Missouri Senate fails to vote on initiative petition changes after Democratic filibuster

After two days of gridlock in the Missouri Senate, a motion to pass legislation looking to overhaul the initiative petition process has been tabled until next week.

Due to the Super Bowl victory by the Kansas City Chiefs, Missouri lawmakers are taking a long weekend to celebrate in the victory parade Wednesday in Kansas City. The Missouri Republican Party is also hosting its annual Lincoln Days event in Kansas City this weekend, another factor in pushing off the debate.

Both the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate are forgoing floor debate on legislation until Monday, so with the exception of a few committee hearings, lawmakers won’t continue their legislative duties this week.

The debate on the initiative petition bills began Monday afternoon in the state Senate, with bill sponsor Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman introducing a few changes to the legislation seeking to change the initiative petition process.

Originally, the legislation, which is a combination of several bills, proposed using a concurrent majority to pass ballot initiatives, meaning that initiative petitions must pass with a simple majority of statewide voters and with voters in 82 of 163 state House districts in favor.

While a concurrent majority system is still being proposed, Coleman would now prefer to use the state’s eight congressional districts as the other metric, meaning the petitions would need approval in five of those eight districts plus a majority of the popular vote.

“It's about wanting to make sure that our founding document is kept and preserved and made more difficult to change,” Coleman said.

Coleman feels that it is too easy to change the state constitution, creating what she calls a “hodge podge document.”

“We have incentivized people to change not statutes, not codes, but our founding documents because it is as easy to change the constitution,” Coleman said.

More: Initiative petitions are the topic of much debate in Missouri’s legislature. Here's why

However, when state Sen. Doug Beck asked Coleman to review her legislation line by line on Monday night, he found multiple items contained in the legislation that he dubbed “ballot candy,” which refers to provisions designed to entice voters to approve a measure that may otherwise be unpopular.

Coleman did not hesitate to confirm that her proposal contained items such as these.

“There absolutely is ballot candy in the substitute,” Coleman said during Monday night’s debate.

However, if voters approve her plan containing the ballot candy she wants to put before voters, her bill would then prohibit the use of ballot candy for certain topics in future initiative petitions.

“We should be limited from changing our constitution,” Coleman said, “making sure that people aren't able to put (what’s) commonly known as ballot candy to incite people to pass or to not pass something."

Many of the “ballot candy” issues in Coleman’s legislation include ensuring that only U.S. citizens and Missouri residents can vote, stopping foreign involvement in initiative petitions, prohibiting raising taxes on some items through initiative petition and prohibiting lawmakers from receiving gifts.

Beck pointed out that these issues are already guaranteed by state or federal law.

Democrats made good on the promise made by Senate Minority Floor Leader John Rizzo last week, when he said that they would “vehemently” oppose changing the initiative petition process, filibustering for more than five hours Monday and six hours Tuesday to prevent action on the legislation.

Senators are expected to resume the discussion next week. So far, no legislation has been passed by the body, while the Missouri House continues to pass bills and send them to the Senate for consideration.

Scott Charton, spokesman for Missourians for Fair Governance, the political action committee representing the interests of the Missouri Realtors, spoke out against the legislation in a release emailed during the debate.

"The idea of requiring a second vote, after all Missouri citizens have already had an opportunity to vote, violates the long-established principle of one-person, one-vote," Charton said. "That's just undemocratic and it devalues citizens' votes based on their ZIP code."

Missouri Realtors have successfully used initiative petitions to pass issues important to their members, setting them up in opposition to any efforts to change the process.

Any changes made by lawmakers would still have to be approved by voters.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Missouri Senate Democrats block vote on initiative petition bill