A Missouri senator has introduced a resolution that would prohibit any future foreign citizens from voting in elections statewide.
State Senator Ben Brown’s SJR 30 states specifically that only legal citizens over the age of 18 years old can vote in Missouri.
“It does state that in the Missouri constitution but not as strongly as Ben Brown’s bill,” said Byron Keelin, president of Freedom Principle MO, a Missouri-first pro-citizen group. “It’s just strengthening what’s already there.”
If SJR 30 is approved by the legislature, it would be Missourian voters who would decide whether it’s implemented because it touches upon the Missouri constitution.
“Our republic was founded on the principle that we are governed by a representative democracy consisting of those chosen through free and fair elections," Brown said at a hearing last month. "In order to secure the future of our republic, it is essential that we restore confidence in our system of elections.”
The resolution also specifies elections should be by paper or mechanical ballot and that voters are only entitled to one vote for each issue on the ballot and the same amount of votes for each office as there are seats to be filled at the election.
“The premise of Ben Brown’s bill is to ban any type of ranked-choice, approval style, or weighted voting in Missouri,” Keelin told the St. Louis Record. “What we're trying to do is work with Senator Brown and get a constitutional amendment that would ban ranked choice voting so that we can just stop this.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, Better Elections MO campaigned to allow ranked-choice voting in Missouri by gathering and submitting more than 300,000 signatures with its petition last year but the petition fell short of signatures.
“Now, they're starting again trying to get signatures for the November 2024 election,” Keelin added.
RCV, also known as Final Five Voting, is an election process in which voters choose among all candidates rather than from a partisan ballot. The top five vote-getters in a primary election then go on to a general election. The winner must earn 50 percent plus one, otherwise, a runoff election takes place.
SJR 30 would preserve the one-person, one-vote system, according to Brown.
“For a voter’s voice to fully count in every round of ranked-choice voting election, they must vote for all candidates on the ballot even those they may not support,” he said. “So, while proponents of ranked-choice voting claim that its purpose is to protect majority rule, the reality is that all it creates is an artificial majority.”