JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri – Republican Party infighting and a record 50-hour Democratic filibuster on Friday killed a Republican push to make amending the Missouri Constitution more difficult, an effort in part aimed at thwarting an upcoming ballot measure on abortion rights.
The GOP-led Senate adjourned Friday morning — nearly eight hours before the 6 p.m. deadline for lawmakers to pass legislation this year — without approving what was a top priority for Republicans this year.
The Senate’s early departure came after Democrats spent Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday blocking all work in hopes of pressuring Republicans to remove from the proposed constitutional amendment a ban on non-citizen voting, which is already illegal in the Senate. Missouri.
Democrats argued that Republicans pushed for the provision to persuade voters to support an effort to limit their own power at the polls.
“Republicans wanted to make it harder to change the Constitution,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo told reporters on Friday. “We recognize that they have an absolute majority, but we wouldn’t let them fool people.”
Without the votes to force Senate Democrats to sit down, the bill’s Republican sponsor on Wednesday ended the filibuster by asking the House to pass a version without noncitizen voting language. The Chamber refused.
House Speaker Dean Plocher, in a statement Friday, said that without language about noncitizen voting, the measure was “so weak that it would ultimately fail if put on the ballot.”
Instead, the House on Friday approved another amendment to ban ranked-choice voting and noncitizen voting. The measure will go before voters this fall.
Republicans also wanted to present the proposed change to the initiative petition process to voters in August, with some hoping voters would approve the higher threshold for amending the constitution before an expected vote in November on abortion rights.
Missouri banned almost all abortions immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade. The pending amendment would enshrine abortion in the constitution and only allow lawmakers to regulate it after viability.
Some Republicans have argued that to block the abortion change requires voters in August to change the current requirement that a majority of voters statewide approve constitutional changes.
The Republican Party wants to make amendments also require the support of a majority of voters in a majority of voting districts. It’s part of an effort to give more weight to voters in more Republican-leaning rural areas compared to the state’s big cities.
“Unfortunately, this Republican Party does not have the backbone to fight for what is right and for life,” said Republican Senator Rick Brattin, who leads the Freedom Caucus faction in the Senate. “That’s what this fight is about all the time: protecting life.”
Republicans and Democrats raised questions about whether the courts would apply the new rules somewhat retroactively to November’s initiative petitions, which were proposed under the current rules.
“The notion that IP reform being on the ballot is the silver bullet to ensure that abortion IP does not pass is ridiculous,” Republican Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden told reporters on Friday.
Longstanding tensions between the Freedom Caucus — whose members blocked work for weeks at the start of the session to push a vote on the measure more quickly — and Senate leaders complicated the debate.
On Thursday, Senator Bill Eigel, a member of the Freedom Caucus, attempted to record in the official House record that work on the amendment “was interrupted by a herd of stampeding rhinos that ran through the Senate chamber, devastating the institution.”
Efforts to change the initiative petition process are not all centered on abortion.
Missouri Republicans have tried for years to impose stricter limits on constitutional amendments, arguing that policies such as the legalization of recreational marijuana, approved by voters in 2022, should not be included in the constitution.
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Associated Press writer David A. Lieb contributed to this report.
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