A group called the “Respect Voters Coalition,” is hosting town halls across Missouri. They say they’re organizing citizens to protect the state’s ballot measure initiative process.
This Friday at 5:30 they’ll hold a town hall at the Library Center in Springfield. It follows similar events in Fulton, Cape Girardeau, Columbia, St. Louis and Kansas City.
The "Respect Voters Coalition” describes itself as bipartisan and includes as a co-founder former republican Missouri Sentaor John Danforth. It says its "working to protect, strengthen, renovate and expand the ballot initiative process.”
The process is a form of direct democracy. It allows citizens to petition for ballot items to be put on the ballot and presented to all Missouri voters. Just over half of US states have some form of citizen led ballot initiatives.
In Missouri the process has come under serious scrutiny in recent years.
Last legislative session the Missouri House passed a bill that would have changed the threshold required for passing an initiative from a simple statewide majority to a formula requiring a majority in five of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. That bill died in the senate on the very last day it could have been passed. It would have had to be approved by voters.
This session the Missouri legislature has heard bills that would seek to reform the process by adding restrictions on the language used in ballot initiatives and by banning foreign funds from contributing to initiative campaigns. The legislature has also heard bills that would limit or alter the impact of initiatives passed by voters last year, including measures that have increased the minimum wage and removed limitations on abortion access.
Opponents of the ballot initiative process argue influences from outside of the state and the simple majority threshold to pass an initiative make the process too easy and too likely to be unrepresentative of the will and interest of Missourians. Proponents, including those supporting the Respect Voters Coalition, argue the process is one of the most direct forms of democracy available to voters, and a valuable means of advancing significant changes in Missouri law, sidestepping a GOP dominated legislature that has made news in recent years for its infighting and unproductivity.