Secretary of State certifies petition 2020-063 – Medicaid expansion – for ballot

Courtesy of Missouri

Secretary of State’ Office

Jefferson City, Mo. — On May 22, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft certified initiative petition 2020-063 regarding Medicaid expansion to appear on the November ballot.

Pursuant to Section 116.120, RSMo., the secretary of state performed the approval of petition signatures by congressional district. Per state law, “the secretary of state may verify the signatures on the petition by use of random sampling.” The law states that “the process for establishing the random sample and determining the statistically valid result shall be established by the secretary of state. Such a random sampling shall include an examination of five percent of the signatures.”

After municipal elections were moved to June 2 and a petitioner submitted signatures on May 1, the secretary of state determined to use random sampling to verify signatures.

“We carefully considered whether to have local election officials conduct signature verifications at the same time as they are preparing for the June election,” Ashcroft said. “After visiting all 116 election officials in the state over the last two weeks, I know we made the right decision. It would have created a tremendous amount of work for them at the same time they prepare for, conduct and certify their local election.”

To place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, the number of signatures verified must be at least 8% of the number of voters in 6 of 8 congressional districts who cast ballots for Governor in the last election by congressional district. In this instance, the petitioner submitted 341,440 signatures on May 1.