JEFFERSON CITY — The top Republican in the Missouri Senate on Wednesday cast doubt on GOP efforts to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments after voters killed a similar effort in Ohio.
Ohio voters, by a 57%-43% margin, on Tuesday soundly rejected a plan that would’ve required constitutional amendments to receive a 60% majority for passage. As in Missouri, constitutional amendments in Ohio currently need a simple majority to take effect.
The Ohio vote was viewed as a win for abortion rights supporters, who will need only a simple majority at the ballot box this November to codify the right to an abortion in the state constitution. Missouri abortion rights supporters are trying to get a similar amendment on the ballot in 2024.
While some Missouri Republicans appeared undeterred Wednesday in their effort to raise the bar for constitutional amendments, Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, expressed doubt that voters would go along with a change.
People are also reading…
Rowden told the Post-Dispatch Wednesday afternoon that while he expects another push to change the initiative petition process next year, “I find it hard to imagine a scenario where the outcome in Missouri would be different than Ohio if we do get it on the ballot.”
House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson, R-Bonne Terre, acknowledged in an earlier interview Wednesday that the Ohio vote gave Missouri lawmakers “something to study.”
Henderson, who this year sponsored a proposal raising requirements, said he preferred a 55% threshold to a 60% bar.
“We knew 60% from the polling we had had, that people thought that was too high,” Henderson said Wednesday. “I don’t think it stalls our momentum.
“We know 60% isn’t going to make it,” he said. On a 55% bar, he said, “I still think that’s probably a number that the people would probably find palatable.”
Rep. Bill Falkner, a St. Joseph Republican who also filed legislation lifting the threshold, said he was working on an alternative to raising the threshold for constitutional amendments — one in which the Legislature would be allowed to debate, but not veto, amendments that would take effect with a simple majority.
“My biggest point is people need to know what’s in it,” he said Wednesday. He said if petitioners opt not to go through the Legislature, “then I’m all for the 60%, or I would even be for 57, 58%.”
On a higher threshold, Falkner said: “Yes, I think that there’s still momentum to try to get that through” and to a vote of the people.
Recent action
The House approved a 57% threshold in the closing days of this year’s session in May, but it died in the Senate. Voters would’ve gotten the final say on whether to raise the bar.
Ballot summaries drafted by Missouri legislators have buried mention of proposed higher thresholds under bullet points limiting voting to U.S. citizens, which is already required. Critics of that move have called it “ballot candy” designed to trick voters into approving a higher threshold.
In Ohio, voters were told of the proposed 60% threshold in the first of three bullet points that appeared on .
Even if Missouri Republicans draft potentially favorable ballot wording in 2024, state courts could rewrite the ballot summary — as they did in 2020 on a ballot question to repeal a redistricting process voters approved two years earlier.
House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat who is running for governor, said Republicans “have made it clear they plan to continue their assault on the initiative petition.”
“They know they’ve gone too far stripping away the rights of Missourians,” Quade said. “But like we saw last night in Ohio, even in ‘red’ states, voters won’t be fooled.”
A spokesman for House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, did not provide a comment on the Ohio vote Wednesday.
During a May news conference, Plocher predicted that if an abortion question made it on the ballot, a constitutional amendment would pass with a simple majority.
At that point, with hours left in the legislative session, the 57% threshold was languishing in the Senate.
“If the Senate fails to take action on IP (initiative petition) reform, I think the Senate should be held accountable for allowing abortion to return to Missouri,” Plocher said.
Initiative petition fights
Four proposed constitutional amendments on Tuesday would enshrine the current simple majority threshold, as well as a requirement that ballot summaries “correctly and fairly” describe what is before voters.
The proposals followed the formation of the political action committee “Missourians For Fair Governance” on Aug. 1, which states it is in support of a ballot measure “to protect Missourians’ power of the petition for citizen governance.”
The group shares a phone number with the Missouri Realtors Association, which has opposed efforts to increase the threshold for constitutional amendments.
The Realtors’ association has previously used the process to amend the constitution to ban sales tax collections on real estate transfers. In 2016, Realtors also financed a campaign to stop the Legislature from extending state sales taxes to services.
Meanwhile, the attempt by Missouri abortion rights supporters to place a separate question before voters next year, which if approved would protect abortion access, has been repeatedly held up in the courts.
The ACLU of Missouri is challenging a ballot summary drafted by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, that the group argues is misleading and argumentative in violation of state law requiring fair ballot language.
A trial on the wording is scheduled to start Sept. 11 in Cole County Circuit Court. A separate lawsuit by Republican lawmakers challenging the measure’s cost estimate could also delay signature collection.
The courtroom fights follow a separate dispute, which the state Supreme Court resolved last month, between Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, both Republicans, that delayed the initiative petition process by months.
Signatures to make the 2024 ballot are due in May, and at least one abortion rights opponent has publicly said opponents hope to delay signature collection as long as possible.
Updated at 4:53 p.m. with comments by Sen. Caleb Rowden.