A ballot measure pushed by Republicans to change how majorities are calculated in Missouri for constitutional amendments proposed by initiative must clearly alert voters that is its intent, a Cole County judge ruled Wednesday.
The decision from Circuit Judge Daniel Green is the written version of his oral ruling from Feb. 19 that provisions critics decry as “ballot candy” must be removed from the language prepared by lawmakers.
Those provisions — penalties for campaigns that accept donations from foreign sources, for committing fraud in the signature process and requiring public hearings on initiatives — don’t change anything, Green wrote. He removed the first two lines of the ballot title, which point to those provisions, because they are “restatements of current law and do not reveal to voters what the measure would achieve if passed and must be removed from the summary statement.”
Passed by lawmakers last year, the proposal will be Amendment 4 on the November ballot.
In place of the first three lines, Green wrote that the ballot language must focus on the main intent of the proposal, which is to change the required majorities. He kept the final two lines, ruling they fairly describe the amend, and ordered the ballot to say it would:
- “Modify current requirements that a statewide majority of voters may approve initiative petitions to amend the constitution
- Require a majority of voters in each congressional district to approve initiative petitions to amend the constitution; and
- Make available to each voter the full text of initiative petitions with their ballot.”
Green ruled in a case brought by the Missouri Association of Realtors, which is backing an opposition PAC under the name Missourians for Fair Governance.
“It is a victory for voters that the judge recognized the legislative attempt to mislead our citizens and ordered the deceptive ballot candy to be deleted from Amendment 4’s ballot summary,” said Scott Charton, spokesman for the PAC. “But the underlying misleading language is still in the body of this terrible proposal. In fact, either negligently or intentionally, Amendment 4 actually dramatically decreases the current financial penalty for petition signature fraud.”
Amendment 4 would make it possible for a small minority of voters to defeat constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by a petition campaign.
Currently, any statewide ballot measure must earn only a majority of votes cast to pass. Under the GOP-backed plan, future constitutional amendments proposed by initiative would need a majority in each of the state’s eight congressional districts instead.
During the 2024 general election, 311,915 votes were cast in the 1st Congressional District out of the state’s 2,960,266 votes. So 156,000 voters — or about 5.3% of the statewide vote — could prevent a measure from passing.
Only citizen-led initiative petitions would be affected. Amendments placed on the ballot by state lawmakers are not included in the change.
Green rejected arguments that the measure should be removed from the ballot entirely for violating constitutional restrictions on the scope of amendments, which must amend only one article. While it would change the way some constitutional provisions would operate, he ruled, it did not change the wording of those sections in other articles.
He also ruled that State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s fiscal summary — that the impact on state funds is minimal — was acceptable. He had previously ordered Fitzpatrick to make revisions to the fiscal note — the estimate of costs — and the summary that appears on the ballot.
Fitzpatrick revised the fiscal note with a statement that he had excluded estimates from the secretary of state’s office because they did not directly address the provisions of Amendment 4.
That was an acceptable revision, Green ruled.
The next step in the court battle would be an appeal if either side thinks Green’s ruling is flawed. If there is no appeal, the new language would stand and the full-scale campaign to pass or defeat it will be joined.
“The lawmakers are trying to make suckers out of Missouri voters,” Charton said, “but our citizens are too smart to surrender their long-held constitutional rights and hand that power to politicians who don’t proofread their own legislation.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
