Introduction This short video takes a deep dive into the process behind Missouri’s ballot initiative petitions, a key tool for citizen-driven democracy. The episode features Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and grassroots organizer Justice Gatson, who walk viewers through the complex journey from drafting a ballot measure to gathering the necessary signatures and ensuring its legal compliance. The program sheds light on how initiatives like Medicaid expansion and recreational marijuana faced hurdles but ultimately triumphed due to public demand. While these tools empower citizens, recent legislative efforts seek to raise the bar for constitutional amendments, igniting debate on the future of this democratic process. Video Transcript Jay Ashcroft: Our Country is not perfect, but at least in an aspirational sense our country tried to be founded on the idea of minority rights with majority rule. The Missouri Constitution retains the right of the people to use the initiative petition process. Anyone can file a prospective change in constitution or law with the Secretary of State’s office.  Justice Gatson: First of all, people need to come together and write the initiative. Once that’s written, it gets submitted to the Secretary of State’s office.  Jay Ashcroft: We will go ahead and we will send a copy of your prospective change off to the state auditor’s office. The State Auditor will work on what’s called the fiscal note, and that’s to inform the people of the state: how that will affect the finances of the state, cost the state money, make the state money, it’s going to cost the counties money, it’s going to make them money. That’s exactly what that is.   While the State Auditor is doing that, The Secretary of State’s office starts going through the actual legal language of either the statute proposed, statutory change or constitutional change. We outline all the changes it would make, because we have 100 words in which to concisely, completely and clearly explain to anyone what that change would do. The Attorney General’s office signs off on whether or not he thinks those meet the legal requirements and then we send it to the individual that wants to have the ID that filed it with us. They now have what they need to go and start collecting signatures. In 6 of the 8 congressional districts.  Justice Gatson: We would need 8% of the votes from the last election, which would bring us to about right up under 172,000 signatures in order to qualify for the ballot. Smart campaigners will definitely go for way more than that, because we know some of them might get tossed out. Somebody might not sign it correctly.   Jay Ashcroft: We then digitally send those signatures to the 178 election authorities across the state. Checking to make sure that the individuals are registered voters, that the signatures match.  Justice Gatson: Once we do meet the threshold, the signatures, the Secretary of State issues a certificate.  Jay Ashcroft: We give out a certificate of sufficiency if a petition initiative had met the requirements for signature collection or a certificate of insufficiency if they hadn’t met the requirements for signatures.  Then there is Judicial Review, we write a ballot summary that puts it onto the ballot.   Justice Gatson: Still, the work isn’t finished. Now we have to educate our community more. Like, what does this really mean? Let’s get all of these questions answered.   The final step is turnout to the polls, right? We need people to actually vote on it.  Peverill Squire: The initiative process began to become popular again in terms of being used widely in the 1970s. Conservatives discovered that they could get around liberal state legislatures. Over the last decade, decade and a half, when conservatives have, enjoyed greater strength at the state legislative level, it’s liberals who have now rediscovered the utility.  Jason Hancock: Increasingly over the last 10 years, voters have sought to go around the legislature to enact policy that otherwise is stalled out. Medical marijuana was a good example, and so was Medicaid expansion in 2020.  Nomachot Adiang: Medicaid expansion was something that a lot of people believe in, no matter what their political ideology was. States had the opportunity to expand in 2010-2011 and Missouri decided not to. The state would’ve been able to get 100% reimbursement for the first decade, and so we basically missed the opportunity. Politics was getting in the way of good policy.  Gathering signatures is relatively difficult.  Justice Gatson: Getting people to sign up, like where is your expertise? Where do you want to be? Do you want to gather signatures? Do you want to be a trainer? Do you want to- do you have space where we can host? We’re thinking about, you know, visuals and graphics and marketing and all those kinds of things. We’re also thinking about fundraising, so it’s a lot. It’s a heavy process. It’s a lot of work.   Jason Hancock: Is it an arduous, expensive, risky proposition? The recreational marijuana, proposal is a great example. The invested tons into signature gathering and just barely made it.  John Payne: And you know we had about 4 or 500 people, collecting signatures by, April, on a- on a daily basis. The number that you need is based on turnout from the last gubernatorial election. On the 2020 elections, you know, shattered turnout records. So we ended up having to pay basically three times what we paid on the medical campaign to get this on the ballot.   Justice Gatson: It’ll take you about an hour to gather 8 to 10 signatures, and through Medicaid, we submitted 350,000. So, it’s something that is increasingly gotten under the skin of Republican lawmakers who have supermajorities in the legislature.   Jason Hancock: They’re watching these ballot measures being pushed, for the most part, by liberal interests and voters overwhelmingly approving them. So, one of the things that they’ve tried to do for several years now is make it harder to either get something on the ballot or pass something when it’s on the ballot, especially when it comes to a constitutional amendment.  Representative Mike Henderson: Let me tell you something about resolution 79. It will put before the voters the question “Is the simple majority to change the constitution to the state too low a threshold?”  Jason Hancock: Increase the number of signatures you would need. Increase the cost. Increase the number of congressional districts that you have to collect signatures. There’s some that want to say that the legislature has a veto over it. Or increase the threshold, so maybe instead of 51%, you have to get 60%.  Peverill Squire: It is motivated entirely by politics. It’s a very partizan measure. We have conservative Republicans who are reacting to the fact that, liberal Democrats have been successful at the ballot box over the last 10 years, forgetting that it was conservatives who use that same device to get their measures put into place  John Hancock: And it’s worth noting, this is a constitutionally protected right, initiative petition process. So, ironically, in order to make it harder to amend the Constitution, this would have to go on the ballot and voters would get to weigh in. So, there might be a spirited campaign about whether to amend the Constitution to make it harder to amend the Constitution.  Justice Gatson: We need to hold on to every single piece of power that we have and the our- our initiative process, is it.    Nomachot Adiang: Because a legislator could just, you know, they have bills, they can put something on the ballot. But we have to do all this work to get something on there.  About 200,000 people have been able to apply, this year. Like, I can’t believe that our collective power actually made an impact, but it definitely wouldn’t have been like that if we didn’t put, grassroots pressure on the State of Missouri.  We basically have the opportunity to participate in direct democracy because every vote actually counts.   [END]  This video is part of a series of shorts focused on supporting voters at the polls this November. You can see all the videos in the series and stream additional election coverage from Kansas City PBS at kansascitypbs.org/ontheballot. The post On the Ballot: Navigating Missouri’s Ballot Initiative first appeared on Flatland.