A measure that would make it harder to pass some Missouri ballot measures has cleared its first legislative hurdle.
The state House Elections Committee voted 10-5 along party lines Thursday to send the measure to the full chamber after seven hours of testimony. A vote there could come as early as Monday.
"To change the constitution in the state of Missouri, there should be broad statewide support," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Ed Lewis, R-Moberly. "Every last inch of the state of Missouri needs to be represented if we want to change the constitution by initiative petition."
The proposed constitutional amendment would require that measures placed on the ballot through the initiative petition process pass with a majority in each of the state's eight congressional districts, as well as statewide. Items put on the ballot by the legislature, such as an attempt to restore a ban on most abortions, would only require a simple statewide majority.
Republicans on the committee defended the differing standards.
"So we're setting ourselves up to play by different rules?" asked Rep Eric Woods, D-Kansas City, the ranking member of the committee.
"We do play by different rules, absolutely," Lewis said.
Lewis argued that ballot measures proposed by the legislature through joint resolution are often better vetted than those going through the petition process.
Proponents of the measure argue that many of the more recent initiative petitions, like those concerning abortion access and recreational marijuana, got their margins of victory from the urban centers.
"Most of our state is rural," said Buddy Lahl, president of the Missouri Restaurant Association. "Yet too often our small towns and farming communities are forced to adapt to policies driven by the metropolitan priorities and outside influence."
Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, contended that the changes would give power to an even smaller group of voters.
Each congressional district, she said, includes roughly 12.5% of the state's population.
"If all eight districts are needed, that means 7% of Missouri voters, which is just more than half of the percent of voters in one district, could override the rest of the state," Lieberman said.
Many of the other provisions in the amendment, including a ban on donations from countries that have been designated foreign adversaries and restrictions on who can sign petitions, are already in state law. But those measures are mentioned first in proposed language that voters will see on the ballot. The new requirements to pass initiative petitions are not mentioned until the fourth bullet point.
That fact prompted a testy exchange between Lewis and Rep. David Tyson Smith, D-Columbia.
"We're just filling this with things that are already the law to throw people off at the ballot," Smith said. "We're going to load this up with all this other stuff as a charade to trick people because no one's going to vote for this resolution if they know exactly what it's going to be about."
"This is not a charade," Lewis insisted. "The constitution is not the same as a statute."
The vast majority of the 30 witnesses who spoke at the marathon hearing urged committee members, ultimately unsuccessfully, to reject the effort.
Truman Oaks, a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia, was involved in collecting signatures last year for initiative petitions on abortion rights and paid sick leave.
"If this joint resolution passes, it's the end of the petition process," he said. "I'm not going to be out every weekend volunteering my time for something that I know could win 75% of the support of the people of Missouri and still not be brought into law. I think that's entirely unjust."
Oaks said he doubted that voters in Missouri would approve it.
The full Missouri House could vote on the resolution on Monday. The measure would also require approval of the Senate before going to voters.
Members of the committee voted down several Democratic amendments, including ones that would have applied the congressional district majority standard to statewide elected officials, measures put on the ballot by lawmakers and the joint resolution itself.
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