The Amendment Arms Race

Ohio's photo ID requirement has been state law since 2023. It works. Nobody has overturned it. Yet the Ohio Senate voted 22-9 this month to put it in the state constitution anyway ^[1][2]. The move is not about policy. It is about permanence. A statute can be repealed by a future legislature or reversed at the ballot box. A constitutional amendment requires its own amendment to undo. Ohio's lawmakers are using direct democracy's own tool to lock their preferred policy against future democratic reversal — whether by voters or by a future legislature that disagrees. This is not an isolated maneuver. In Missouri, the legislature placed Amendment 5 on the August ballot to eliminate income tax through a sales tax expansion. The measure does not just change tax policy. As the opponents' attorney Chuck Hatfield argued, it would override existing constitutional taxpayer protections — including the citizens' right to vote on big tax increases ^[3].

Lawmakers failed to tell voters the truth about Amendment 5 -- it would mean the largest expansion of sales taxes in Missouri history, while giving lawmakers a license to ignore current constitutional taxpayer protections, including the citizens' right to vote on big tax increases. — Chuck Hatfield

A Missouri judge kept Amendment 5 on the ballot, rejecting single-subject and misleading-language challenges ^[3]. The legislature used the amendment process to strip a citizen protection that voters themselves had placed in the constitution. Missouri's legislature also placed Amendment 4 on the same low-turnout August primary that Governor Kehoe deliberately chose, which would require citizen constitutional amendments to win both a statewide majority and a majority in each of the state's eight congressional districts ^[4]. Analysis shows the threshold would have blocked past voter approvals of Medicaid expansion, abortion rights, marijuana legalization, and sports betting. Scott Charton, an opponent:

It gives voters in a single district veto power over the other seven. — Scott Charton

The citizens of Missouri have not been passive. A group called Respect Missouri Volunteers submitted 367,000 signatures — the largest volunteer-led drive in state history — for a constitutional amendment requiring an 80% legislative supermajority to repeal voter-approved laws, plus mandatory unbiased ballot summaries ^[5]. Co-founder Benjamin Singer:

This amendment has been powered by volunteers from the start. — DeMarco Davidson

This is a ballot measure to protect ballot measures. The meta-level response to a legislature that has overridden voter-approved minimum wage and paid sick leave laws. Citizens are weaponizing the same amendment process the legislature uses, but to entrench voter power rather than legislative power. The pattern is visible only when you line up the states. In Ohio, a legislature constitutionalizes existing statute. In Missouri, a legislature uses amendments to override existing constitutional protections and raise the bar for future citizen initiatives. In Missouri, citizens counter with an amendment to protect their own victories from legislative repeal. Each side is writing rules the other cannot easily undo. Meanwhile, Missouri ballot campaigns have raised $14.5 million across the Amendment 4 and 5 fights — a financial arms race comparable to legislative campaigns, funded by PACs, professional associations, and nonprofits not required to disclose donors ^[6]. The courts are not picking sides against voters. They are the enforcement layer of whatever constitutional architecture happens to exist. In Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court blocked three citizen ballot initiatives — a rent control measure, an income tax cut, and a related proposal — on constitutional grounds. Attorney General Andrea Campbell admitted her office had wrongly certified the rent control initiative:

We got the rent control initiative, we certified it. But we, of course, have to respect the court’s decision which was against us, and we got that wrong. — Andrea Campbell

Campbell called the certification process itself the problem:

ballot question certification by the attorney general is a "stupid process founded by some other people" that needs to be "revamped." — Andrea Campbell

More than 85,000 signatures were gathered for the income tax initiative before anyone checked whether the measure was constitutionally eligible ^[7][8]. The court enforced the constitution's limits on what direct democracy can reach — limits that had been botched by the state's own certification process, not by judicial hostility. In North Dakota, the state Supreme Court did the opposite, for the same reason. The court blocked a legislative term-limit measure (SR 4008) and ordered it removed from the November ballot, because a 2022 voter amendment reserves the power to change term limits exclusively to citizen-led initiatives ^[9].

The constitution itself reserves this power to the people and does not give the Legislative Assembly authority to propose this amendment. — North Dakota Supreme Court

Same judicial function: enforcing constitutional architecture. Opposite outcomes. In Massachusetts, the architecture constrains what citizen initiatives can reach. In North Dakota, the architecture protects citizen initiatives from the legislature. The court is the referee, not the opponent. This frame fits the Missouri rulings too. The state Supreme Court kept Amendment 5 on the ballot — a legislature-placed measure — while reshaping the ballot summary after an appeals court found the original misleading ^[10][3]. It did not block the legislature's amendment. It enforced the process. And courts have expanded access in the same period: a Virginia federal court mandated automatic voting rights restoration for former felons, with the governor signing a measure to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot ^[11]. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously ruled cast vote records are public records, expanding election transparency ^[12]. Direct democracy is still functioning where the architecture allows it. Oregon voters crushed a gas tax increase by a 4-to-1 margin after Republicans gathered 250,000 signatures to force a referendum against a Democratic legislature's transportation bill ^[13]. Louisiana voters rejected all five constitutional amendments backed by Governor Landry — the second consecutive year they turned back his agenda ^[14]. Voters are still voting. The question is who wrote the rules that got the measure to them.

The fight has moved above policy. When Ohio constitutionalizes a photo ID law already working as statute, the point is not the photo ID — it is that a future legislature cannot simply repeal it. When Missouri's legislature places Amendment 5 to override taxpayer protections voters enacted, the point is not tax policy — it is that the citizens' right to vote on tax increases would be gone. ^[1][3]

Trump publicly urged Ohio's legislature to pass the photo ID amendment:

I have a general concern that when something like this is done this quickly there can be unintended consequences. — Frank LaRose

State Representative Veronica Sims objected:

Democrats fought hard against this, presumably so they can CHEAT. — Donald Trump

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a fellow Republican, warned of "unintended consequences" from rushing the amendment through ^[1]. The photo ID policy was never in danger. The amendment process was being used for something else: to make the policy permanent in a way that ordinary law cannot. The arms race is self-reinforcing. Each side's entrenchment provokes the other's counter-entrenchment. Missouri citizens collected 367,000 signatures to require an 80% legislative supermajority for repealing voter-approved laws. If they succeed, the legislature will look for another constitutional lever. The amendment process — designed to let citizens bypass legislatures — is now the primary weapon for both sides to lock in their preferences against reversal. The fight is no longer over what policy should be. It is over who gets to decide what can be changed, and how hard it should be to change it.