Daily Brew: October 10, 2025
Welcome to the Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, Brew.
By: Lara Bonatesta
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Under proposed supermajority requirement, every Missouri ballot initiative since 2020 would have failed
- Candidate themes: The oldest form of robust voter information, by Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia Founder and CEO
- On this date, in 1911, California became the twelfth state to adopt an initiative and referendum process
Under proposed supermajority requirement, every Missouri ballot initiative since 2020 would have failed
Daily Brew readers may recall that back in September, we told you about Missouri’s proposed constitutional amendment, which would create a new type of supermajority requirement for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments.
Amendment 4, which Missouri voters will decide in 2026, would require initiated amendments to receive simple majority approval in each congressional district, rather than a majority statewide. The amendment would also add a prohibition on foreign nationals contributing to ballot measure campaigns, among other provisions.
Supermajority requirement ballot measures change the vote threshold to approve certain ballot measures. Eleven states require supermajority approval for certain ballot measures—for example, a 60% vote to amend the constitution or a higher threshold for tax-related amendments.
To give readers an idea of what the proposed change would mean in practice, we went back and looked at how recent initiatives would have fared.
Since 2020, Missouri voters have decided on five citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, approving four and defeating one. They were:
- Amendment 2, Medicaid Expansion Initiative (August 2020) – Approved 53.3%-46.7%
- Amendment 3, Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2022) – Approved 53.1%-46.9%
- Amendment 2, Sports Betting Initiative (2024) – Approved 50.1%-50%
- Amendment 3, Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative (2024) – Approved 51.6%-48.4
- Amendment 5, Osage River Gambling Boat License Initiative (2024) – Defeated 52.5%-47.5%
Missouri has eight congressional districts. Following the 2024 elections*, two districts—District 1 and District 5— have Democratic U.S. representatives, and six districts—Districts 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8—have Republican U.S. representatives.
In at least one congressional district—Missouri's 7th District—voters rejected all five citizen-initiated constitutional amendments, meaning that all of the initiatives that passed would have failed.
We examined the 7th District because the secretary of state provides election results by county, not congressional district, and the majority of the 7th District's counties fall inside the congressional district borders (except for Webster County, which was excluded from the analysis).
Voters will decide Amendment 4, along with three other constitutional amendments, on Nov. 3, 2026. Click here to learn more about 2026 ballot measures in Missouri.
*The Missouri General Assembly voted in September to approve new congressional district boundaries. Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) signed the new map into law on Sept. 28. The new congressional map would make its most significant changes, in terms of partisanship, in the Kansas City area. Signatures are currently being gathered for a referendum effort to place the map on the 2026 ballot, which means it would not go into effect unless voters approve it. Click here to learn more about redistricting in Missouri ahead of the 2026 elections.
Candidate themes: The oldest form of robust voter information
In this week’s column, we come to the last of the five components that go into what we call robust information — a candidate’s campaign themes (you can read about the other components here, here, and here).
Campaign themes are a very broad category, one that includes everything from slogans on bumper stickers and TV ads to media interviews, public debates, and detailed position papers on policy issues.
All of these things, and many more, can be counted as a campaign theme. We use a range of sources to identify these themes, allowing us to incorporate them into the candidate pages on our website. Most often, they come from candidates themselves, either through their official websites and social media channels, the media covering their campaigns, forums where they debate other candidates, and from responses to questions like those on our Candidate Connection Survey.
Candidates generally have powerful incentives to make sure every voter hears what their campaign stands for. Technology has made it easier and, in some instances, less expensive for candidates to get their message in front of voters. But there are plenty of examples, particularly in smaller localities and rural areas, where yard signs, door-to-door campaigning, and other low-tech, “shoe leather” campaign techniques are still the rule. They might get a candidate elected. But they aren’t necessarily the best way to help voters make informed choices.
Large campaigns, such as those for statewide office or Congress, often have websites that include pages devoted to specific policy issues. Many campaigns have active and engaged social media channels to get their message across. Regardless of the medium they use, our writers and researchers scour them all to find out what candidates are telling voters in those elections.
And, of course, there are civic and political organizations that host forums and debates, where candidates have the opportunity to share their messages with engaged audiences. Events like these are rich sources of campaign information that we routinely share with readers and voters.
The long-established source for independent news and information about candidates and their campaign themes has been the press. In their heyday, newspapers, radio, and TV had ample resources to cover elections at every level of government in every election.
But as we all know, that era of media political coverage is largely gone. There are several outlets that do fantastic work covering state and local politics. But there aren’t nearly enough of them, which means that an increasing number of candidates and their issues are not being covered at all.
What this decline in local coverage also means is that it is increasingly difficult, and frustrating, for the average voter to quickly gather information on candidates and their issues from a resource they trust. That can lead to voters making uninformed choices at the polls or worse, deciding voting just isn’t worth the trouble.
In next week’s column: why we think robust information is essential to the health of our democratic process … and the challenges we face in providing it.
On this date in 1911, California became the twelfth state to adopt an initiative and referendum process
On Oct. 10, 1911, California became the twelfth state to establish an initiative and referendum process.
Proposition 7 created the initiative and referendum process. It gave Californians the ability to propose constitutional amendments, state statutes, and veto referendums. Voters approved Proposition 7 76.4%-23.6%. Proposition 8 established a process for recalling both state and local elected officials. Voters approved Proposition 8 76.8%-23.2%.
Multiple committees supported the constitutional amendments. Among them were the National Referendum League and the Lincoln/Roosevelt League.
Before 1911, the National Referendum League had campaigned for the initiative and referendum process in states and localities across the country. Judson King, a representative for the League, framed California's constitutional amendments as part of a national trend.
In a column promoting the approval of the propositions, King listed the states that had passed or were considering an initiative and referendum process and wrote, “It is safe to say that no fundamental political form has made such rapid progress during the past thirteen years as has the Initiative and Referendum.”
The Lincoln/Roosevelt League, a group of Progressive Republicans and the predecessor to the Progressive Party, is also credited with pushing for the initiative and referendum process in California.
The League endorsed Hiram Johnson in the 1910 gubernatorial race. After his election, he worked with members of the California Legislature who were affiliated with the Lincoln/Roosevelt League to place Propositions 7 and 8 on the ballot.
Following the October 1911 election, Johnson said, “[the] initiative, referendum and recall have carried overwhelmingly. The result, of course, affords every lover of true democracy the most intense satisfaction. Today has demonstrated the people do think and are fit to govern themselves. California has indeed a people’s government.”
A column in the Fresno Morning Republican stated that there was no committee or other organized opposition to either Proposition 7 or 8.
Between 1910 and 2024, California voters decided 444 ballot initiatives, approving 159 (36%) and defeating 285 (64%). Of those:
- 216 were directly initiated state statutes
- 133 were initiated constitutional amendments
- 51 were veto referendums
- 41 were combined initiated constitutional amendments and state statutes
- Three were indirectly initiated state statutes
In that time, voters approved 69% of the 862 measures the state Legislature put on the ballot.
Click here to learn more about California's 1911 ballot measures. Plus, check out our Historical Ballot Measures Factbook to see our comprehensive coverage of 114 years of California ballot measures.
