Community leaders say to vote against attempt to undermine Clean Missouri reforms
“What it’s really about is how politicians want to draw their own district maps. They want to choose their voters instead of having the voters choose them,” said Louise Wilkerson, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis.
She was speaking of Amendment 3 on the statewide ballot in Missouri on November 3. A group of community leaders met virtually on October 21 to discuss the measure and why they’re urging voters to cast their ballots against it.
“As a public health leader in St. Louis I strongly oppose Amendment 3 because it would hurt our democracy and put policies that promote health and health equity at risk,” said Angela Fleming Brown, CEO of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission.
Amendment 3 is designed to draw district maps based on the eligible voter population of the state, meaning children and non-citizens would not count when the districts are drawn.
“This would dramatically impact how our communities are represented and funded at our state capital,” Brown said. “Amendment 3 would weaken our constitutional protections for voters of color, and data shows Amendment 3 would disproportionally take away political power from Brown and Black communities.
The Brennan Center and Schwarzenegger Institute have independently conducted studies on this amendment. The Brennan Center concluded that excluding children and noncitizens would exacerbate racial inequities and result in more than a quarter of Missourians left uncounted — including 21% of Missouri’s white population compared to 28% of the state’s Black population, 54% of its Asian population and 54% of its Latino population.
The Schwarzenegger Institute concluded that “Amendment 3 presents a new form of gerrymandering with significant implications for changing who and how people are represented.”
Amendment 3 would undo the reforms passed by voters in the Clean Missouri Act in 2018. That initiative was approved by two-thirds of over statewide
“So now, once again, we have elected officials sending out a clear message to us that they don’t think we’re smart enough to know what we want,” said John Bowman, president of the St. Louis County NAACP.
“The NAACP and our membership have clearly decided to oppose Amendment 3 based up equitable opportunities for people of color and then the minority community. This is a very discriminatory act that they’re trying to force down our throats.”
Sean Soendker Nicholson, who is leading the effort to defeat Amendment 3, said the politicians and lobbyists are trying to trick voters.
“They want super-safe incumbent protection maps, regardless of what voters are saying that they want from their legislature,” he said.
“To do that they are going to need to trick voters – that is their plan – to be able to trick voters with the $5 lobbyist gift change and hope that voters don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the fine print. So, we know that in the fine print that there are redistricting details [and] policies unlike anything Missouri has ever seen and unlike anything else in the United States.”
While the first two items on the amendment are a $5 change to lobbyist gift limits and a $100 change to contribution limits for state Senate candidates, everything else is about gerrymandering. He said that two different judges have ruled that the politicians have broken the law with what is in the fine print (the major changes to the redistricting process).
The Amendment 3 language is as follows: “Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to: Ban gifts from paid lobbyists to legislators and their employees; Reduce legislative campaign contribution limits; Change the redistricting process voters approved in 2018 by: (i) transferring responsibility for drawing state legislative districts from the Nonpartisan State Demographer to Governor-appointed bipartisan commissions; (ii) modifying and reordering the redistricting criteria.”
The Brennan Center study noted that the politicians and lobbyists behind the measure have close ties to national conservative operatives including Thomas Hofeller, “whose posthumously released memos revealed a scheme among high-ranking Republican donors and operatives to encourage states to make a ‘radical departure’ from total population to adult citizen apportionment, arguing that it would be ‘advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.’”
Ellen Alper, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women St. Louis, said her organization is distressed with what Missouri politicians are trying to do with Amendment 3.
“Clean Missouri passed by 2 to 1 margin in 2018 — 1.4 million voters wanted fair, non-gerrymandered, non-political maps in order to make the best decisions for our state,” Alper said. “The politicians didn’t like it and they came back with this amendment to undo the will of the voters.”
Nancy Mille, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis, said the league has actively been working on redistricting for the last 12 years.
“Before endorsing what was in Clean Missouri, we carefully studied it, read the whole thing … we backed it and worked hard to pass it,” Mille said.
“But maybe legislators didn’t like the reforms, even though every Senate district approved of them. They didn’t listen when league members across the state asked them to respect their vote. Many of us appeared before committees across the legislature, where our opinions and even our presence was just disregarded.”