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Primary Wrap Up: Ballot Initiatives See Mixed Night

Saint Louis, Mo. — Missouri had 5 constitutional amendments on its statewide ballots during the August 5 primary and, to some extent, they turned out largely as conventional wisdom said they would.

Missouri’s one-of-a-kind privacy measure — which provides identical protections under the law for electronic documents as paper ones — earned the most love from Missouri voters despite opposition saying the amendment simply wouldn’t have real force with regard to federal surveillance programs. Over 74 percent of Missourians voted in favor of the measure, easily making it the biggest winner of the evening.

**Amendment 1, Missouri’s so-called “Right-to-Farm” amendment passed in the evening’s biggest nail biter. With nearly one million votes cast, Amendment 1 squeaked in by just 2,528 votes. The photo finish must be attributed in no small part to a sudden and well funded opposition campaign that seized social media and the airwaves in the final weeks in a massive push against the measure.

**Amendment 5, Missouri’s measure to make it harder to pass new gun restrictions, sailed by with a 20 percent win in an unsurprising result.

**Amendment 7 supporters were probably hoping for a closer finish, but the bill to raise Missouri’s sales tax by three-quarters of a percent to fund new roads projects died a long-expected death with a crushing loss of almost 20 percent.

**Amendment 8, the state’s bid to fund certain waning veterans services through the state lottery, lost by eleven percent. While the loss is not Earth shattering, it does signal one of the first times in recent memory that a ballot initiative with no clearly organized opponents has been defeated.