KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For more than a century, Missouri residents have had the power to bypass the General Assembly and pass laws — including amendments to the state constitution — through a vote.
Some lawmakers believe voters are getting too good at it.
"The idea of a direct democracy does not work," Rep. John Simmons, a Washington Republican, said during a February House debate on a measure to make it harder to amend the Missouri Constitution.. "Our founders did not create a direct democracy and they debated and they learned and they studied history on what failed over the centuries.
"And having the mob rule dictate policy in the end destroys the government of that people."
Kansas and Missouri lawmakers want fundamental changes to how state politics is conducted. A series of proposals represent a multipronged effort to reshape the rules of engagement for partisan battles.
Republicans in both states are advocating for measures that would enshrine conservative goals in state constitutions, altering the balance of power in ways that would make it more difficult for Democrats to promote liberal policies in the future.
The Kansas Legislature has advanced a constitutional amendment that would give it veto power over rules and regulations issued by state agencies under the governor. The objective for Republicans, who control the Legislature, is dominion over an executive branch that can shift back and forth between parties.
Kansas Republicans also want to give the GOP-controlled state Senate the final say over nominees to the state Supreme Court and amend the constitution to make it harder for lawmakers to approve future tax increases. The Senate narrowly fell short of passing those measures this past week, but they are almost certain to return.
Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, said he felt the current moment was particularly ripe for discussing changes that would adjust the machinery of governance in the GOP's favor.
"Given the last two years of COVID and the frustration and some of what our current President Biden's done in Congress ... I think there are more people right now paying attention and interested in what the rules are," Masterson said.
In Missouri, the General Assembly is aiming to overhaul the initiative petition process — the state's form of direct democracy that offers a way to get proposals on the ballot by gathering signatures. Republicans want to expand signature-gathering requirements and establish a supermajority vote of the public to approve future amendments to the state constitution.
At the same time, lawmakers want to continue to allow existing amendments they never liked, such as Medicaid expansion and minimum wage requirements, to be repealed with a simple majority vote.
The Missouri effort comes as an initiative petition campaign is underway seeking ranked-choice voting. It's a change that could bolster moderate candidates in a state where right-wing — and some left-wing — politicians have gained influence in recent years.
Republican state lawmakers across the country are working to restrict the power of citizens to advance ballot measures. Nearly 100 bills have been filed to change ballot measure rules, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a Washington-based group that promotes progressive ballot measures.
"The trend that we're seeing is an increased boldness from state legislators to really bar citizens from the initiative process and more creative policies than ever," said Corrine Rivera Fowler, the group's director of policy and legal advocacy.
The movement to retool the political process has gained support from Kansas Republicans bitter about Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's COVID-19 response. The early phase of the pandemic included business closures and gathering limits.
In Missouri, Democrats and progressives have won significant recent victories at the ballot box, implementing ethics reform, Medicaid expansion and minimum wage increases through initiative petitions. Their success has, in turn, sparked a Republican backlash.
"We have one of the easiest processes in the country for amending our constitution," said Rep. Mike Henderson, a Bonne Terre Republican sponsoring one of the initiative petition overhaul measures.
Kansas legislative veto
In Kansas, the Republican supermajority has spent hours considering a slate of constitutional amendments that would change the power dynamics between the executive, legislative and executive branches.
Kansas voters will decide in November whether to approve a constitutional amendment establishing a legislative veto over executive agency rules and regulations. The Legislature approved the amendment this past week.
The measure would allow the Legislature to repeal executive agency regulations with a simple majority vote. Under current law, if lawmakers disapprove of executive agency regulation they must pass a bill that the governor can veto. It takes a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate to override the rejection.
Kansas state Sen. Kellie Warren, a Leawood Republican running for attorney general, said the move "restores checks and balances" between the legislative and executive branches.
The amendment was proposed by Attorney General Derek Schmidt. A Republican, Schmidt is his party's presumptive nominee for governor and expected to face Kelly on the ballot in November.
The amendment was offered in response to efforts by state agencies to issue regulations lawmakers say are tantamount to law — concerns that echo, in some ways, fears among national Republicans over a federal bureaucratic "deep state."
Among prime examples cited by amendment supporters are the Kansas Department of Labor's rules giving employees more control in workers' compensation cases and tightened regulations from the Kansas Board of Cosmetology.
"When it comes to lawmaking, the buck is supposed to stop with the people's elected representatives in the Legislature," Schmidt said in a statement. "But the reality of the modern regulatory state is that the Legislature often passes the buck by granting broad power to regulatory agencies and then has no meaningful recourse when an agency uses that power to create an ill-advised rule or regulation."
House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, said lawmakers are seeking a "balancing out the power between branches of government."
"We kind of had a fourth branch of government in bureaucrats that started passing laws by imposing rules and regulations," Ryckman said.
