Senate Joint Resolution 74

Senate leadership fulfilled their promise to advance IP or Ratification Reform asap, so Tuesday morning in a special hearing, the Elections Committee gave first round approval to a bill that is the combination of several bills, but has SJR 61 and SJR 83 at its core. 

The bill number will be SJR 74 and the handler of the bill Senator Mary Elisabeth Colman. To download the bill, click here: https://www.senate.mo.gov/24info/pdf-bill/SCSfromResearch/SJR74.pdf

SJR 74 contains all the essential components:

• It amends Article XII (not Article III).
• It uses Concurrent Majority Ratification 
• It applies to ALL proposed constitutional amendments, whether proposed by petition, the legislature, or a constitutional convention.
• It uses state House districts as the second metric or condition for adopting an amendment.

The committee added some additional restrictions on foreign involvement in the amendment process.

Concurrent Majority Ratification (CMR) is intended to give voice to rural Missourians. Currently the urban areas can change the Constitution with little help from the rural areas. CMR require a broader geographic consensus because in addition to the current statewide popular simple majority vote requirement, a proposed amendment must ALSO receive a majority vote of the people in each of more than half of the state’s 163 House districts.

See https://www.mofirst.org/issues/ratification/CMR-Booklet.pdf to learn more.

The next step is for the entire Senate to debate and vote on this bill.