Under the Dome – March 22
Welcome back to Under the Dome, your weekly update on the goings-on of the Missouri state legislature.
Legislators promise ballot candy will be back in SJR 74 when session resumes
Even Spring Break couldn’t deter legislators from attacking majority rule in Missouri. House Speaker Dean Plocher took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce that the House would be adding back the ballot candy the Senate previously removed.
Specifically, Plocher said they would be addressing “noncitizen voting,” which he would know was already illegal if he took two seconds to read the requirements on the Missouri Secretary of State website. But while it’s fair to question his literacy based on how many scandals he’s been involved in this session, he and his fellow supermajority are more likely doing it to trick Missouri voters into passing incredibly unpopular legislation by sweetening it up (hence the term).
Specifically, Plocher said they would be addressing “noncitizen voting,” which he would know was already illegal if he took two seconds to read the requirements on the Missouri Secretary of State website. But while it’s fair to question his literacy based on how many scandals he’s been involved in this session, he and his fellow supermajority are more likely doing it to trick Missouri voters into passing incredibly unpopular legislation by sweetening it up (hence the term).
Protecting majority rule has broad bipartisan support. Conservative, pro-democracy organizations such as Show Me Integrity and Conservatives Against Corruption have spoken out against the legislation that would change Missouri’s century-old law.
KMOV News highlighted the voice of conservative Fred Steinbach, former mayor of Chesterfield and finance director for former Gov. John Ashcroft:
“I oppose SJR 74 and any efforts to make it harder for Missourians to exercise our Constitutional freedom of the citizen initiative process. In 1992, my former boss Governor Ashcroft vetoed similar attacks on the citizen initiative process. The then-Democratic majority was attacking the will of the people, and trying to make the initiative process more difficult, because the Democrats were bitter that conservatives had been using the citizen initiative, including to pass the Hancock Amendment with only 55% of the vote.”
Scandal-ridden Speaker Plocher feels the walls closing in
While Plocher went on a buzzword-riddled tirade attacking majority rule, he also spent his Spring Break trying to discredit the Missouri Independent, which has been a journalistic leader in its reporting on his near-constant stream of scandals. Not once in the rant did he refute a single fact from their extensive and well-sourced reporting.
From the latest Missouri Independent story, the bipartisan House Ethics Committee investigating Plocher will reconvene at 4 p.m. Tuesday, the fifth hearing on Plocher in 2024.
In case you’ve missed his laundry list of scandals, he’s been accused over the last few months of pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign; and arranging meetings between legislators and an out-of-state vendor.
Maybe he left his tinfoil hat in the new $60,000 liquor pantry he replaced a fellow legislator’s office with.