By Maria Hickey, KWMU
St. Louis, MO. – The Missouri Secretary of State's office is defending the ballot language for an initiative to end affirmative action in the state.
A group that's calling itself the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative filed suit last week against Secretary of State Robin Carnahan over the ballot language.
They don't want the words "affirmative action" to appear in the summary of the initiative.
But the Secretary of State's Chief of Staff Mindy Mazur says the ballot language accurately reflects what the measure would do if passed.
"It doesn't matter what the issue is. What the important thing is that Missouri voters have a summary they understand when they go to the poll, and they can vote yes or no, regardless of the issue," Mazur said. "And that's what we consistently do, and what we feel we've done in this case as well."
The group needs at least 139,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot in 2008.
In 2006 the Secretary of State's office faced three lawsuits over ballot language and won all three.