Kelly questioned whether Republicans are truly motivated to help Kansans.
"I think we should be very judicious in the use of ballot questions and do it in such a way that we can explain to the public as best as possible what the ballot question is all about," Kelly said.
Kansas Senate Republican leaders tried and failed to pass an amendment requiring state Supreme Court nominees to receive Senate confirmation. Nominees to the court are currently selected by a commission and appointed by the governor — a merit-based system put in place decades ago after Gov. Fred Hall resigned in 1957 and his successor immediately appointed Hall to the court.
The Senate also failed to approve an amendment requiring tax increases to be approved by a supermajority of the Legislature.
Even though Republican senators came up short, the proposals are almost certain to resurface. Changing the way Supreme Court justices are chosen has been a longtime goal of Masterson since before he became Senate president in 2021.
Republicans have viewed the Kansas Supreme Court as left-leaning in recent years. It is a view they believe was decisively confirmed in 2019 when the court declared that the state constitution protects the right to an abortion. Voters will decide in August whether to approve an amendment overturning the decision.
"I think the majority party has been in control for so long and the fact of shifting trends is scaring them that they may lose even an inch of power," said Kansas Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat.
"And so they want to change the game so that they remain in ultimate control."
More signatures in Missouri
In Missouri, Republican lawmakers are focused on setting a higher bar to change the state constitution.
Initiative petitions to change the constitution require signatures from 8% of registered voters from six of the state's eight congressional districts to qualify for the ballot. Once on the ballot, a simple majority of voters must approve the amendment.
While the number of initiative petitions — which can only be used to change state law — that end up on the ballot has remained relatively steady over the past decade, the number of petitions filed has risen dramatically, growing from 105 in 2010 to 371 in 2018, according to Politifact.
Missouri voters approved Medicaid expansion in 2020. Before that, voters defeated a measure prohibiting workers from being required to join unions and approved raising the minimum wage to $12 over several years.
Voters have also approved medical marijuana and the government reform plan Clean Missouri, though voters in 2020 approved a separate measure sent to the ballot by GOP lawmakers rolling back its redistricting provisions.
The Missouri House has approved two constitutional amendments to put a more difficult process in place for initiative petitions. Both would require future amendments to receive two-thirds support from voters.
Both would require signatures to come from every congressional district, and one would raise the signature threshold to 10% of registered voters for constitutional amendments. The other would implement a review process that allows the General Assembly to propose changes to the measure, though the signature-gatherer could decide whether to accept the modifications.
One proposal would allow amendments that have previously been adopted to be repealed with a simple majority vote, even though a supermajority would be required for future amendments.
Finally, one of the proposals calls for the secretary of state to conduct a review and comment process for proposed amendments in each congressional district ahead of the election. Critics fear this would hand the secretary of state a platform to influence voters.
"The truth is this is basically going to make it virtually impossible to get anything done. It's going to kill the initiative petition process as we know it," said Rep. David Tyson Smith, a Columbia Democrat.
Republican supporters say the existing process is too easy. Well-funded donors and out-of-state organizations are able to fund signature gathering efforts and campaigns, they say. Some Republicans have toyed with the idea of requiring individuals gathering signatures to be Missouri residents.
The supermajority requirement would ensure future changes to the constitution have buy-in from more areas of the state, supporters contend.
"So we can't have a situation where, I don't know, where 93% of the counties of our state vote down an IP (initiative petition) yet somehow it still gets into the constitution like we had with Medicaid expansion," said Rep. J. Eggleston, a Maysville Republican sponsoring the measure that would allow past amendments to be repealed with a simple majority.
'Folks will look back'
Looming over the debates this year is the Better Elections campaign, which is seeking to place an amendment on the November ballot that would implement ranked-choice voting.
Under the group's proposal, beginning in 2024 voters would cast a single primary ballot, with the top four candidates advancing to the general election, regardless of party. During the November election, voters could rank their choices.
If a candidate wins an outright majority, he or she wins immediately. If not, the ranked choices of voters are used to determine the winner. "That's an incentive for candidates to campaign for every vote and stick to issues instead of hurling nasty attacks that turn off some voters," the group said in a recent update.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported this week more than $3 million in funding for the effort has been linked to John and Laura Arnold, a wealthy Texas couple. John is an investor and Laura is an attorney and former oil company executive, according to their philanthropy group, Arnold Ventures.
The House-approved amendments to change the initiative petition process passed by similar margins: 98-53 and 96-34. Hearings in the Senate have not yet been scheduled.
Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, warned that while Republicans are currently in control, eventually the pendulum will swing back.
"Folks will look back at what we did in terms of making sure that everybody had an opportunity to participate and vote directly on issues that matter to this state and make substantial change through that process," she said.
