JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Republican infighting and a record-breaking, 50-hour Democratic filibuster on Friday killed a Republican push to make changing Missouri’s constitution more difficult, an effort aimed in part at thwarting a coming ballot measure on abortion rights.
The GOP-led Senate adjourned Friday morning — nearly eight hours before the 6 p.m. deadline for lawmakers to pass legislation this year — without passing a top priority for Republicans this year.
The Senate’s early departure came after Democrats blocked all work Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday in hopes of pushing Republicans to remove the ban on noncitizen voting, already illegal in Missouri, from the proposed constitutional amendment to delete.
Democrats argued that Republicans pushed for the provision to convince voters to support an effort to limit their own power in elections.
“Republicans wanted to make it harder to change the Constitution,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader John Rizzo told reporters on Friday. “We recognize that they have a supermajority, but we would not allow them to fool people.”
Without the votes to force Senate Democrats to sit down, the Republican bill sponsor ended the filibuster on Wednesday by instead asking the House to pass a version without the voting language for noncitizens. The House refused.
House Speaker Dean Plocher said in a statement Friday that the measure, without language on noncitizen voting, was “so weak that it would ultimately fail if brought to a vote.”
The House of Representatives instead passed a new amendment Friday to ban both ranked-choice voting and voting by noncitizens. The measure will go to voters this fall.
Republicans also wanted to put the proposed change to the petition process before voters in August, with some hoping voters would approve the higher threshold for amending the Constitution before an expected November vote on abortion rights.
Missouri banned almost all abortions immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The upcoming amendment would enshrine abortion in the Constitution and only allow lawmakers to regulate it after it is feasible.
Some Republicans have argued that blocking the abortion amendment would require voters in August to change the current requirement that a majority of statewide voters approve constitutional amendments.
The Republican Party wants to ensure that amendments also require the support of a majority of voters in a majority of congressional districts. It’s part of an effort to give more weight to voters in rural areas that lean more Republican than the state’s big cities.
“Unfortunately, this Republican Party has no backbone to fight for what is right and for life,” said Republican Senator Rick Brattin, who leads the Senate Freedom Caucus. “That’s what this fight has always been about: protecting life.”
Republicans and Democrats have expressed doubts about whether courts would apply the new rules somewhat retroactively to November initiative petitions proposed under the current rules.
“The idea that intellectual property reform on the ballot is the silver bullet to ensuring the abortion IP treaty doesn’t pass is ridiculous,” Senate Republican President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden told reporters on Friday.
Long-simmering tensions between the Freedom Caucus — whose members had stalled for weeks at the start of the session to speed up a vote on the measure — and Senate leaders complicated the debate.
On Thursday, Freedom Caucus member Senator Bill Eigel attempted to note in the chamber’s official record that work on the amendment “was interrupted by a stampeding herd of rhinos that ran through the Senate chamber and destroyed the institution.”
Efforts to change the petition process are not all focused on abortion.
Missouri Republicans have been trying for years to place stricter limits on constitutional amendments, arguing that policies such as the legalization of recreational marijuana, approved by voters in 2022, should not be written into the constitution.
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Associated Press writer David A. Lieb contributed to this report.
