JEFFERSON CITY — Following the repeated success of progressive ballot measures in Missouri, Republican senators on Wednesday began debate on a plan to raise the threshold needed to amend the state constitution.
Constitutional amendments — which lawmakers and the governor can’t unilaterally repeal or water down — currently require a simple majority for approval. The plan under consideration would raise that bar to 60%.
If approved in the Legislature, Missouri voters would get the final say in a referendum next year.
Supporters say changes to the constitution should have wide consensus and that out-of-state interests have had too much influence over the document in recent elections.
Opponents say the move is an affront to direct democracy. They say voters have used the constitutional amendment process to enact popular measures that otherwise didn’t gain traction in the capital.
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During House debate, Democrats criticized proposed ballot wording they said Republicans were using to deceive voters.
Ballot language that would appear before voters buries a description of likely the most controversial change — the 60% threshold for constitutional amendments — under a provision that only U.S. citizens may qualify as legal voters. (U.S. citizenship is already a requirement to vote in Missouri.)
Democrats on Wednesday held off a vote Wednesday afternoon, and the plan was set aside shortly before 6 p.m. The Senate then adjourned.
The debate followed a long list of initiatives that have won voter approval in recent years in the face of strident opposition by lawmakers in Jefferson City. Through the initiative petition process, Missourians approved medical marijuana and enacted changes to redistricting in 2018. Medicaid expansion was approved by voters in 2020. And last year, voters embedded a 40-page recreational marijuana program into the state constitution.
As the 2024 election looms, abortion rights supports are in the beginning stages of launching a campaign to enshrine access to abortion in the state’s constitution — effectively neutralizing the Legislature’s near-total abortion ban approved in 2019.
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