Judge rules General Assembly's Clean Missouri ballot summary is 'misleading, unfair'

JEFFERSON CITY — A judge on Monday ruled that the ballot summary prepared and approved by the General Assembly to undo the so-called "Clean Missouri" redistricting plan is "misleading, unfair, and insufficient."

With the Medicaid Expansion debate still ringing in our ears, the next big ballot issue has been in court. Lawmakers want voters to undo the Clean Missouri redistricting amendment that was approved by 62 percent of Missouri voters just two years ago.

The amendment created a nonpartisan state demographer who was given much of the authority in mapping out new legislative districts, a task that was previously handled by two partisan legislative commissions.

This year, the General Assembly adopted SJR 38, an amendment that would undo Clean Missouri. Court documents say the General Assembly opted to prepare its own ballot title rather than having the Secretary draft one.

Plaintiffs say the language written by the General Assembly for the November ballot is deceptive and Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce agrees.

Court documents describing Joyce's final judgment expressed that the ballot title was misleading.

Having fully considered the parties' pleadings, evidence, and written and oral arguments the court concludes the General Assembly's ballot title for SJR 38 is misleading, unfair, and insufficient.

The ballot language makes multiple misleading claims and fails to mention the central focus of the amendment: undoing Clean Missouri. The document also notes that although SJR 38 does propose several changes to the constitution, these changes "pale in comparison to the scope and magnitude" of undoing a recent voter mandate.

The ballot written and approved by the General Assembly claims the amendment would:

• Ban all lobbyist gifts
• Reduce legislative campaign contribution limits
• Create a citizen-led, independent, bipartisan commission to draw state legislative districts

Court documents say the ballot language fails to mention that by voting in favor of the amendment, voters are also saying they support undoing the redistricting plan that the majority of voters approved in 2018.

The legislature's summary fails to inform voters that adopting SJR 38 would eliminate the legislative redistricting rules Missourians overwhelmingly adopted just two years ago to combat political gerrymandering and replace them with a redistricting process similar in substance to the one they just voted to abandon.

Claim: Banning all lobbyist gifts

The final ruling states that instead of fully explaining the amendment, the General Assembly's description seeks to entice voters with a misleading reduction in allowable lobbyist gifts.

The legislature's summary instead seeks to entice voters to adopt the measure by misleadingly overstating a modest $5 reduction in allowable lobbyist gifts and a $100 reduction to Senate campaign contribution limits.

The ballot says it would ban all lobbyist gifts, to which court documents say is untrue. If passed, the amendment still allows lobbyist gifts to legislators and their employees if the gifts are coming from unpaid lobbyists or lobbyists with some form of relation to the legislator. It would ban the only allowable lobbyist gifts in the state which are gifts under $5.

Claim: Reducing legislative campaign contribution limits

The second bullet of the ballot summary claims it will reduce legislative campaign contribution limits. A claim that the document says is misleading because the statement makes it look like all legislative campaign contributions will be limited but SJR 38 would actually only make a 4 percent reduction to senatorial campaign contributions.

Given that there are 163 representatives and only 34 senators in Missouri SJR 38 will not reduce "legislative campaign contribution limits" for approximately 83 percent of Missouri legislators...

They [Missouri voters] would actually be leaving contribution limits untouched for the overwhelming majority of legislators.

Claim: Citizen-led independent bipartisan commission

Court documents say "nearly every aspect" of the third bullet of the ballot summary is "wrong or misleading." The third bullet claims SJR 38 would create a citizen-led independent bipartisan commission to draw state legislative districts.

According to court documents, SJR 38 will not create a new commission, instead, it will essentially bring back what was already there. The document also says the commission would not be citizen-led and that the term "independent" is incorrect because the people who are appointed to the commission will not be independent of the political process.

Final Ruling

Court documents say the ballot summary is deceptive and unfair to voters.

Voters must understand the choice they are being asked to make.

As the summary statement is currently drafted, however, voters are likely to be misled. This sort of deception is the exact evil the summary statement is meant to combat, not promote.

Following Joyce's ruling, a new summary statement was drafted that would give fair information to the voters. The new statement says that if passed, the amendment would repeal rules for drawing state legislative districts, lower the campaign contribution limits for senate candidates by $100, and lower lobbyist gift limits from $5 to $0.