Missouri lawmakers break new ground to stop constitutional amendments — and abortion

Editor’s note (March 25, 2023) : This story has been corrected to reflect that the proposal would require a majority support from voters statewide, plus a majority vote in five of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.

While state lawmakers across the country stumbled when trying to make it harder for voters to amend state constitutions, Missouri lawmakers took notes.

In rhythm with a national trend, Republicans want to make it harder for voters to change the Missouri Constitution.

As in other states, the efforts to block voter-led initiative petitions spring from increasingly tense fights over abortion . And the abortion rights movement has proved formidable once the issue goes to voters.

Republicans in Missouri watched closely as voters in other states voted the proposals down — and shifted their tactics . In previous years, they have looked to raise the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments from the current simple majority to 55% or 60% support from voters.

Now lawmakers are taking what experts call a hybrid approach: demanding that a proposal win not just on a statewide vote, but in at least half of the state’s congressional districts.

“Missouri’s proposal is interesting,” said Sara Carter, an attorney who focuses on state legislatures and ballot measures at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It takes pieces from two major trends we’re seeing: adding geographic distribution requirements and then increasing the approval threshold for a measure to be enacted.”

Under legislation being considered by the General Assembly, passing a constitutional amendment in Missouri would require a statewide majority — plus majority support in five of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.

The change, if approved by voters in August, would make it significantly more challenging for voters to have a say via one of the few forms of direct democracy available to them. That would also dramatically cut the chances that Missourians could vote in abortion rights in November.

It’s one of the few paths left anti-abortion lawmakers see to win.

Republicans “really do see it as the best chance they have to derail any effort to weaken the abortion laws in the state,” said Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political science professor.

Lawmakers across the country have looked to roll back access to one of few methods of direct democracy available to voters. In the last five years, in Republican-led states like Arizona, Arkansas and Ohio, lawmakers have asked voters to OK raising the threshold for passing voter-led ballot measures.

Similar to Missouri, Ohio’s attempt to raise the threshold was closely tied with a ballot measure to amend the state constitution to legalize abortions.

But a simple majority has been the precedent for passing a voter-led change to the state constitution.

“It’s pretty easy to make the argument that majority rule is sort of the norm that’s been in place here in Missouri for over a century,” Squire said.

Nearly half of states allow citizens to place a change in law on the ballot. Of those, 16 allow citizens to use the initiative petition process put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

The ballot measure process, known as a voter-led initiative petition, has been used widely in Missouri to pass things voters like and lawmakers don’t. Both medical and recreational marijuana were passed that way. So was Medicaid expansion, raising the minimum wage and restrictions on campaign finance.

“The concern is that many of these efforts (to toughen the ballot measure process) don’t appear to be fueled by valid concerns that the process is insufficiently regulated,” Carter said. “Instead, they appear to be animated by disagreement with the policies that citizens are enacting.”

Missouri’s history with the initiative petition process

Missourians have increasingly turned to ballot measures to pass ideas that are popular among the public but that struggle to make it through the General Assembly.

In 2010, Missourians changed state law through the initiative petition process to regulate the state’s puppy mills. The next year, the legislature repealed that law and passed a watered-down version.

Since then, citizen lobbying efforts turned more toward petitions to amend the Missouri Constitution. It’s a more arduous, costlier process. But legislators can’t reverse it.

Still, the General Assembly has attempted to undercut what voters did.

When Missourians voted on a constitutional amendment expanding Medicaid in 2020, the measure passed with 53% support. Since then, lawmakers have tried to take tax dollars away from the program.

They’ve also introduced resolutions that would force Missourians to vote on yet another constitutional amendment that would give lawmakers the power to decide on expanded Medicaid eligibility every year.

“Republicans have been uncomfortable with the initiative process for a while, given that it has worked against their preferences,” Squire said. “The voters have been willing to overturn them on several major issues.”

Medicaid expansion is one example. Missouri lawmakers for years refused to take up the topic in the General Assembly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled expansion under the Affordable Care Act was optional for states. As a result, voters used the initiative petition process to expand eligibility.

And abortion could be another place voters assert their will over that of their lawmakers. After the nation’s high court overturned Roe v. Wade and set abortion bans into motion across the country, groups have turned to ballot initiatives to restore access.

Constitutional amendment efforts are underway in at least 13 states to place a question on 2024 ballots to allow access to abortion.

“The reason (lawmakers) are seeing so much pushback in direct democracy is because they’re legislating to the right of where the state is,” said Craig Burnett, an associate professor of political science at Hofstra University. “That’s pretty typical in most Republican-dominated states right now.”

Petitions circulating in Missouri this year want to put two questions on the ballot: one to weaken the state’s abortion restrictions and one to legalize sports betting.

Polls show varying support for both. A February poll from St. Louis University and YouGov found that 44% of respondents support a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, allow the General Assembly to enact laws that regulate abortion access after “fetal viability,” and barring criminal penalties for any pregnancy outcome, including a miscarriage or stillbirth.

The poll found that 37% of Missourians opposed the effort, while 19% weren’t sure.

Legalized sports betting had 60% support, with 25% of respondents opposed and 14% unsure. The poll didn’t ask Missourians if they specifically supported an effort to legalize sports betting through the initiative process.

Lawmakers have debated sports gambling for years without legalization, so sports teams are now going straight to voters.

Inside Missouri’s proposal to make constitutional amendments harder to pass

Meanwhile, lawmakers are trying to make it harder for efforts like those. Missouri state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman’s proposal would raise the amount of voter support needed to pass an initiative petition. Coleman, a staunch abortion opponent from Jefferson County, is running to represent the 3rd Congressional District.

An earlier version of Coleman’s proposal was loaded with what she called “ballot candy” — popular, noncontroversial ideas with little practical effect that would make the idea of raising the bar for voter petitions more appealing. For instance, it said only U.S. citizens should be able to vote on constitutional amendments. That’s already the law.

But after a nearly 24-hour filibuster from Senate Democrats, that language was stripped out before the bill passed the Senate. When the Missouri House took up the bill, Coleman asked to put the language back in. House leadership has promised that the lower chamber will reinstate that ballot candy language .

Burnett said by including a citizen-only voting provision, lawmakers could set themselves up for legal trouble. Constitutional amendments in Missouri, like legislation, must stick to a single subject.

“I don’t think I’ve seen any other states sort of go directly to the citizen voting part of this and tie it with this issue,” Burnett said. “That language actually opens them up to challenge in the courts.”

The resolution is SJR 74.

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