The Republican House Speaker Pro Tem wants to raise the bar for approving a constitutional amendment to 60% because ballot initiatives are allegedly increasingly funded by out-of-state political action committees.
“If you trace the money from the PACs, it’s a great deal,” said Rep. Mike Henderson (R-St. Francois County). “I think Missourians should shape what our constitution looks like, not people from other states like New York, California, and other places. I don't think they should come in here and reshape Missouri to what their view of it is.”
House Joint Resolution 43 (HJR 43) was approved by the Missouri House of Representatives last week 108-to-50. Only one Democrat voted in favor of HJR 43. The rest voted against it.
If approved by the Senate and signed by Gov. Parson, it will appear on the November 2024 ballot.
“All we're doing is putting it before the voters and letting the voters decide,” Henderson told the St. Louis Record. “We're looking to put one on to say that it's too simple right now and the people in Missouri feel like they're being hoodwinked at times and not being told all the truth about some of these constitutional amendments that are on there.”
Currently, approving a ballot initiative only requires a simple majority, which is 50% plus one.
For example, Amendment 3, was approved by voters last year with a simple majority to legalize recreational marijuana.
Amendment 3 legalizes the possession, cultivation, and licensed retail sale of cannabis for residents 21 and over and requires marijuana-related misdemeanor expungements to be completed by June 8 and certain marijuana felonies to be expunged by Dec. 8.
“On the marijuana initiative, for local communities to keep the sale of marijuana out of their local communities, that same constitutional amendment 3 required 60% of your local community to vote to keep it out,” Henderson said in an interview.
HJR 43 would also amend Article 3, Section 50 of the Missouri Constitution in a way that would exclude non-citizen Missourians from being considered legal voters.
“Our state constitution, I feel, in many ways is up for sale,” Henderson added. “If you can raise three to five million dollars, you can almost pass anything you want on a constitutional amendment. Our constitution has been changed more than 60 times since it was written in 1945 whereas the US Constitution has only been changed 17 times since 1791. My point of all that is that the Constitution should be a living document, not an ever-changing document, and I think that's where it is right now.”