JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri voters will be asked to amend the state constitution in November to bar ranked choice voting as part of a Republican backlash against a concept designed to ease partisan divisions in politics.
The ballot initiative, approved by the GOP-controlled House and Senate this spring, is among two that were formally placed on the Nov. 5 ballot Monday.
The other question will ask voters whether to allow the state’s court system to charge defendants a fee that would help fund the pension systems for sheriffs and prosecuting attorneys.
People are also reading…
While other, more high profile, citizen-led questions, such as restoring abortion rights in the state, are awaiting certification by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the ranked choice voting proposal is the latest in a wave of red states that have prohibited the alternative voting counting method.
Oklahoma, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi earlier this year enacted laws barring the practice, calling it confusing and nontraditional.
Instead of a winner-take-all approach, ranked choice allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. A candidate wins outright if they receive a majority of the first-place votes.
If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voters who chose that candidate have their votes redistributed to the candidate they ranked second on their ballots. The process continues until a candidate has secured a majority of the vote.
The measure exempts nonpartisan elections in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, which instituted an “approval voting†system first used in the 2021 municipal elections.
Under the ºüÀêÊÓƵ system, voters are allowed to vote for as many candidates as they approve of, and the top two-candidates advance to a run-off election.
Included in the ranked choice ballot language set for the Nov. 5 election is another Republican priority, barring noncitizens from voting, even though the state constitution already prohibits it.
Democrats contend the citizenship language was being added by Republicans to trick voters into approving it as part of their push to make immigration a major issue in the election.
Placement of the legislative-driven initiatives on the November ballot was mostly a foregone conclusion after Gov. Mike Parson chose two other proposals to be decided in the Aug. 6 primary.
One of the primary election questions asks whether to allow child care establishments to be exempt from property taxes.
The other question is a re-vote of an initiative requiring Kansas City to spend more on policing. It was approved in 2022, but the Missouri Supreme Court issued a ruling in April calling for a second round of voting.
Both of those, as with the two approved for the November ballot, are designed to get Republicans to the polls, while the citizen-led proposal on abortion and another raising the minimum wage could be a draw for Democratic voters.
The ballot question for ranked choice voting follows an ill-fated Missouri Agrees campaign for 2024 to institute approval voting.
The court fees question seeks to address underfunding in the pension systems covering sheriffs and local prosecutors after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that adding fees did not qualify as “the administration of justice.â€
Under the plan, the fees are limited by state law to $3 for sheriff pension funds and $4 for prosecuting attorney pension funds per defendant. They also can be waived if a judge decides the defendant cannot pay.
Meantime, county and state officials continue to count thousands of signatures submitted for four citizen-led ballot initiatives. They face an Aug. 13 deadline to determine if supporters collected enough signatures to qualify.
One would add a section to the state constitution enshrining “the right to reproductive freedom,†including access to abortion up until fetal viability as determined by a medical professional. The measure, if approved by a majority of voters, would undo Missouri’s near-total ban on abortion that went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
A second proposal would expand family leave in Missouri and raise the minimum wage from $12.30 per hour to $13.75 per hour in 2025 and $15 per hour in 2026.
Also on tap is a question that would legalize and regulate sports gambling. The fourth question would allow investors to build a casino at Lake of the Ozarks.