Ranked Voting Update: Missouri Legislature

[in...@betterballotkc.org]

Status of the Bill

In both the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate, the bill has passed out of committee to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that, among other things, would ban ranked choice voting. If this makes it to the ballot, voters state-wide would still have a chance to vote no. But the first thing in that amendment is to ban non-citizens from voting. They already can't vote, of course, but since the Missouri constitution only says all citizens can vote but not that non-citizens can't, the bill's drafters thought it was important. That provision is likely to be popular, and it will come first, so many voters might not even be aware they're voting to ban localities from deciding the voting method they want to use. 

Yesterday, there was a hearing in the House elections committee. The two chambers came up with different bills, and they were handling this by simply voting on the Senate bill. It's now what the House would consider if it comes to a floor vote. 

That "if" is a biggy - the legislative session ends for 2024 on May 17, just a couple more weeks. They have way higher priority things that they're having trouble getting to, so we're hopeful this just won't get scheduled for a vote. 

As for you all contacting your Missouri state representative and/or senator (the bill is SJR 78), a phone call is ideal. You'd get their aides, but an actual short discussion with an aide about how important it is to vote against this bill will be far more effective than a simple email. Unfortunately, the legislature has mainly a partisan divide on this, so if your reps are Democrats, they're likely voting against it anyway, but could do with some bolstering plus paying attention. If your reps are Republicans, they're more likely to need some work in having ranking explained to them. 

Yesterday's Hearing (April 30)

The hearing lasted over three hours - there were many witnesses, and the committee was also highly engaged. Ranking was a major topic, but the non-citizen non-voting provision and the paper/mechanical means only provision (that is, no internet voting) also got a lot of attention. 

Rachel MacNair and Larry Bradley were both there. Rachel's presentation went well, probably, but without any feedback in the form of questions afterwards. Larry's, on the other hand, sparked quite a bit of discussion. One thing made quite clear: we can't assume that legislators that are voting about banning something are actually familiar with how it's done. Even though they've been considering it for weeks, Larry had to go over some of the non-controversial basics of how the ballots are counted. 

The primary hangup in the rhetoric is that ranking opponents somehow think that a ballot that selects a first ranking and doesn't select a second ranking is therefore thrown out, meaning that the voter's vote didn't count, and that's unfair. Of course, that voter's vote in the first round counts just as it does now. No ballots are ever "thrown out." They just only continue to be counted in later rounds if the voter participated in the later rounds. Voters don't have to - no one has to rank candidates they can't abide at all - and they're in no worse shape than the current system where their candidate gets voted down. But with the current system they have no more opportunity to weigh in on the rest of the candidates, and with ranking they do. 

But our attempts to straighten them out on this were difficult since they've had others tell them this many times but us only telling them a few times. Hopefully that will get fixed as time goes on and more of us have a chance to educate our neighbors and legislators. 

-- Rachel MacNair

Voice and text: 816-753-2057