Missouri voters defeated Amendment 4, a GOP-backed proposal that would have required citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to win a majority in every congressional district instead of a simple statewide majority. The higher threshold would have applied only to citizen-led initiatives, not measures placed on the ballot by the Legislature. Opponents outspent supporters on broadcast ads by more than $6 million, and critics said the change would cripple direct democracy while supporters called it a protection for the state constitution.
Missouri Voters Defeat GOP Bid To Raise Bar For Citizen-Led Constitutional Amendments
Opponents of the ballot measure vastly outspent supporters on Missouri's airwaves. (Christian Gooden / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Getty Images)
Missouri voters rejected Amendment 4, a Republican-backed proposal that would have made it significantly harder for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to pass in the state, NBC News projects.
Under current Missouri law, citizen-led constitutional amendments pass with a simple statewide majority. Amendment 4 would have required such initiatives to win a majority in every congressional district — boundaries drawn by the state Legislature — while measures referred by lawmakers would have remained subject to the simple statewide standard.
Critics warned that the change would effectively neuter direct democracy in Missouri. Hannah Ledford, deputy director of the Fairness Project, argued the measure would create “the strictest passage threshold in the country for citizen-initiated ballot measures only” and could leave the process “functionally dead.”
Supporters said the amendment was designed to protect the state constitution after voters used citizen initiatives in recent years to approve measures expanding abortion protections, legalizing marijuana and expanding Medicaid. Republican state Representative Ed Lewis, who proposed the amendment, said it was intended to guard the constitution from what he called harmful initiative-driven changes.
‘This amendment is really an amendment to protect our Constitution,’ Representative Ed Lewis said. ‘We have the absolute lowest and weakest process and that’s why we’ve had six initiative petitions passed in the last eight years that have really done real harm to our state and to our Constitution.’
Campaign spending favored the opposition: opponents of Amendment 4 spent more than $6 million on broadcast advertising, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact, while backers did not run broadcast ads. The better-funded campaign against a separate measure, Amendment 5 — which would have eliminated income taxes and expanded sales taxes — also included arguments opposing Amendment 4 in its ads.
The push to change the citizen-initiative process followed a partisan redrawing of Missouri’s congressional map that split the state’s lone Democratic-held district. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins said a referendum seeking to undo the new map would not appear on the ballot, calling the effort unconstitutional.
Missouri is one of 26 states that permit citizen-initiated constitutional amendments. Similar debates over raising the approval threshold have also appeared elsewhere: this fall voters in North Dakota and South Dakota will consider raising the bar to 60 percent, and Utah will weigh a related change tied to tax measures.
What Happens Next: With Amendment 4 defeated, Missouri’s simple-majority rule for citizen-led constitutional amendments remains in place, preserving the path voters have used in recent years to enact high-profile reforms. Lawmakers, however, retain other tools — including legislation and lawsuits — to challenge or modify voter-approved changes.
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