Columbia Missourian: Group Seeks Feedback on Ballot Initiative to Protect Other Ballot Initiatives

Community members shared their suggestions for a ballot initiative aimed at protecting Missouri's initiative petition process itself Monday evening at the Columbia Public Library.

The push is being led by the Respect Voters Coalition, a group with ties to Show Me Integrity, a cross-partisan good government advocacy group.

Volunteer members have been traveling throughout Missouri, holding three town halls in each congressional district to crowdsource suggestions for the language of a citizen initiative that would protect other citizen initiatives in Missouri. The group hopes to place the issue on the 2026 congressional election ballot.

"Our goal is to go on offense and close some of those loopholes that (Missouri lawmakers) are using to attack us," said Toni Easter, a volunteer who led the meeting along with Benjamin Singer, co-founder of Show Me Integrity and one of the three steering members of the Respect Voters Coalition.

A policy summit will occur the first week of April, where voters and volunteers from all over the state will convene to review the policy responses from the survey and decide on the precise language of the citizen initiative. The group's goal is to block lawmakers from restricting citizens' ability to put issues on the ballot, as well as their ability to undo initiatives that have already passed.

"You can write a constitutional amendment saying 'the legislature cannot pass any laws making it more difficult to pass citizen initiatives,'" Singer said. "You can put in the (Missouri) Constitution that courts will have the ability to rewrite ballot language. So (lawmakers) passing a measly statute saying lawmakers can rewrite initiatives will be superseded by a constitutional amendment."

They said they plan to file the initiative at the end of April, and after 60 days the Secretary of State's office will draft "ballot language" for the initiative, which is the wording that would appear on Missourians' ballots. In order to show up on the ballot, the Respect Voters Coalition must get a minimum of 300,000 signatures from residents in six out of Missouri's eight congressional districts.

Organizers hope to begin the process this summer. They estimate collecting enough signatures will require 2,500 volunteers doing two hours of signature collecting for 12 weeks.

Missouri has a rocky history with citizen initiatives, although they have been legal for the past 115 years.

The Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act was approved by Missouri voters in 2010, only to have significant parts repealed by lawmakers in 2011; the legislators removed regulations in the law for clean water, veterinary exams and exercise space, as well as the term "puppy mill."

The Clean Missouri Amendment, which changed the way legislative districts are drawn every decade, passed in 2018. But that decision was overturned in 2020 by another amendment. Supporters of Clean Missouri pointed to "ballot candy" — popular but ineffectual provisions in ballot language aimed at hiding the real purpose of the legislation — as reason why the initiative undoing the amendment passed. 

Ballot language has also sparked controversy amongst statewide officials. It was a sticking point between supporters of Amendment 3, which put reproductive rights before the voters this November, and then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft last year. A court eventually ordered Ashcroft's rewrite of the ballot language to be thrown out, calling it "problematic" and "argumentative." 

This session, lawmakers have already filed bills aimed at shoring up two initiatives passed by citizens in November: Amendment 3, which legalized abortion in the state, and proposition A, which will raise the state's minimum wage to $15 by 2026.  

"A lot of the news that came after the inauguration was a driving force to come here," said Samantha Woodard, who attended the meeting in Columbia. "I just want to see a way to protect these citizen initiatives from getting overturned immediately by legislators, and keep them in law or keep them in the constitution."

Like Woodard, David Adams saw the Respect Voters Coalition event on social media: "I felt like I needed to get involved — I mean I vote, but other than that, I've never been involved. I wasn't aware of what happened with Clean Missouri, I probably voted the wrong way."

You can read the article on Columbia Missourian’s website here.