JEFFERSON CITY — The team pushing to build a new gambling casino in central Missouri filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to get their project on the November ballot.
One week after Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft determined that the backers of the Lake of the Ozarks casino had failed to collect enough signatures for placement on the ballot, the lawsuit claims to have found more than 2,500 signatures that would put the effort over the top.
“With the inclusion of the additional valid signatures, the initiative petition is sufficient and should be certified to be on the November 5, 2024 general election ballot,†the lawsuit said.
Osage River Gaming and Convention wants to build a casino on the Osage River near the lake, but needs voters to approve a constitutional amendment allowing the construction and operation of a 14th casino in the state.
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Currently, the state’s 13 casinos are limited to sites along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
In order to get on the ballot, the group was required to collect signatures from 8% of the legal voters in each of two-thirds of the state’s eight congressional districts. Ashcroft said they fell short by 2,031 signatures in the 2nd Congressional District, which covers suburban ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
In the Cole County lawsuit, the group said it has identified more than 2,500 valid signatures of legal voters whose signatures had been rejected when they should have been counted.
“Verifying every signature on multiple initiative petitions this summer has been a very long process for election officials and we realize mistakes happen,†the organization said in a statement Tuesday.
The effort to add a new casino is being bankrolled by casino giant Bally’s and lake-area real estate developer Gary Prewitt. Campaign finance records show they each chipped in $2.1 million to get the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Much of that funding went to the signature collection effort.
The project, if approved, is expected to create 500 construction jobs and more than 700 permanent jobs. Tax revenue from bettors would be earmarked for early-childhood literacy programs in public schools.
The project comes as the Osage Nation continues to wait for approval from state and federal officials to build a tribal casino in the lake area, which is a popular Midwest vacation spot.
In 2021, the Oklahoma-based tribe announced it had submitted an application to the U.S. Department of Interior for approval of a casino near the town of Lake Ozark.
If the tribal application is approved, the Department of Interior would transfer the casino land into federal trust with tribal sovereignty to the land and casino gaming rights that are exempt from Missouri laws and regulations.
Under its plan, the tribe is attempting to reestablish and expand upon its cultural presence and ancestral ties to the region. In addition to a casino, plans include a convention hotel, an entertainment complex and a tribal office.