The Missouri House on Tuesday backed a proposal that could make it significantly more difficult to pass some constitutional amendments.
Rep. Ed Lewis’ ballot measure, which would need voter approval, would require any constitutional amendment that is put before voters through the initiative petition process to pass statewide and in all eight congressional districts. Currently, amendments only need a statewide vote to be enacted.
The House voted 98-58 to send the measure to the Senate. The General Assembly’s upper chamber is slated to take up the matter later in the week.
Lewis and other supporters said that partisan and outside interests have hijacked the initiative petition process and that it should be more difficult to amend the constitution. While a prior version of Lewis’ measure would have also affected statutory ballot items, the proposal sent to the Senate wouldn’t affect those measures.
“Do you want partisan issues to be going into the constitution? Whether it be ultraconservative or ultraliberal positions going into the constitution?” Lewis said. “Or do we want something that a broad consensus of all Missourians could support change in the constitution? And that's what I want.”
The measure wouldn’t affect constitutional amendment proposals that lawmakers put on the ballot.
That means that if Lewis’ plan had been in place in 2024, an initiative petition enshrining abortions rights in the constitution would have needed to pass with a statewide vote and in all of the state’s congressional districts. But a plan to repeal most of that initiative that lawmakers placed on the 2026 ballot would only need a statewide majority vote.
Lewis has said that getting a measure through the General Assembly is already a difficult and laborious task. Rep. Brad Banderman, R-St. Clair, said the legislature should have an opportunity to legislate on major issues – such as the marijuana industry. Voters legalized cannabis in 2022.
“That process has silenced the duly elected representative from that area from being able to present it,” Banderman said. “It gets presented as a threat to democracy. I would contend the real threat to democracy is limiting the ability for our elected officials, the ones that have gained a majority in their districts, from proposing any statutory adjustments to a private business that chooses to use our constitution to regulate themselves.”
The plan would also require printed constitutional amendments to appear at polling places, make it illegal for foreign nationals to donate to initiative petition campaigns, require a public comment period for proposed amendments and create penalties for people who fraudulently collect or sign petitions.
“I'm hearing lots of moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth over taking away the will of the people,” said Rep. Bill Lucas, R-Jefferson County. “To change our constitution should be harder. It should be a little more difficult. This is not putting an undue burden on anybody. For both sides, the far right and the far left, it's going to be harder to get changes to our constitution.”
Democrats assail plan as silencing voters
Democrats blasted Lewis’ bill as another example of Missouri Republicans not respecting the results of high-profile ballot initiatives.
They point out that even though Missouri continues to elect Republicans, they’ve also gravitated to left-of-center ballot initiatives such as the abortion and marijuana amendments – as well as efforts to expand Medicaid.
“If you don't win at something, you get mad. We do too, but yet we respect the will of the voters,” said Rep. Emily Weber, D-Kansas City. “You sit here and try to undo it. Or you storm the Capitol.”
Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, D-Columbia, said Lewis’ proposal gives certain parts of the state effective veto power over constitutional amendments – even if they pass overwhelmingly everywhere else.
“An eight out of eight will require petitioners to provide education in every district, but it will leave opponents to focus all of their time, all of their energy, all of their money in just one district,” Steinhoff said. “The other seven districts, they'll be left behind. Imagine how they're going to feel when they realize that in one district that got all the education, the results will outweigh the seven other districts combined.”
Rep. Marty Joe Murray, D-St. Louis, took issue with the argument that there’s a much higher standard for proposed constitutional amendments that go on the ballot through the initiative petition process than for measures the legislature puts before voters.
“I can't believe we're sitting here talking about a ballot measure and raising the threshold for our constituents to communicate their desires and not raising the thresholds for [proposals] that we pass out of this chamber,” Murray said. “I feel like that's very disingenuous to our voters and the people that sent us here.”
If Lewis’ proposal is sent to voters by the Senate, it is likely to face an expensive opposition campaign. In 2024, the Missouri Realtors Association was prepared to spend millions of dollars to defeat a plan that made it harder for constitutional amendments to pass. And AFL-CIO President Jake Hummel testified last week that members of organized labor were angry about the prospect of the initiative process being constricted.
Rep. Bryant Wolfin, R-Ste. Genevieve, questioned whether Lewis’ proposal would find favor with voters.
“I think that the actual IP reform provision in this bill is a disaster,” Wolfin said. “I think it fails at the ballot box. And I think we squander our opportunity to potentially protect the document that I hold sacred, the document we all took an oath to defend.”
Rep. Darrell Chappell, R-Rogersville, said opponents of Lewis’ measure “appear to be afraid to let the voters decide on this issue.”
“This is entirely about taking it to the voters. They will tell us what it is that they want to pass,” Chappell said. “So forgive me if it seems a bit tiresome to hear about how we are not respecting the voters while we are trying to take it to the voters for their final say.”
