Lawmakers went through the biggest partisan fight of the year Tuesday, Rep. Crystal Quade told listeners gathered late Wednesday morning at the steps on the north side of the state Capitol.
And the fighting was to continue Wednesday - this time, over bills offered to change the initiative process, the House minority leader from Springfield said.
Republican lawmakers who voted to not fund Medicaid expansion, which voters passed in August last year, have authored a number of bills aimed at suppressing votes from minorities and others, Quade, a fifth-year member of the House, told several dozen people gathered for 2021 Missouri Voting Rights Lobby Day.
She said their actions showed Republicans' complete disregard for what voters told them to do.
"Every single year that I have been here, my colleagues have essentially given the middle finger to Missouri voters," the House minority leader said. It started with the minimum wage - an issue voters in St. Louis took upon themselves to fix by voting to increase the minimum wage in the city, she said.
The Legislature told St. Louis voters they were wrong and didn't understand what they were doing, then took the higher minimum wage away, Quade said.
"Time and time since then - it's been Right to Work, it's been the minimum wage, it's now Medicaid expansion, Clean Missouri," Quade said. "Every time that the Legislature refuses to do its job and the citizens of Missouri say, 'OK, if you're not going to do it, we're going to do it for you,' they come back and say, 'No, you don't get to do that.'"
Now, not only are Republicans not listening to voters, they're taking away voters' right to correct the Legislature's lack of action, Quade said.
The latest bills make the initiative process almost impossible, she said.
Folks gathered at the morning rally girded themselves to speak during testimony in the Missouri Senate Local Government and Elections Committee hearing in the afternoon.
The committee heard testimony about numerous bills, including House Bill 333, which requires a $500 filing fee for all petitions and limits the time for filing petitions and House Joint Resolution 20, which would amend the state Constitution to require a two-thirds majority vote for petitions to pass and increases the number of signatures required to get a petition on the ballot.
"They're making it so only those with exorbitant amounts of money can get something passed. They're making it harder to show up at the ballot box," Quade said. "There are 47 other Democrats in the Missouri House right now who are running through fire for you and for these issues and will do everything in our power to stop this."
She said she was thankful for the coalition that gathered on the Capitol steps and others who gather to say, "Enough is enough. Stop messing with democracy."
Denise Lieberman, the director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, said gathered advocates were on those steps Wednesday to call out the spate of restrictive voting bills being advanced in Missouri as part of a national trend that targets access for voters.
"We are here today to say 'No.' No to voter suppression. No to photo ID," Lieberman said. "And no to efforts to silence the voices of Missouri voters any longer."
The Missouri Supreme Court, directly across the street from the Capitol she pointed out, twice concluded that strict photo ID requirements in the state violate the Missouri Constitution - and its fundamental right to vote - disproportionately for Missouri's voters of color.
"We know that the legislation that is moving here in Missouri is part of a pattern of restrictive voting bills that are making their way through legislatures around the country right now, as we speak," Lieberman said.
Conservative lawmakers have introduced more than 300 restrictive voting measures in 43 states, she continued. And around the country, voter-protection coalitions are gathering at statehouses, sometimes at risk to their own safety because lawmakers scoff at COVID-19 concerns, to tell lawmakers to stop voter suppression.
Organizers said the Legislature is considering house bills 334 and 738, both of which impose strict photo ID requirements to vote. HB 334 eliminates the secretary of state's obligation to notify voters about new rules. It requires people who intend to cast absentee ballots to establish their identity in person.
HB 738 also prohibits changes in election law within 26 weeks of a presidential election. It requires hand-counted paper ballots and repeals electronic voting system language. It authorizes the secretary of state to audit voter rolls and remove voters. It requires people who register 10 or more voters to register. It prohibits people from being paid to register voters.
In 2017, right before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People initiated a travel advisory for people of color in Missouri because of Jim Crow practices, the NAACP asked that someone do something about the laws the Missouri Legislature was passing, said Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri NAACP. Now it's evident that Jim Crow laws are expanding, he said.
"We already know that people of color are 100 percent more likely to be stopped on the roads - and those numbers continue to go up," he said. "And there's been no plan for relief from the executive, from the judiciary, and not only that, but from the local government."
This Legislature, he said, has seen laws offered to outlaw peaceful protests, civil disobedience - from kneeling and praying in the street to having a die-in (a form of protest in which participants simulate being dead).
"This is in the wake of George Floyd, of Mike Brown," Chapel said. "Even Tory Sanders, who can't get a prosecution."
Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in Minneapolis while being arrested May 25, 2020, for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for about nine minutes and 30 seconds during the arrest. Floyd complained about being unable to breathe. After several minutes, he died. Chauvin's murder trial started Monday.
After a confrontation with a white police officer, the officer shot and killed Brown in Ferguson. Witnesses said there was a confrontation between Brown and Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer. Brown and a colleague fled with Wilson pursuing Brown. At one point, Brown stopped. Wilson said Brown charged him. Witnesses said Brown turned around and raised his hands. Wilson shot and killed Brown.
Sanders, a 28-year-old black man, died in the Mississippi County Jail in Charleston in May 2017. He'd had several encounters with law enforcement while jailed (and a mental health counselor said he suffered from paranoia). Then-Mississippi County Sheriff Cory Hutcheson and eight others subdued him.
Missouri NAACP and black lawmakers in 2020 pushed for Attorney General Eric Schmitt to investigate and bring murder charges against law enforcement officers involved. But, Schmitt said there was not enough evidence to prove first- or second-
degree murder, and also said those were the only options because a statue of limitation had expired for other potential charges, such as manslaughter. Schmitt's predecessor, Josh Hawley, also investigated Sanders' death but refused to file charges.
Chapel pointed out Attorney General Eric Schmitt's office is in the Supreme Court Building, across the street from the Capitol.
"He said he's not going to prosecute any of the killers of Tory Sanders," Chapel said. "That's what Missouri is. It has a history of violence and Jim Crow."
And legislation to take away the initiative petition would expand that history, he said. And, the Legislature wants to take away Medicaid, which voters approved just last year, he said.
"This is too much. They cannot take away your voice at the ballot box," Chapel said. They cannot prevent you from protesting in the street when your cries for accountability - for equality - are met with insensitivity and neglect."
The Legislature cannot criminalize demonstrators being who they are, he said.
A supposed criminal justice reform bill actually creates a new felony, he said. Chapel said mentioning Hutcheson, "the one who had his knee on the back of Tory Sanders' neck until he was dead," could get him prosecuted in Mississippi County.
"How do you think that's going to work out?" Chapel asked. "We need to stop criminalizing skin color, criminalizing poverty and speak in a way that makes sense."
The Rev. Cassandra Gould, executive director of Missouri Faith Voices, said people at the gathering are tired of the Missouri Legislature manipulating their lives.
"We're tired of all the barriers that they attempt to put in place," Gould said. "It is very similar - and connected - to what is happening in Georgia and in 42 other states around the country. We feel like these types of measures, like HB 783, are punitive. We believe they are designed to shrink democracy - to shrink the electorate. And we're not going to put up with it."