Preserve Local Elections!

Vote No on Amendment 7

November 5, 2024

The Missouri legislature has placed on the ballot state constitution Amendment 7,

Ballotpedia page

Media coverage (includes all our press releases for background information)

The Ballot Language

Here it is on a sample ballot:

Vote No on Amendment 7 Sample Ballot

Comments on the three points in the ballot summary:

The first point has been called “ballot candy” because many people will vote for the whole thing only based on what they read first.
Note what they say in the second point: limiting voters.
A “plurality” means the largest number of votes even if it’s well less than half. They’re deliberately setting it up so a candidate could advance if, say, he or she got only a quarter of the vote — even if the majority is against that candidate! He or she wins because there happened to be enough other candidates running to split up the vote.

The Basic Case

Over 50 cities and towns in the United States use ranked choice voting, and exit surveys show voters are happy with it. In each and every case, there was an election where voters decided they wanted to use it. There’s no place where a government imposed this voting system on an unwilling electorate. And no one’s proposing to start doing that now.

Therefore, this amendment would simply remove the option from those who want it. We call the campaign committee “Preserve Local Elections” because the amendment would ban one kind of local election.

Missouri legislators have suggested that voters would be confused – showing they have less confidence in Missouri voters compared to those in other parts of the country. But never fear – we’ve done exit surveys of Missouri voters showing that they also like it by large majorities, and find it easy by even larger majorities.

FAQ

What if I don’t yet know whether or not I like ranked voting because I haven’t studied it yet?

If your locality holds an election to decide whether or not to use ranking, you’ll need to study it at that point to figure out how to vote. For this amendment, you only need to know whether you think your locality gets to hold such an election or not. The amendment would ban your locality from doing so.

Do I have to rank all the candidates? Am I therefore forced to essentially vote for people I positively oppose?

No! If you only like one candidate, can tolerate another, and can’t stand the rest, then rank first the one you like, rank second the one you can tolerate, and then you’re done. You still have more say under this system: if you could have ranked somebody but didn’t, that actually communicates more about your opinion. Leaving lower rankings blank doesn’t mean you skipped voting, but rather communicates something more.

What if I know I don’t like ranked voting as well as other alternative voting systems, such as approval voting, star voting, cumulative, or top four/five?

As you can see in the wording of the second point, this amendment would wipe out all alternative voting systems. We don’t need to settle the question of which voting system is best. We can let localities settle that question for themselves, as long as they’re not banned from doing so by this amendment.

What if I like the voting system just as it is now?

Currently, no Missouri jurisdictions use ranking, and only St. Louis uses approval voting (they have a carve-out in this amendment, being grandfathered in).

But what we do currently have is the right to persuade our fellow citizens about whether to have an election on the topic. This amendment would change things by taking away a right we currently have.

Also, if you prefer to select only one candidate as we do now, you can continue doing so if your jurisdiction goes to ranking. There’s no obligation to rank any more than you want to.