Every Missouri Ballot Initiative Since 2020 Would Have Failed Under the Legislature's New Rules

Your Vote Passed. They Repealed It Anyway.

In November 2024, nearly 1.7 million Missouri voters approved Proposition A, establishing paid sick leave and tying minimum wage increases to inflation. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld it. Seven months later, Governor Kehoe signed HB 567, repealing the sick leave mandate and killing the inflation adjustment. Workers who had already begun accruing sick time lost those benefits on August 28, 2025.

This was not an isolated event. It is a pattern.

A Track Record of Overriding the Public

Missouri’s legislature has repeatedly gutted measures that voters approved at the ballot box. Here is what that looks like over the past 15 years:

Year	What voters approved	What the legislature did
2010	Puppy mill regulations (Prop B)	Weakened the law months later
2018	Clean Missouri redistricting reform (62% yes)	Put a repeal on the 2020 ballot; original reform never implemented
2020	Medicaid expansion (53% yes)	Refused to fund it despite a record budget surplus
2024	Paid sick leave and minimum wage indexing (58% yes)	Repealed sick leave, killed inflation adjustment

Four times in 15 years, your vote was treated as a suggestion.

Now They Want to Make Winning Nearly Impossible

Missouri’s Amendment 4 on the November 2026 ballot would require citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to win a majority in all eight congressional districts, not just statewide. A Ballotpedia analysis found that every citizen-initiated amendment since 2020 would have failed under this rule, because Missouri’s 7th and 8th districts gave Trump more than 70% of the vote and rejected every initiative.

That means two rural districts could veto the will of the entire state.

“Requiring a majority in all eight districts will be virtually impossible to pass the initiative petition and would effectively silence the voice of the people.” — Kay Park, League of Women Voters of Missouri

Missouri is not alone. At least five states have certified 2026 ballot measures raising initiative thresholds, including North Dakota and South Dakota (both proposing 60% supermajorities). But Missouri’s district-by-district requirement is the only one of its kind in the country.

The Counter-Move You Should Know About

A grassroots coalition called Respect Missouri Voters collected more than 367,000 signatures to place their own amendment on the November ballot. Their proposal would require an 80% supermajority in the legislature to alter any voter-approved law, and those changes would then need statewide voter approval.

The coalition includes former Republican U.S. Senator John Danforth and former Democratic House Minority Leader Crystal Quade. If both measures reach the ballot, Missouri voters will face a direct choice between weakening and strengthening their own power.

What You Can Do

Vote on August 4 and November 3. Missouri could see up to nine ballot measures in 2026. Read them before you go.
Learn the amendment numbers. Amendment 4 restricts your initiative rights. The Respect Missouri Voters amendment protects them. Know which is which.
Talk to people who skip off-year elections. Turnout in non-presidential years drops sharply, and that is exactly when these measures get passed.
Check your registration. Verify your voter registration status at Missouri’s Secretary of State website.
Share this with someone in Missouri. Forward this page. The biggest threat to your ballot power is not knowing it is under attack.

Update, June 12, 2026: Courts have rewritten or rejected Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ ballot summaries five times since he took office, and judges have separately revised three summaries drafted by Republican lawmakers, the Missouri Independent reported. The cases span measures on abortion, redistricting, public education, private-school funding, and the initiative-petition process.

The most recent ruling involved Amendment 5, a proposed constitutional amendment that would phase out Missouri’s state income tax. An appeals court found the legislature’s original summary failed to disclose that the measure would expand the General Assembly’s power to impose sales and use taxes and curtail existing constitutional limits on taxation. Gov. Mike Kehoe, who has called Amendment 5 his administration’s top priority, characterized the rewrite as judicial interference; the measure remains on the August 4, 2026 ballot under the revised language.

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said the Western District Court of Appeals has approved edits to every ballot title it considered over the past year and argued the rewrites undermine deference owed to elected officials. Derek Clinger, senior counsel for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Missouri has been “probably the hottest spot in the last couple of years” for conflicts over direct democracy.