Some voters are pushing back on lawmakers' efforts to overturn citizen ballot initiatives

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 12:03 AM EDT, March 21, 2025


JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — One by one, each of the more than 50 people seated on folding chairs at a public library explained why they were there. “I’m just really upset about our voting rights being taken away from us,” one woman said. “I’m mad, and I want to do something with my anger that protects my rights,” the next woman exclaimed. “I want to understand how the heck they can do this,” added another.

The citizen activists, many of them heretofore strangers, had come together two days after the Missouri House passed legislation to overturn a voter-approved ballot initiative guaranteeing paid sick leave for workers and cost-of-living increases to the minimum wage. The people weren’t focused on how to stop the Senate from taking the same action. Rather, the group had something bigger in mind: Preventing the Legislature from ever reversing the will of the voters again.

Paid sick leave highlights a Missouri fight

As Republican President Donald Trump tests the Constitution’s separation of powers with far-reaching executive orders, lawmakers in some states are engaged in a tug-of-war for power with the people who elected them. In Missouri, Republican lawmakers not only want to reverse the workers’ benefits law approved by voters in November, they’re also proposing to undo parts of a new abortion rights amendment and make it more difficult to approve future constitutional amendments.

Missouri lawmakers have a history of such actions. They previously tried to block funding for a voter-approved Medicaid expansion and authored changes to voter-approved measures regulating dog breeders and legislative redistricting.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/ballot-initiatives-sick-leave-minimum-wage-abortion-c4dbda039d63cc121b662f9b7ee7e522

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Tyrants.

[UpInArms]

1. I hate the hypocrites

Republicans who control the Legislature noted that amendments to the U.S. Constitution require approval from three-fourths of states. They also asserted that out-of-state groups have bankrolled initiatives pushing “radical agendas,” citing recently defeated ballot proposals for abortion rights and open primaries.

“Our constitution must be protected from the transient political influence and whims of a bare majority,” South Dakota state Sen. Sue Peterson said during debate.

Unless it’s the “bare majority” of MAGAts

[JMCKUSICK]

2. Their cruelty really knows no limits.