Judge strips 'ballot candy' from plan to make it harder to amend Missouri Constitution
A Republican judge in Cole County on Thursday ruled that the ballot summary must be rewritten for a proposed constitutional amendment that would make it much harder for Missourians to amend the constitution through citizen initiative petitions.
Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ordered the first three bullet points of the summary voters will see on the ballot to be removed, saying they were misleading because they tout provisions already in state law — such as a ban on foreign campaign contributions and penalties for signature fraud.
It isn’t until the fourth bullet point that voters learn the proposal’s main purpose, which is to require constitutional amendments put on the ballot by voters to obtain both a simple majority statewide and a majority in all eight congressional districts to pass. Currently, constitutional amendments only require a simple majority statewide.
Scott Charton, spokesman for Missourians for Fair Governance, the political arm of the organization that filed the lawsuit, the Missouri Association of Realtors, called the quick decision by Green to remove misleading “ballot candy” a total victory.
https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/judge-strips-ballot-candy-from-plan-to-make-it-harder-to-amend-missouri-constitution/
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