by State Rep. J. Eggleston
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Now that the August primary is over, hold on to your hats … the November General is just around the corner.
Besides the candidate versus candidate races that will inundate the airwaves with commercials, there are seven ballot measures up for consideration as well. The topics of these measures range from marijuana to minimum wage to legislative redistricting to gas tax to bingo. Some of the measures try to create new laws, but several are an attempt to alter our Missouri state constitution.
Over my next few reports, I plan to provide you with information on these ballot measures so you can make an informed choice in the voting booth. But this report will be on how measures get on the ballot in the first place.
Measures are put on the ballot either by the legislature or by a group of citizens. On the November ballot, the measures on the gas tax and bingo were put on the ballot by the legislature passing a bill to do so. The other measures were initiated by special interest groups who gathered enough signatures to put them on the ballot, a process known as “initiative petition.”
For a group to get a proposal on the ballot requires gathering a magic number of signatures from six of our eight US legislative districts, with the magic number being 5% of the number of votes cast in the last governor’s election to make a new law, and 8% to change the state constitution.
The original intent of the initiative petition process was to let citizens enact a law just as the legislature does in case the legislature is not following the will of the people. But it has been pointed out that what has been intended to help average citizens has become used by narrow, sometimes extreme, special interest groups to enact their agenda when they fail to get traction through the normal legislative process.
These special interest groups are often well-funded and well-organized machines that use their power to push a less than totally honest advertising campaign to sway voters who are not fully aware of all of the facts.
Where bills that are passed by the legislature go through a rigorous debate and amendment process to catch any flaws in their language, initiative petitions are passed as is, sometimes with unintended consequences.
Amendment 2 from the 2016 election is a prime example. It was advertised as a means to eliminate corruption in campaign financing by limiting the amount someone could contribute to a candidate to no more than $2,600. Prior to Amendment 2, donors could give any amount, but their donations were publicized so the whole world knew who was giving to whom.
It turns out Amendment 2 did not limit campaign financing at all as it appears more money will be spent on the 2018 elections than the 2016 ones. Now larger donations are just funneled through political action committees (PACs) who do not have to reveal their donors, which has eliminated transparency. Political experts predicted this would happen, but the average voter didn’t know.
Since some initiative petitions have done more harm than good to the public, there has been some discussion of increasing the number of signatures required to get an initiative petition on the ballot or increasing the threshold for passage from 50% to something higher to better insure only quality measures get through, especially regarding amendments that alter our state constitution. Or, we could become like more than half of the other states in America that have no initiative petition process at all, but I doubt we go that far.
In short, if you want to know what is behind a ballot measure, follow the money. If you can find out who is financing the campaign and who stands to benefit if the measure passes, you will be a more informed and prepared voter.