Voters will be asked this November whether to amend the Missouri Constitution to make it the 11th state to ban ranked-choice voting.
Ranked-choice voting asks voters to rank candidates from favorite to least favorite, rather than requiring them to pick only one candidate.
Maine and Alaska have adopted ranked-choice voting for some of their elections. So have cities such as New York City, Minneapolis and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The exact ballot language for Missouri Amendment 7 is below.
Official ballot title
"Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
- Make the Constitution consistent with state law by only allowing citizens of the United States to vote;
- Prohibit the ranking of candidates by limiting voters to a single vote per candidate or issue; and
- Require the plurality winner of a political party primary to be the single candidate at a general election?
State and local governmental entities estimate no costs or savings."
What does a ‘yes’ vote do on Missouri Amendment 7?
Approving Missouri Amendment 7 would prohibit ranked-choice or approval voting in any elections in Missouri, including the city, county, state and federal levels.
It would also add language to the Missouri Constitution to explicitly forbid noncitizens from voting in elections. But state law already prohibits noncitizens from registering to vote in any election.
What is ranked-choice voting?
Ranked-choice voting asks voters to rank the candidates by order of preference, rather than only voting for one candidate.
The election office tallies the number of voters who selected each candidate as their top pick. If no candidate wins the majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are reallocated based on the voters’ preferences. This process repeats until one of the candidates has a majority.
In the end, a candidate can only win the election if the majority of voters preferred them over their opponents.
Approval voting is similar, but less complicated.
When voters cast their ballots, they fill in the bubble next to multiple candidates for each position.
For example, if someone likes three out of four candidates for mayor, they can vote for all three without having to pick which one is their favorite — or gambling on who they think other voters are more likely to pick.
When the ballots are counted, whichever candidate received the highest number of votes wins.
Does anyone currently use ranked-choice or approval voting in Missouri?
The city of St. Louis voted to implement approval voting in 2020 for citywide primary races. St. Louis is exempted from the constitutional amendment and will continue to use approval voting on local races regardless of whether Missouri Amendment 7 is approved.
What are the advantages of ranked-choice voting?
Proponents of ranked-choice voting and approval voting argue that they force candidates to more closely represent the views of voters.
“Right now, we see politicians incentivized to lie to voters about what they really care about and voters incentivized to lie about who they really support,” said Benjamin Singer, the CEO of Show Me Integrity. Singer will be voting against Missouri Amendment 7.
In Missouri, Republicans generally win most statewide elections, while Democrats typically win most elections in Kansas City and St. Louis. That means that the most important election tends to be the primary.
That, Singer said, encourages politicians to pander to a small group of ideologically extreme voters, rather than appealing to voters on both sides of the aisle.
From the voters’ perspective, he said, Missourians are left voting for the lesser of two evils. They might really like one candidate, but if they’re not sure if that person can win, they might vote for their second or third pick because they think that option is more realistic.
St. Louis Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, who supported the city’s 2020 proposition to switch to approval voting, said that approval voting put an end to manipulation by powerful political interests.
Prior to approval voting, Aldridge said, some interest groups would encourage people to enter municipal races to split the vote and undermine another candidate. But now that voters can pick more than one candidate on the ballot, that strategy doesn’t work anymore.
Singer said that the amendment’s language about noncitizen voting is misleading. He fears that uninformed voters will ban ranked-choice voting, which they might otherwise support, because they don’t realize that noncitizen voting is already illegal.
“What politicians in Jefferson City are trying to do is trick Missourians,” Singer said, “because they know that Missourians actually want these reforms.”
What are the arguments against ranked-choice voting?
Byron Keelin, the president of Freedom Principle MO, opposes ranked-choice voting and will be voting for Amendment 7.
One reason is because he finds ranked-choice voting too confusing for voters.
One study from the University of Pennsylvania found that ranked-choice ballots were more likely to contain marking errors than traditional single-choice ballots. Some of those ballots could still be counted.
Another argument is cost. If Amendment 7 fails and a later vote authorizes ranked-choice elections, counties would need to update voting machines.
Keelin also argued that ranked-choice voting can allow interest groups to manipulate voters into supporting candidates who otherwise would not be able to win.
When Alaska voters in 2020 approved ranked-choice voting, Keelin said it allowed more moderate Republicans and one Democrat to win statewide elections that otherwise would have been guaranteed for a more hard-line conservative.
“They did it because they knew that (U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski) would lose a Republican primary,” he said.
Murkowski is one of the most moderate Republican senators and was censured by the Alaska Republican Party for voting to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment for inciting an insurrection.
Keelin believes that ranked-choice voting was an effort by special interest groups to cheat Alaska Republicans out of a more right-leaning candidate.
Who is campaigning on either side of Missouri Amendment 7?
Freedom Principle MO, Keelin’s group, is campaigning to vote yes on Missouri Amendment 7, as is the Liberty Alliance, a Kansas City-based conservative group.
Better Ballot KC, which advocates for ranked-choice voting in Kansas City, opposes Missouri Amendment 7. A campaign committee called Preserve Local Elections also opposes the amendment.
