On August 6, Missouri voters rejected two proposed constitutional amendments – Amendment 4, which would have made it harder for citizens to propose legislation through ballot measures, and Amendment 5, which sought to eliminate the state’s income tax to create a giveaway to the state’s richest residents.
In essence, Missourians said “Hell no” to these efforts to undermine voters and increase inequality in their state.
“We fought back against historic efforts to divide us on race, class and zip code,” said Adams. “Missourians from every corner of the state came together to reject these outrageous power grabs.”
The effort to restrict ballot initiatives, Amendment 4, received only 19.7 percent of the vote, while Amendment 5, which would have replaced the income tax entirely with a sales tax, which places a disproportionate burden on those who rely on their monthly income to live, failed even more dramatically, garnering only 16.7 percent of the vote.
Missourians have previously used ballot initiatives to pass a higher statewide minimum wage and paid sick leave, and delay efforts to implement partisan voting maps, which have been designed to engineer permanent electoral majorities for Republicans.