JEFFERSON CITY — A multimillion dollar push to legalize sports betting in Missouri is in limbo as a judge mulls whether to keep a proposed constitutional amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot.
In arguments before a Cole County judge Thursday, opponents of the proposed ballot question said they determined that the effort to collect the required amount of signatures to place the matter before voters fell short in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area.
Faced with the possibility of being removed from the ballot, supporters of legalized betting asked Circuit Judge Daniel Green to add in 652 signatures that were previously not counted.
Green said to expect a quick decision. The deadline to remove proposed constitutional amendments from the Nov. 5 ballot is 5 p.m. Tuesday.
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“These cases are not easy to do because of the time frame,†Green said.
At issue is a push by the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Cardinals and other Missouri-based sports teams and two major sports betting companies to bring Missouri in line with nearly all of its surrounding states when it comes to allowing people to wager on athletic events.
FanDuel and DraftKings, two sports betting industry giants, have pumped in most of the $6.5 million that has funded the ballot initiative.
The measure would set the sports betting tax rate at 10% and allow Missouri’s professional sports franchises and the state’s 13 casinos to operate retail and online sports betting.
A recent ºüÀêÊÓƵ University/YouGov poll of 900 likely voters found that 50% of respondents support efforts to legalize sports betting, compared with just 30% in opposition.
In a daylong hearing, Attorney Mark Ellinger said Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office a “improperly counted†as many as 768 signatures in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area 1st Congressional District.
Examples outlined in testimony included signatures linked to dead people, convicted felons and people who have moved out of Missouri.
But attorney Charles Hatfield, representing a political action committee that is backing the initiative, said Green’s decision should favor placing the question on the ballot in order to not disenfranchise voters.
“The secretary of state’s certification was proper,†Hatfield said.
To make the ballot, proposed initiative petitions must receive signatures from 8% of legal voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts.
The initial lawsuit argued that Ashcroft should have taken the statewide vote total for the 2020 gubernatorial election, multiplied that by 8%, and divided that total by eight to get the proper signature threshold for each congressional district.
That would’ve set the threshold for each district at 30,122, and would’ve meant the current 1st Congressional District had fewer signatures than needed to make the ballot, the lawsuit said, putting ballot access out of reach for the question.
Under questioning, political consultant Jacqueline Wood said she was asked by an attorney to lend her name to the case as a plaintiff. She did not say who is bankrolling the lawsuit and appeared not to know details about the case.
“I have not seen any of the information they have,†Wood said.