The Missouri Secretary of State has approved the ballot initiative, Your Vote Counts Act, meaning supporters can gather the signatures needed to put the measure on the 2012 ballot. The ballot initiative would amend the Missouri Constitution to prohibit the state legislature from amending or repealing
a statue enacted by a citizen’s initiative except by either a three-fourths vote each of the House of Representatives and the senate, or a a vote of the people through a referendum. Currently, a citizen’s initiative can be amended by a simple majority of the legislature and the governor’s approval. Under the proposal, the citizen’s initiative could be amended or repealed by a majority vote of each chamber if the ballot language states as much.
The amendment, called Your Vote Counts Act, would apply to all legislative actions going forward "whether the initiative statute was enacted before or is enacted after the effective date of this section".
The effort to amend the constitution resulted, in part, because of radical amendments made by the legislature and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon in 2011 to the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act passed by Missouri voters just a few months earlier in 2010.
The Your Vote Counts Act would give some protection and meaning to citizen’s initiatives. The vote could not be so easilly overturned – or undermined. For more on this initiative and how you can help collect signatures to put the measure on the ballot, visit
http://protectvoters.com/