In Missouri, there are two citizen-initiated measures pending signature verification. One would enact an electoral system combining top-four primaries and ranked-choice voting for general elections. The other proposal would legalize marijuana in the state. The state must verify whether enough signatures have been collected by August 9.
The electoral system initiative would replace partisan primaries with open top-four primaries for state executive, state legislative, and congressional offices. The ballot initiative would establish ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, for general elections, in which voters can rank the four candidates that succeeded from the primaries. The system would be similar to Alaska’s, where voters approved an initiative in 2020.
Better Elections, the campaign behind the electoral system initiative, reported submitting more than 300,000 signatures on May 8. In Missouri, there is no statewide signature requirement; rather, proponents of initiated constitutional amendments need to collect signatures equal to 8 percent of the votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election in six of the eight state congressional districts. The smallest possible number of signatures required for an initiated amendment is 171,592.
