The Missouri House approved a plan to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments to 57% but it was among the bills that did not pass by the end of the legislative session.
Currently, approving a ballot initiative only requires a simple majority, which is 50% plus one. Amendment 3, for example, 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 as well as certain marijuana felonies to be expunged by Dec. 8.
“We've been at 50% for a pretty long time on passing constitutional amendments and that's what the problem is,” said National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) State Director Brad Jones. “The legislature is treating the Constitution like it's a statute. And the thinking is that if you're going to change the constitution, then it should be at a higher standard.”
On May 9, House lawmakers voted 107 to 55 to send the proposal to Senate lawmakers, according to media reports.
House Joint Resolution (HJR) 43 was introduced by Rep. Mike Henderson (R-St. Francois) to stave off ballot initiatives that are believed to be funded by out-of-state political action committees.
“Sixty percent is what they really wanted at the beginning but it got negotiated down to 57 percent,” Jones told the St. Louis Record. “I think there's probably a constituency that didn't really want that either.”
Conservative Missourians like the Freedom Principle MO prefer a Concurrent Majority Ratification (CMR) because they predict that raising the threshold for ballot initiatives could still be easily approved by ignoring the rural vote and focusing on votes in urban population centers like St. Louis and Kansas City.
"There was talk that they were going to drop it down to 54 percent and the original version that went into the conference committee did have a concurrent majority revocation model for constitutional amendments that were passed through the signature process but they took that out," Freedom Principle MO President Byron Keelin told the St. Louis Record.
If approved and signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson, HJR 43 would have amended Article 3, Section 50 of the Missouri Constitution in a way that excluded non-citizen Missourians from being considered legal voters.