What the Amendment 4 Ballot Summary Doesn’t Tell You
The court-approved ballot summary for Amendment 4 tells voters that it would change the approval process for citizen-led constitutional amendments and require the full text of initiative petitions to be made available with the ballot.
That summary leaves out major provisions.
Amendment 4 would constitutionally ban foreign funding of ballot measure campaigns.
It would also empower the Attorney General to prosecute initiative petition fraud.
Both are seriously important provisions, but voters won’t know about them if they only see the ballot summary.
There is no better argument for giving the voters the full text of constitutional amendments than Amendment 4 itself.
A ballot summary cannot replace the full text.
Foreign funding protections
Amendment 4 constitutionally bans foreign funding of ballot measure campaigns.
In 2025, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 152, restricting certain committees from accepting contributions from foreign nationals and other prohibited sources and creating new reporting requirements for committees spending money on ballot measures.
Amendment 4 follows the same principle but puts the protection in our Constitution. Campaigns seeking to change Missouri’s Constitution should not be funded by foreign nationals or prohibited sources.
Since 2014, the foreign-backed Sixteen Thirty Fund has spent almost $13 million on ballot measure campaigns in Missouri. In that same time span, they have spent $130 million on ballot measure campaigns nationally.
Unfortunately, even after the passage of SB 152, left-wing ballot measure campaigns continue to report donations from foreign-linked sources.
In May, Americans for Public Trust filed a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office against the pro-abortion Stop the Ban ballot measure committee. Stop the Ban publicly reported $2.5 million in contributions from the ACLU Foundation. The ACLU Foundation has itself received millions of dollars in foreign grants.
Foreign spending in Missouri ballot measures remains a serious concern.
The initiative petition process should belong to Missouri voters, not foreign billionaires and foundations.
The people should know that Amendment 4 is an opportunity to enact constitutional protections against foreign interference in our elections.
Petition fraud safeguards
Also left out of the Amendment 4 summary are its protections against petition fraud.
The initiative petition process begins with signatures. If the signatures are not legitimate, the process fails.
Missouri already treats petition fraud seriously. Section 116.090 of Missouri law makes “petition signature fraud” a crime. The law covers signing someone else’s name, knowingly signing more than once for the same measure, submitting petition sheets with false information, and other fraudulent conduct.
Amendment 4 adds these provisions to the state constitution.
More than that, it empowers the Attorney General to prosecute instead of local county prosecutors.
Modern signature-gathering campaigns are run by large companies operating statewide. They employ paid petitioners who routinely cross county lines. When petition fraud happens, it’s rarely confined to one county.
Worse, Woke prosecutors refuse to prosecute petition fraud when it favors their preferred initiatives.
In May, Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson’s office put out an official press release declaring that they would not be prosecuting anyone who signed the petition to repeal the Missouri First Map.
Petition fraud harms everyone: voters, honest petitioners, election officers, and everyone else who deals with the consequences of bad policy decisions.
It should be prosecuted.
Amendment 4 gives the Attorney General authority to prosecute petition fraud like the statewide crime that it is, and it puts those protections in the Constitution.
The people deserve to know about that.
Missouri voters deserve the full text
The ballot summary tells voters part of what Amendment 4 does.
The full text tells them all of it.
Too often in Missouri, ballot measures are won and lost in the courtroom instead of the ballot box.
Since 2022, the Western District rewrote 11 of the 12 ballot summaries that came before it.
Unelected and unaccountable judges have been allowed to decide what Missourians can and can’t see at the ballot box.
When the Constitution is on the line, voters deserve more than a summary.
Amendment 4 gives them the full text.
Vote Yes on Amendment 4.
Andy Bakker
Executive Director
Liberty Alliance USA