A House bill that would give the Secretary of State the power to rewrite summaries of referendums and constitutional amendments has the potential to give too much power to the executive branch and further politicize ballot issues. That's the view of some legal experts who worry about the bill's impact on separation of powers in Missouri.
Currently, if a proposed ballot summary is challenged in court for being unfair, and a judge rules in petitioners' favor, that judge rewrites the summary.
HB 3146 would take rewrite authority away from the courts, giving the Secretary of State as many as three chances to write a fair summary before a judge could step in.
Supporters of the bill argue that getting ballot language approved will be easier if the rewrite power is given to the Secretary of State instead of the legislature or judicial branch, and that it would ease the workload of the courts.
“If we were out of session, and then there was no ability for us to rewrite the language, the governor would have to call us in to rewrite just that ballot summary statement because the judges denied it,” Bill Sponsor John Simmons (R-Washington) said. “We don’t want to see that authority go to the judges because that’s not their lane, it’s not their purview."
But Saint Louis University law professor Anders Walker believes the bill wouldn’t alleviate any workload pressures for the judicial branch, while taking away some of its regulatory power.
“I don’t think that these kinds of cases burden the judiciary,” Walker said. “I think the real question is whether it’s a separation of powers issue to allow the executive branch to write the summary versus the judicial branch. Or the legislative branch.”
University of Missouri Constitutional Democracy and Political Science professor Scott LaCombe said the burden may not come from the number of challenges, but the kinds of topics they deal with.
“The more we pull our courts into these really contentious fights, the more risk there is of the public losing confidence in our court system,” LaCombe said.
Several states with ballot initiatives use bi-partisan legislative boards to review ballot language. According to LaCombe, this is often because those states do not have legislatures ruled by supermajorities, as Missouri Republicans have. For those states, giving complete authority to the executive branch could backfire because either party could have a majority each year.
“The minority party [in Missouri] has consistently been the Democrats and so [Republicans] don’t feel the same fear to create this bipartisan system because [they’re] not worried about them ever being, at least realistically in the short term, in a position of authority to write this legislation,” LaCombe said.
A law similar to this year's was deemed unconstitutional by Missouri’s Supreme Court in January because justices said it strayed too much from its original intent.
The 2026 legislation, and a similar bill introduced in the Senate, look to avoid that problem by solely focusing on who can rewrite the ballot language. The House bill has yet to be scheduled for a floor debate.
