat from Independence, said on Monday as Democrats kicked off the 50-hour filibuster. “And now we’re back here because they have insisted upon deceiving the voters.”

Democrats filibustered the bill until late Wednesday afternoon, when Coleman asked the Senate to send the bill to a conference committee with the House, presumably to cut out the ballot candy.

That move was seen as a blow to the hard-right members of the Senate who demanded the language be part of the final bill and called it necessary to stop voter approval of abortion access in Missouri.

Freedom Caucus members wanted to use a procedural move known as the previous question, or “PQ,” to stop the filibuster and force a vote on the measure. A PQ is seen as the “nuclear option” that bucks the norms of the Senate and could set a new precedent for future sessions.

But Freedom Caucus members didn’t have the support among the broader GOP to use the PQ.

“This Republican Party has no backbone to fight for what is right and for life,” Harrisonville Sen. Rick Brattin, the leader of the Freedom Caucus, said on the floor. “They will have the blood of the innocent on their hands.”

The bill was sent out of the Senate. Then, the House wouldn’t open up conversation about removing the extra ballot candy language and sent it back.

“We’d love to have some purposeful debate on the bill and let people vote,” House Speaker Dean Plocher said Friday morning. “That’s what the House does. That’s what we’d like to see from the Senate.”

The Senate also refused to take up the bill. On Friday morning, hours before lawmakers were set to adjourn until January, the measure was officially dead.

Opponents of the bill say that if voters were to approve the measure (which ostensibly would have been more likely with the extra language included) it would be almost impossible to undo, because any changes to the constitution must be approved by voters.

“Next thing you know, they have volleyed away their right of participating in constitutional changes forever,” Rizzo said on the Senate floor.

Even then, prominent Republicans in the state weren’t sure voters would have supported the measure in August. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the current Republican front-runner for governor, said on a Wednesday radio appearance that he was uncertain Missourians would back the proposal.

“Even if it gets through the legislature, it then has to be approved by the people of the state,” Ashcroft said. “I’m not holding my breath. But my fingers are crossed.”

Other states have looked to raise their thresholds to pass initiative petitions in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned — and in the wake of subsequent efforts by voters to reestablish abortion rights. Last August, Ohioans voted on a proposal to raise their threshold to pass constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%. The measure failed.

Ohioans went on in November to vote in support of a ballot measure that would allow access to abortions by amending the state’s constitution.

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