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On Tuesday, voters in Kansas and Missouri overwhelmingly rejected ballot measures proposed by Republican lawmakers that aimed to restrict their democratic and human rights.
In Kansas, proposed Amendment 1 would have required direct elections for state Supreme Court justices. The measure was introduced by Republicans in the state legislature to counter the process for appointing jurists to the state’s highest court, which has protected reproductive rights over the past decade despite efforts by the GOP to pass laws restricting abortion.
As of 9 am Central Time on Wednesday, that measure was losing, with 61.3 percent of voters rejecting the idea. Several counties in the state, including in rural areas that have traditionally sided with Republicans, voted against it as well.
The rejection of the measure comes just four years after Republicans sought to reverse the state Supreme Court’s abortion protections in a different ballot measure in 2022.
Missouri voters also rejected a measure aimed at curtailing voters’ right to self-determination at the ballot box. Proposed Amendment 4 would have changed the ballot initiative process altogether. Instead of simply requiring a majority vote in the state to pass changes to state law, it would require a majority vote in every congressional district in the state. Such a measure would allow lawmakers to gerrymander the state’s political lines in order to prevent voters from passing ballot initiatives.
As of Wednesday morning, more than 80 percent of voters opposed the proposal by GOP lawmakers. A majority in every county in the state voted against the measure, meaning that, even by the standards that the proposal was trying to enact, it would have been rejected.
The outcome is significant because voters in Missouri have used the ballot initiative process to bypass obstructionist Republicans in the state government on issues relating to abortion, Medicaid expansion, the minimum wage, and required paid sick leave for workers.
“These decisions were made directly by Missourians,” wrote Constance Harper, vice president of Strategic Impact and Innovation at the Deaconess Foundation, and McClain Bryant Macklin, chief policy and impact officer at the Health Forward Foundation, in an op-ed for Truthout earlier this month. “They determined whether more families could access health care, whether workers could earn higher wages, whether someone could stay home sick without losing a paycheck, and whether Missourians could exercise greater control over deeply personal decisions. These are the kinds of questions that shape the health, stability, and vitality of communities.”
Several political observers celebrated the rejection of the measures.
“Voters in Kansas saw through a blatant political power grab and sent a message — our courts are not for sale,” the Bluesky account for the American Civil Liberties Union wrote.
“Republican power grabs in Kansas and Missouri are going down in flames,” Stephen Wolf, contributor for The Down Ballot, opined in a social media post.
“This is a TOTAL repudiation by Missouri voters of a core agenda of state GOP leadership,” wrote Quinton Lucas, mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.
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