Amendment 6: Don't Freeze a Petition Law in Place

This is the third post in my plain-words series on Missouri's November 3 ballot. Amendment 6 is the only amendment this year that got on the ballot by citizen petition rather than from the General Assembly. It's also the one where I recommend a No.

What It Would Do

Missouri already lets citizens put a law or a constitutional change on the ballot. A No vote doesn't take that away. A Yes vote makes it much harder to repair a law once a petition campaign has passed it. Here are the main pieces:

• The 80% rule. To change a law voters passed by petition, 80% of the members of both the House and the Senate would have to agree just to send the fix back to voters. That covers petition laws passed since 2010.
• Harder to fix than the Constitution. Today the legislature can send a constitutional amendment to voters with a simple majority in each chamber. Amendment 6 would make an ordinary petition law far harder to fix than the Constitution itself.
• A "fundamental right" with strict scrutiny. It declares initiative and referendum fundamental rights and says any law touching them must pass the strictest test courts use.
• No "weakening." It bars the legislature from weakening the petition process, a term it says should be read broadly.
• Courts rewrite the summary. It writes into the Constitution the courts' power to rewrite the short summary voters read, and bars the legislature from limiting that power.

Signature rules wouldn't change either way: 5% of voters for a law and 8% for a constitutional change, in two-thirds of the congressional districts. A simple statewide majority would still pass a petition measure.

What a No Vote Leaves in Place

A No keeps today's petition process exactly as it is today. Citizens can still gather signatures and put laws and amendments on the ballot. Voters can still reject laws by referendum. The official summary says this measure won't raise or lower taxes either way.

My Recommendation: NO

The 80% figure is the heart of it. Petition laws are written by campaigns, not debated line by line in committee, and sometimes they have mistakes that need fixing. Under Amendment 6, fixing one would take an 80% supermajority in both chambers before voters could even weigh in. No law should be beyond repair.

We're a representative republic built on checks and balances. The founders didn't write the Constitution as a set of suggestions, and they didn't design a system where any one path to making law sits above all the others. I value the people's right to petition. That's exactly why I'd keep the process we have instead of tipping the balance this far.

Next in the series (Wed., Oct. 21): Amendment 7, a savings fund meant to retire state taxes.