Proposals to limit voters’ say are bad for Missouri

There are two proposals being worked on currently by the legislature that Missouri voters should be concerned about. One would reduce the power of the voters to get an item passed through the initiative petition system. The second could swing the balance of votes in our legislative districts through the redistricting process.

Voters should be wary of any change that is suggested by elected officials which would limit the voter’s ability to have a say in our state government.

The current initiative petition system is 115 years old and in that time, only 28 of 69 citizen-initiated Constitutional amendments have ever been approved, Marilyn McLeod shared this week in an opinion piece on the Missouri Independent. McLeod is president of the nonpartisan Board of Directors of the League of Women Voters of Missouri.

If an initiative does gain enough signatures to make it on a ballot, and then gains enough votes to be put before legislatures, it currently requires a simple majority to be passed at that level. It’s the same number of votes legislators need to be elected, McLeod notes.

Proposals by our elected officials would raise the bar, and require a two-thirds majority.

This would be the highest requirement of any state in the nation. To us, that says our representatives want to make it harder in Missouri, than in any other state in the country, to have our voices heard.

“The League believes that our democracy depends on the power of people to be directly involved in their government,” McLeod wrote, adding that if there are parts of the process that place a burden at the local level, there are other options than doing away with this resource. “The initiative petition process is a sacred and trusted right of the citizens of Missouri. It should not be restricted in any way that would end its usefulness.”

Another issue before legislators is redistricting. This comes up every 10 years and the fight is always the same. One group wants to shift lines so that they create a technical victory in one district or another.

We say technical victory because those lines are meaningless in the day-to-day lives of the real people who make up our voting public in Missouri. You can arrange the lines to take power from a voting group you disagree with, but that doesn’t change how those people will vote in the future on statewide initiatives, or taxes like the recent sales tax passed to increase revenue for the Missouri Department of Transportation.

What you do when you take away the voice of the voting public is create more disenfranchised, unhappy and apathetic voters.

Those voters stop showing up to support your sales tax measures and stop participating when you need their support the most.

This may be an uncomfortable topic, but we would say the city of Poplar Bluff has seen the results of this when it comes to the use tax. The use tax would benefit many needs for the city, not the least of which is increased support for police and fire departments.

But decisions surrounding the locations of the city’s police department and city hall created deep fissures in this city over the past decade. Those wounds have clearly not healed yet when we hear from many residents each time the use tax comes up, that they would support it if they felt like their voices mattered.

We can come up with many great ideas on paper. But we need to remember that in real life, people don’t care about that if they don’t feel like our elected officials respect and listen to their needs.