Bill would increase Missouri secretary of state's role in initiative petition process
State Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville speaks in May 2024 during the Freedom Caucus filibuster blocking approval of provider taxes essential to funding Medicaid (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).
In the spring of 2023, efforts were underway to put the question of restoring abortion access to Missouri voters. Abortion-rights supporters geared up to collect the roughly 171,000 signatures required to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Per the state's initiative petition process, then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote a summary of their proposed constitutional amendment. A staunch abortion opponent then running for governor, Ashcroft drafted the first part of his summary of the petition to say: 'Do you want to amend the Missouri Constitution to: allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth.'
It was not what the drafters had in mind. They took him to court — and won.
A judge nixed Ashcroft's summary and wrote a new one.
A Republican-sponsored bill that has cleared the state Senate and received a House committee hearing Tuesday would make it more difficult for judges to rewrite a secretary of state's ballot summary.
'To me this is a gross overstepping of the judiciary branch,' state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville and the bill sponsor, said at Tuesday's hearing.
In Brattin's opinion, shared by opponents to abortion rights, the courts wrote a summary slanted in favor of the initiative petition that would become Amendment 3, ultimately passed by voters last November.
Senate Bill 22 allows a group to appeal the secretary of state's summary. The court can make recommendations, but the secretary of state must revise the language within seven days
If the court finds that summary unfair, the secretary gets five days to write another draft. This process can happen one last time, and upon third revision the secretary gets just three days. Only then, if the court still finds the summary unfair, can a judge rewrite it. The back-and-forth process must take place on a set timeline prior to the general election.
Brattin's original bill eliminated the court's ability to rewrite a ballot summary, he said at the committee hearing, but he worked with Senate Democrats to amend it.
'This was (a) compromise,' Brattin said.
For opponents of the bill, the timeline would make it nearly impossible to oppose the secretary of state's ballot language. The process would need to play out more than 70 days before the election.
'If the time runs out, the challenge is extinguished, and it seems to me like whatever the last language is would stand, even if the court still thinks it's not fair,' said state Rep. Eric Woods, a Kansas City Democrat.
Sam Lee, a veteran anti-abortion lobbyist, argued courts can expedite cases related to an election. He spoke on behalf of Campaign Life Missouri and testified in support of the measure along with a representative from Missouri Right to Life.
Groups including the League of Women Voters of Missouri, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, Missouri Jobs with Justice Voter Action and the Missouri AFL-CIO testified in opposition to the measure. Many voters echoed Woods' concerns about the feasibility of the proposed timeline.
'What if today our Secretary of State was a Democrat?' asked Ron Berry, a lobbyist for Missouri Jobs with Justice and a former staffer for Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. 'Would we be here today discussing this bill?'
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.
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