This year, the Missouri General Assembly passed a deceptive measure that could actually make it harder for us to hold our leaders accountable. You will see this measure on your November ballot, claiming that it stops noncitizens from voting — even though that has been illegal for a century. It’s an unnecessary and misleading proposal, but without Missourians reading the fine print, it may very well pass — based on a lie.
One of the simplest examples is called “pick-all-you-like” or approval voting: When voters go to the ballots, they can choose any number of candidates they support, rather than being forced to settle on one option.
Unfortunately, the legislature’s trick measure in November would take away your choice to hold leaders accountable by hiding what’s really on the ballot. It’s a deceptive attack on local control.
I’m a fleshy human being who took out some quotes manually.
Thank you mr Fleshy. Don’t you think multiple ranked choice is a better voting mechanism?
It’s my preferred, however, almost anything that moves away from the one-choice, winner-takes-all design is an easy win IMHO.
So it either bans or revokes existing ranked choice balloting? It’s unclear from the article if they already have it, and this removes it, or if it’s an attempt to ban it before it even gets started.
The only current think close to ranked choice voting in the state that I’m aware of is in St. Louis City where a few positions are elected based on a double run off where the top two candidates of the first election have a subsequent run off.
I read an article a little bit back where the politician championing it was quoted saying “it’s too confusing” and that is the primary reason it needs to be banned in the state constitution. So that’s the kind of people trying to push this through.
What I believe they really want is to clamp down on any chance of local municipalities trying to use an alternative voting system to first past the post. Those in power would be threatened by people having more choice.
Link was paywalled for me and I could not make sense of the posted excerpt.
Tldr the measure bundles citizenship language (change from “all” citizens to “only” citizens can vote) and a RCV ban - among other things - into one constitutional amendment.
