On April 5, 2022, voters in St. Louis, Missouri, will decide a ballot initiative, Proposition R, at a special election. The citizen-initiated charter amendment addresses three policies – the city’s redistricting process, the laws governing conflicts of interest, and legislative changes to voting methods. It would also change the name of the Board of Aldermen to the Board of Alderpersons.
Proposition R follows the voter-approved Proposition D, which enacted a system of approval voting the offices of mayor, comptroller, president of the Board of Aldermen, and the Board of Aldermen. Approval voting is an electoral system in which voters may vote for any number of candidates they choose. Proposition D also made elections for these offices open and non-partisan. Proposition R would require the Board of Aldermen to submit changes to voting methods to the ballot for a public vote. Therefore, in regards to Proposition D, approval voting could not be repealed or changed by the Board without voter approval. After Proposition D was approved in 2020, the voting method was first used in the 2021 municipal election.
Proposition R would transfer redistricting from the Board of Alderpersons to a 9-member redistricting commission that, according to the amendment, should “represent the demographic make-up of the City of St. Louis.” An Oversight Committee would remove applicants that do not meet certain requirements, and then provide a list of applicants to the Board of Aldermen. Each alderperson would be permitted to strike one applicant from the list, which would then return to the Oversight Committee. A random draw would be used to select four applicants to serve as commissioners, and those four persons would select the remaining five applicants by votes requiring approval from three out of the four.
