David Pepper describes a stunning victory for democracy in Missouri for outnumbered Democrats. Remember how the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature promoted a referendum called Issue 1 to require all future referenda to get 60% of the vote to pass? They were trying to defeat a referendum on abortion by raising the bar. Voters got wise and defeated the measure. Voters then protected abortion rights with 58% of the vote. Democracy means majority rule, not tampering with the process to defeat majority rule.
On May 18, David Pepper posted this good news on his blog Pepperspectives:
Yesterday proved once again why you never stop fighting for democracy.
Anywhere. Ever!
For months, Missouri Republicans have been scheming to bring an Issue 1-style attack on direct democracy to their state, where voters have a tradition of using ballot initiatives to exercise their will—including recently expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana. And the GOP plan was to sneak the attack through this August, right before a November referendum on reproductive freedom.
You remember Issue 1, right? Where they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments in Ohio to 60%?
Our amazing campaign to crush that monstrosity heated up about a year ago. (Yes, time flies):
Well, as I wrote in “Laboratories of Autocracy,”GOP statehouses always learn from their failures. And adjust.
And in Missouri, the GOP response was a more sneaky version of Issue 1—where they would’ve required that in addition to a simple up or down vote across the state, a majority of voters in 50% of House districts (you know, highly gerrymandered districts) would have been required for any referendum to gain approval. And that essentially would have locked in a severe form of minority rule even more onerous than a 60% threshold. One study found that as few as 20% of Missouri voters could block an effort under such rules.
Still, the GOP would’ve falsely insisted that majority rule was still protected. They even tried to add “ballot candy”—such as a ban on non-citizens voting even though they already can’t vote in Missouri—to fool voters into supporting an attack on their own rights. And this could’ve been voted on in August, months before Missouri voters would be voting on an amendment on reproductive freedom in November.
Overall, it felt like stopping this would be an uphill battle. Downright scary.
But…
…Democrats, although outnumbered in Missouri, resisted at every turn. Many more are running this year, bringing accountability to far more sitting incumbents. And current Democratic state senators held the Senate floor in a more than two-day filibuster (the longest in state history) earlier this week.
And yesterday? The Missouri GOP ran out of time.
The awful, anti-democracy bill died.
As my friend Jess Piper told me:
“The Freedom Caucus was dead set on stealing one person, one vote. They were beaten by a 50 hour filibuster by Senate Dems and by reading the room. This is the first in their defeats…we’ll also win on the abortion question in November.”
Amazing. Keep going!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do I incorrectly recall an America in which we mostly agreed that democratic ideals were inviolate? We collectively argued about problems and solutions, but no one wanted to limit the participation of his opponent. Is this just my naïve country boy coming through?
Roy,
I remember those days. Foreign policy was bipartisan. Partisanship stopped at the water’s edge.
Yes, Roy, I think that that is not something that you would claim on further consideration. Throughout American history, a lot of time and effort has been put into keeping some people from voting and amplifying the votes of others. In the 19th century and in many places for much of the 20th, vote fraud was rampant because local political machines controlled the voting. There as voter intimidation, voter kidnapping, vote buying, voting under the names of deceased persons, and so on. And then there were all the schemes to keep working stiffs and immigrants and black from voting, which you know about, certainly. So, no, this is nothing new. We had a brief, shining moment of almost democracy at the polls. Now the darkness has come again.
Bob: I know you are correct, but there seemed a time in my youth when saying you wanted to deprive someone of their vote would have been a death move for a politician. Now at least a third of the population actively wants to deprive certain voters the opportunity.
And then there’s Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s proposed GOP platform…
“Perhaps the most consequential plank, if approved, calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college.
“Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/
The folks like A-butt in the current Repugnican Party are not patriots. They oppose everything that our country is supposed to stand for. Abbott is evil in a pretty distilled and pure form.
Democracy means majority rule — except when the Electoral College decides who the winner is in presidential elections, not the popular vote.
GREAT!
In other news, the technical term for Jabba the Trump’s toxic verbal spillage every time he opens his cheeseburger hole is frass.
Thought I would share.
Do I incorrectly recall a time when assuring representation was a postulate of our age? Perhaps I was just young and naïve.