Post-Dispatch: Missouri Voters "Becoming an Awful Nuisance to Their Legislators"

The Post-Dispatch has a good editorial today looking at efforts in the Missouri General Assembly to overturn the will of the voters on 2010's Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, which passed with 52% of the vote in an election that was favorable to Republican candidates; and 2008's Proposition C, the Clean Energy Initiative, which passed with 66% of the vote and created a renewable electricity standard in the state, requiring utility companies to gradually increase their usage of renewable energy.  Not included in the editorial are Republicans' ongoing efforts to undermine the 2006 vote to provide for annual increases in Missouri's minimum wage based on the pace of inflation in the Midwest.

Still, it's a good editorial that gets at the heart of the matter:

The people of Missouri are becoming an awful nuisance to their legislators in Jefferson City.

Missouri's state representatives and senators, after all, slog away for four long months a year (part-time, with a 10-day spring break), making the tough decisions about which bills written by which lobbyists they should pass.

But every now and then, some nervy Missourians get it into their heads to read the part of the state constitution about how to make laws without the Legislature. When they succeed, legislators then have to hole up with more lobbyists to figure out the best way to nullify the laws that the people passed without them....

This page has expressed serious concerns about abuses of Missouri's voter-initiative process, particularly when multi-millionaires like St. Louisan Rex Sinquefield can sink limitless funds into paying hired-gun companies to gather signatures.

But the solution to such abuses is to reform the process.

Instead, the Missouri Legislature prefers to defy the will of the people, trash duly enacted voter initiatives and bow to the will of special interests more to their liking.