Want Medicaid expansion or legal marijuana? Kansas voters deserve a petition process | Opinion

Want to hear a great idea that’s going absolutely nowhere?

Thomas Arnhold, a retired attorney writing in the nonprofit Kansas Reflector, has one such great idea: He says Democrats should campaign for the Kansas Legislature this fall on a grand promise to bring direct democracy to the state in the form of a new citizen-led initiative-and-referendum process.

If Kansans really want popular policies the GOP-controlled legislature refuses to give them — stuff like Medicaid expansion and medical marijuana — they could force those ideas onto a ballot and then vote them into law. Just like their voters next door in Missouri have already done.

“It’s a winning issue for Democrats and whoever else wants to join the cause,” Arnhold writes.

I love it.

Kansans overwhelmingly support the Republican Party, but I have long believed the electorate at large is far more moderate than the right-wing GOP representatives they so often send to Topeka. The result? Our representative democracy isn’t so representative.

Polling tells us that measures such as Medicaid and marijuana are broadly supported by the state’s voters, but conservative legislative leaders keep ignoring them. So it would be great if Kansans had an option to do an end run around those stubborn so-called “leaders.” I suspect Arnhold is right when he argues that such a measure would be popular with voters, including moderate Republicans.

“How,” Arnhold wrote, “can you argue against a process that is democracy in its purest form?”

It’s funny he should ask.

The answer comes (again) from next-door Missouri, where Democrats in Jefferson City this week have been conducting a heroic record-breaking filibuster intended to preserve the Show-Me State’s referendum process.

Missouri Republicans didn’t love when the people circumvented them to pass Medicaid expansion and legalize marijuana. Now they’re downright alarmed that voters have brought them a petition for a statewide vote that would reverse Missouri’s draconian abortion ban.

Their solution? Less democracy in its purest form.

POWER GAMES

The measure being pushed now by Missouri Republicans would undo the “one person one vote” nature of the current referendum process and essentially give conservative rural areas a veto over initiatives that have broad support in the more liberal bastions of Kansas City and St. Louis. As few as 20% of Missouri voters could block measures backed by the broader electorate.

Not very democratic, is it?

The reasoning behind the proposal seems obvious. Missouri Republicans say the state constitution shouldn’t be so easy to change. What they more likely mean is that the state constitution shouldn’t be so easy to change in ways that conservatives don’t like.

Republicans have a great deal of power in Missouri. The initiative process means they don’t have total power.

Which brings us back to why Arhnold’s great idea — bringing the initiative-and-refendum process to Kansas — is almost certainly going nowhere.

The referendum process already exists in Missouri. GOP leaders there probably can’t get away with trying to get rid of it entirely: That would need approval from a majority of the state’s voters, ironically. So they’re tinkering with the details instead and hoping the voters don’t catch on.

Kansas Republicans don’t have to bother. It’s too easy to stick with the status quo.

As Arnhold points out, adding an initiative process to the Kansas Constitution would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature before going to the state’s voters for approval. The GOP right now happens to hold … two-thirds majorities in those chambers.

And it is nearly impossible to imagine legislative leaders surrendering even a small bit of their power back to voters. Who can make them?

We already know what Kansas Republicans think about the will of those voters. They put the anti-abortion-rights Value Them Both amendment on the ballot in August 2022 and saw it overwhelmingly rejected by Kansans eager to preserve abortion rights. GOP legislators have spent the two years since then continuing to pass anti-abortion-rights legislation anyway.

Republicans who control the Kansas Legislature are accustomed to ignoring the people they represent. It’s why we won’t get the referendum process, at least not anytime soon — and also why we need it.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and son. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.