One great thing about Missouri: When legislators won’t act, voters can — and will.
A referendum process allows Show-Me State residents a significant voice in their government by amending the state constitution. Missouri voters used that process to expand Medicaid in 2020, then to decriminalize marijuana in 2022. And with the 2024 election on the horizon, there is a good chance that voters could soon choose to end the abortion restrictions that some conservatives favor.
Republicans in the General Assembly don’t like these developments much.
That’s why — once again — GOP legislators are pushing to overhaul the citizen-led initiative process. Their proposal would entrench authority in Jefferson City while diminishing the political power of voters in Kansas City and St. Louis.
Most important, the proposal would make it much more difficult for Missourians to have a say in how their state is run.
The folks behind the new proposal say that’s a good thing.
“I think it’s important to mention that the Missouri Constitution is the highest document of our state,” Rep. Brad Hudson, a Cape Fair Republican, told the MissouriNet radio network. The point of the new proposal is to “make it a process where it’s not too easy” for voters to amend that document.
Missouri voters should be dubious.
Right now, citizen-led initiatives can pass with a simple majority of votes. If 100,000 voters weigh in on a measure, it takes 50,001 votes to pass.
Republicans in the legislature last spring attempted to raise that threshold to 57% of voters. That measure failed.
Now Hudson and seven other Republicans are back with a proposal that would keep the simple majority requirement, but only as a start. A referendum would also have to get a majority of the vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts.
It’s a supermajority by a different name.
The idea, plainly, is to shift Missouri’s balance of power away from the two urban congressional districts in Kansas City and St. Louis to give rural voters a veto over initiatives — no matter what a majority of the state’s voters say.
“What you have with concurrent majority ratification is you got buy-in from different areas of the state,” Hudson said. “It makes sure that rural areas have a say in the process and that’s only appropriate when we are amending the highest document of our state.”
Rural Missourians would no doubt be delighted by that idea. So it’s important to note that the proposed reform wouldn’t just disempower city voters. It would also centralize power with Jefferson City politicians.
