Amendment 7 would end ranked-choice voting in Missouri before it starts; citizens committee pushes back

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

With less than a week until election Day, a group is making a final push to strike down Amendment 7, which would prohibit ranked-choice voting in Missouri.

However, proponents of Amendment 7 argue that ranking candidates is too cumbersome and violates the one person, one vote principle in the Constitution. 

Preserve Local Elections is a citizen-led committee pushing for ranked-based voting in Missouri. They are one of the few groups that have spent money on the issue.

“The only people who benefit from not having ranked-choice voting are the people who think they can win elections with a plurality," Rachel MacNair, from Preserve Local Elections, said. “They don't think they would win if they had to build majority support. They don't think they could get the second- and third- rankings.” 

The exact ballot language for Amendment 7 reads: 

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:

• Make the Constitution consistent with state law by only allowing citizens of the United States to vote;
• Prohibit the ranking of candidates by limiting voters to a single vote per candidate or issue; and
• Require the plurality winner of a political party primary to be the single candidate at a general election?

State and local governmental entities estimate no costs or savings.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Kehoe has already endorsed Amendment 7, focusing on the "only allowing citizens of the United States to vote" portion of the ballot language. President of Freedom Principle Missouri Byron Keelin also argues that the amendment will help prevent local municipalities from passing laws to allow non-citizens to vote. 

“With the progressive governments that we have in Saint Louis and Kansas City and Columbia and even Springfield, it won't be too long if we don't prohibit non-citizens from voting that they're going to pass ordinances to allow citizens to vote in those municipal and school board elections,” Keelin said. 

Non-citizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections, which has led some to call the language about only allowing citizens to vote “ballot candy” to trick voters since the bulk of the amendment focuses on prohibiting rank-choice voting. 

“Amendment 7 is a deliberate attempt to trick Missouri voters into voting for something that reduces their choices in elections going forward,” Larry Bradley, of Better Ballot KC, which is in favor of ranked-choice voting. 

The group says for ranked-choice voting, a candidate needs at least 50% of the vote plus one. If 100 people cast a ballot a candidate would need at least 51 votes to be declared the winner. If no candidate surpasses 50% then the candidates in the race with the lowest vote totals are eliminated and their votes are redistributed. During the election, voters have the option to rank each candidate. If their preferred candidate has one of the lowest vote totals, their vote is given to their second choice. This process continues until one candidate surpasses 50%. 

“You have the option to rank.  So if there are four candidates for office, you three think three of them are just bozos and are unqualified then only ranked the one that you like. Your vote counts so long as that candidate is still in competition,” Bradley said. 

Bradley believes that a ranked-choice voting system gives voters more of a voice in who is representing them and force each party to post stronger candidates. He added that it would also allow people to vote for a third party without feeling like they are “throwing away their vote”. 

Since Republicans typically dominate the majority of statewide elections in Missouri and Democrats control most of the elections in large cities such as Kansas City, St. Louis and Columbia, the change would have the most impact on primary elections. 

“The Republican nominee for governor got that nomination with 39.412% of the vote. Which is a little bit better than a guy named Eric Greitens, who didn't even make his chair over the bar for 35%,” Bradley said. “In the Republican race for lieutenant governor, there were two candidates who were the leading candidates, won with 31% of the vote, the other with about 30% of the vote. There were only 7,452 votes between them, and there were 235,262 votes given to other candidates.” 

However, Keelin, argues that ranked-choice voting can lead to watered-down candidates. 

“It's confusing. It's cumbersome. It leads to delays and outcomes,” Keelin said. “Our organization, particularly wants to get rid of voting machines and go with a hand counting. With ranked-choice voting, you have to spend millions of dollars on highly expensive software.  You won't have any paper ballots  and you're forever tied to voting machines.”

Being too complicated is one of the most-common arguments against ranked-choice voting and one that MacNair pushed back on. 

“I explain ranked choice voting to people and it takes it literally takes a minute,” MacNair said. 

Missouri joins Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Missouri and Washington D.C which will be voting on the future of ranked-choice voting in the state. Currently, Alaska and Maine are the only two states that use rank-choice voting statewide. 

“Alaska's trying to get rid of ranked-choice voting. They put it in place in 2022. Now they're trying to they got a ballot initiative on their ballot in November here to get rid of it,” Keelin said. “They didn’t know their results for two weeks.” 

While only two states use the system statewide, ranked-choice voting is used by some local municipalities in 14 different states. 

“New York City did this for the first time in 2022. We do exit surveys afterward.  First of all, they had a 36% increase in voter turnout in the exit surveys. 95% found ranked choice voting easy,  77% preferred ranked choice voting and 80% ranked at least two candidates,” Bradley said. 

MacNair also argues that ranked-choice voting is beneficial to members of the military. 

“There are people in the military overseas, but there are six states that let them do ranked-choice voting and they have found it tremendously helpful because when they're overseas, they’re kind of busy. Ranked-choice voting means they can do all the considerable trouble that goes into sending the ballot in once instead of twice in those races where there are two. It also means they can vote for somebody, and if that person drops out, then they have what we call a zombie ballot.  But with ranking then it just goes to the second person and they haven't wasted their vote, which took so much trouble for them to do. “