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.
The proposal would make it much more difficult for Missourians to have a say in how their state is run.
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 percent of voters. That measure failed.
TRICKERY
Now several 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.
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.
One thing that makes the referendum process great is that it lets voters act when their representatives refuse to do so. That’s also the reason those elected officials want to change the process. They want the power for themselves.
LET’S KEEP IT
The Missouri Constitution states plainly that “all political power is vested in and derived from the people; that all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.”
We have a government by the people, in other words, not a majority of congressional districts. It should stay that way.
(Reprinted from the Kansas City Star)
- Share this story:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-