State initiative process proves difficult to follow

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- "Read these directions carefully. Failure to precisely comply could thwart the will of hundreds of thousands of Missourians and waste millions of dollars."

Missouri's instruction manual for citizen-initiated ballot measures does not actually come with a warning label. But the hypothetical one above could be appropriate.

Those who have participated in Missouri's initiative petition process describe its requirements as incredibly difficult to achieve.

Petition circulators must gather thousands of signatures of registered voters in at least two-thirds of the state's congressional districts -- achieving a geographical distribution mandated in only a few other states.

Those petitions must be printed, sorted and submitted to the secretary of state's office following some rather detailed specifications. If they are not, the thousands of names on them must be rejected.

And even if the petitions are submitted in the proper format, they still could be rejected if state officials made mistakes in drafting the ballot language summarizing the legal and financial effects of the initiatives.

Those scenarios are not hypothetical.

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan rejected two ballot initiatives this year because their petition pages were disorganized and, in one case, because a judge ordered a change in the financial summary State Auditor Claire McCaskill had prepared for the petition.

Supporters sued Friday to challenge Carnahan's rejection of the two measures -- one of which would restrict the use of eminent domain, the other of which would impose an annual spending limit on state government.

If successful, the lawsuit merely would force the petitions' signatures to be verified and counted by election authorities -- not guarantee the initiatives a spot on the Nov. 7 ballot.

"Missouri is one of the most difficult initiative states in the country," said Susan Johnson, whose Ludington, Mich.-based firm National Voter Outreach was hired to gather signatures for three Missouri ballot proposals, including the two rejected.

"With all the rules and regulations, unless you're a professional and know what you're doing, you're not going to make it -- and even then it's hard," Johnson said.

Five of the six initiatives submitted this year to Carnahan's office relied partly on paid signature gatherers -- often costing around $1 million.

Missouri became one of the first states to allow citizen-initiated ballot measures in 1906. Twenty-four states now do so, with varying degrees of ease. Many of Missouri's rigorous requirements were enacted in the past 10 years.

For example, a 1997 law added the language mandating petitions be rejected if signature pages aren't ordered and numbered by county or if the official ballot title is not attached to each page. A 1999 law required the county name to be in the upper right-hand corner of each petition page, that all pages be submitted at once and that each petition gatherer register with the secretary of state.

A 2003 law required courts to send insufficient ballot summaries back to the auditor's office for reworking and declared the old summaries could not be used as the official title attached to petitions.

Carnahan cited that law in rejecting the roughly 200,000 signatures submitted for the eminent domain initiative. They all were collected under the old financial summary. Yet there was no real opportunity for them to be gathered under the new summary, because it was approved just three days before the deadline to turn in signatures.

"When you put those kind of hurdles in front of petitioners, you're basically shutting off the initiative process. You're making it impossible for citizens to put items on the ballot," said John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

California has one of the most open initiative systems. Residents there used it 90 times from 1990-2004 -- more than any other state, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Missourians employed it 17 times in that span.

Whereas Californians are guaranteed the opportunity to solicit signatures in public places, Missourians are not.

Petition gatherers can be forced off private property in Missouri, even if its tenants include things such as post offices, vehicle license offices or shopping malls where the public congregates.

Robin Acree, whose Mexico, Mo.-based group Grass Roots Organizing spearheaded an initiative to overturn last year's Medicaid cuts, said her all-volunteer crew of about 400 petition circulators encountered obstacles both from property owners and from paid petition circulators jockeying for prized positions in public places.

"We really felt it would be fairly easy to access public spaces, and that is not the case," said Acree, who led her first initiative campaign.

Some state lawmakers, however, have little sympathy. American governments are set up as republics, where people elect representatives to enact laws for them -- instead of democracies where people vote directly on every proposal.

Passing laws in the Legislature also is difficult. Thousands of bills get introduced but only a fraction become law -- often after being amended repeatedly.

With citizen initiatives, there is no opportunity to change the proposal -- what's written by supporters either becomes law or it doesn't. So it's appropriate to have some hurdles and a standardized format, legislators say.

Despite stringent requirements, the use of citizen initiatives seems to be rising. If all six measures submitted this year were to make the ballot, it would set a Missouri record.

People seem to be "running to the initiative process to do most everything," said Sen. Rita Days, D-St. Louis, who handled the bills heightening initiative standards as the House Election Committee chairwoman in the 1990s. "We're setting up a system where it's not necessary for us to be up here -- you just put it on the ballot."

In essence, Missourians may be delivering their own warning message to elected lawmakers: "If you don't precisely comply with our desires, we're willing to propose laws ourselves -- no matter how hard that may be."

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Capitol Correspondent David A. Lieb covers Missouri government and politics for The Associated Press.