4 initiatives could end up on ballot

Missouri voters may have the opportunity to decide the fate of four initiative petitions this fall, if the signatures collected in support of each measure are verified.

The issues to be decided range from raising the minimum wage to legalizing abortion to proposals allowing sports betting in Missouri and the construction of a new casino at the Lake of the Ozarks.

When might the signatures be verified?

Since each of these petitions turned in their signatures by the May 5 deadline, the elections team at the Missouri Secretary of State’s office is working to process the submitted signatures before distributing them to local election authorities in the state’s eight congressional districts.

“The statute says that if you have four or more petitions, that means you have four weeks to process those petitions here in house to distribute those to local election authorities,” said JoDonn Chaney, spokesperson for Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft.

Once the signatures have been processed by the secretary of state’s office and distributed to local county clerks, those local election authorities will verify that the signatures match those on file for the people registered to vote in their district.

Only voters registered in the congressional district in which they signed the petition will have their signatures counted. If a signature was crossed out on the collection sheet, it will not be counted.

Local election authorities will then have until July 30 to return the verified signatures to the secretary of state’s office.

“We couldn’t do this process without our local election authorities,” Chaney said. “They’re so integral to how this works and how it gets done.”

Once the signatures are returned, the secretary of state’s office will either issue a certificate of sufficiency for a ballot initiative that met the requirements, or a certificate identifying a reason for insufficiency. This process should be complete by either Aug. 6, or