Should Kansans demand the petition initiative? Recent election results point to a resounding “yes.”

Currently, the only way to change the Kansas constitution is for the Kansas Legislature to initiate. This year, they asked voters to abandon merit selection and choose Kansas Supreme Court justices in partisan elections. Voters crushed the idea 61%-39%, handing the Legislature’s supermajority an even bigger defeat than 2022’s vote on abortion rights.

If you think those results were decisive, just look at Missouri. There, a supermajority of the General Assembly joined the Governor to propose two state constitutional amendments. One would have launched a Brownback-style plan to phase out the state’s income tax, proposing higher sales taxes instead. The second would have made it much harder to amend the state constitution via petition initiative. Show Me State voters obliterated these, with more than 80% (yes, really) choosing “No” on both. They failed in every one of the state’s 115 counties. As in Kansas, legislators there are now grumbling about poorly-worded ballot proposals and too much money spent promoting the “No” side… anything at all to explain it away, except just admitting that their ideas are wildly unpopular.

These Missouri votes have implications for Kansans. First, proposals to phase out state income taxes are fantastically unpopular in both states. Second, a massive supermajority of Missourians retained their state’s petition initiative, which is something that Kansas voters do not even have. The initiative is a process by which voters can put laws — or the repeal of laws — directly on the ballot by circulating petitions. If enough verified signatures are collected, the proposal goes straight onto the ballot for voters to decide. In this decade, advocates have successfully used Missouri’s petition initiative to bypass the General Assembly and amend the state constitution, expanding Medicaid, overturning anti-union “right to work” laws, legalizing recreational marijuana, and placing abortion rights into the state constitution. Here, polls such as Kansas Speaks consistently show that in addition to being pro-choice, a majority of Kansans also support Medicaid expansion and marijuana legalization, but there is no way to get these things on the ballot, because Kansas lacks the petition initiative. The Legislature is not interested.

The only way to amend the Kansas constitution is for the Legislature to initiate it, and they have shown no interest in giving Kansas voters this power. Currently, both states’ voters have a peculiar habit of electing legislative supermajorities who support policies that are sharply out of step with these voters’ own viewpoints. This is particularly noticeable in rural areas, where Republican candidates often win 70% of the vote, but many rural voters reject the constitutional amendments proposed by those same legislative supermajorities.

Overall, the votes on constitutional amendments in both states show an electorate that is far more progressive, once party labels are removed. Democrats, progressives, and moderates all favored the victorious “No” positions on Kansas’ proposed amendment and both of its counterparts in Missouri. This is probably why Republicans show no interest in the initiative here, and why they tried — and failed — to sharply restrict it in Missouri.

The bottom line is, if Kansans truly want the right to change laws without being blocked by the Legislature, they must first vote to change the composition of the Legislature itself. It’s either that, or move to Missouri.

— Michael Smith is a professor of political science at Emporia State University.