In a Missouri REALTORS® legal victory for voter protection, a judge is stripping misleading and prejudicial “ballot candy” from a legislatively-approved ballot measure that would vastly weaken citizens’ long-standing initiative petition and referendum rights.
Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green announced from the bench after an hour-long hearing on Thursday afternoon that he is discarding three bullet points from the ballot summary for House Joint Resolution 3. The judge’s decision will give more prominence in the ballot summary to the real purpose of the measure, which would, if enacted, make major changes in our citizens’ IP power reserved in the state constitution.
The three discarded bullet points are “ballot candy,” written by the General Assembly in hope of luring voter support. But Judge Green agreed with arguments by attorneys for Missouri REALTORS®’ that the ballot candy is misleading, because the three provisions cited are already part of state law.
A ruling from the bench is unusual in Cole County, the seat of state government where legal challenges to legislative and governmental matters originate. Judge Green directed the REALTORS® legal team, led by attorneys Chuck Hatfield and Greta Bax of the Stinson law firm, to submit suggestions on substitute ballot summary language to him by next Friday, February 27. The judge said he would issue a formal ruling with his own substitute ballot summary language by March 4.
The General Assembly approved HJR3 last year, sending it to a statewide vote. HJR3 would require that instead of allowing citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to be enacted by a statewide simple majority vote – which is currently the law – such proposals could not be enacted unless they pass in all eight of the state’s congressional districts. That means the failure of a proposed citizen’s amendment in a single congressional district would mean it fails statewide. Governor Mike Kehoe has not yet set an election date for HJR3.
Missouri REALTORS® backed the lawsuit through its Missourians for Fair Governance campaign committee, which was created several years ago in support of the association’s long-standing commitment to protect the citizens’ IP power.
“We are grateful the court agreed with our arguments and is stripping the misleading, unfair and prejudicial ballot candy from this bad measure. Missourians deserve clarity in what they are voting on, especially when they are being asked by lawmakers to give up their citizen initiative power, a constitutional right they reserved for themselves more than a century ago,” said Scott Charton, spokesman for Missourians for Fair Governance. “We will continue building a campaign coalition to protect our citizens’ initiative petition rights and defeat this terrible proposal at the polls.”
MFG’s attorneys argued that HJR3’s three ballot candy bullets are the most prominent part of the ballot summary because they are most appealing to voters, although they duplicate existing law. They cited an appeals court ruling from last year, stating that a ballot summary statement is misleading if it “leads voters to erroneously believe a measure would change existing law when it did not.”
Judge Green said he is stripping the following duplicative ballot candy bullets, which were the first things voters would see, in numerical order, in reading the ballot summary:
(1) “Stop foreign nationals and foreign adversaries of the United States from providing funding to influence ballot measure elections, and allow criminal prosecution of violators …”
(2) “Punish initiative petition signature fraud as a crime …”
(3) “Require public hearings to be held to get public comment before initiative petitions are placed on the ballot …”
Deletion of the ballot candy will move up to the most prominent position in the ballot summary the actual central purpose of HJR3: Making it nearly impossible for citizens to amend the constitution in the future with the new congressional district voting requirements.
Missouri REALTORS®, the state’s largest professional association with more than 25,000 members, has twice led successful statewide citizen-initiated campaigns to amend the constitution. In 2010, REALTORS® sponsored a prohibition on taxing the transfer of property, and in 2016, voters approved banning sales taxes on services Missourians use every day.
