Why Missouri courts keep tossing the secretary of state’s ballot language

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins walks into a Missouri Right to Life rally in March 2025 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.

So what does it say when five times in recent months ballot summaries written by Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins have been tossed out by the courts?

Since October, judges at every level of Missouri’s court system have stepped in to block or rewrite ballot language drafted by Hoskins. At stake are some of the most politically charged issues in the state: public education funding, private school vouchers, abortion rights, gerrymandering and the initiative petition process itself.

First, a judge in October found Hoskins’ description of an initiative petition seeking to enshrine education as a fundamental right in the state constitution to be “insufficient and unfair.”

Then came a ruling last month from the Missouri Court of Appeals, which faulted Hoskins for failing to disclose in a summary that a proposed ballot measure would repeal the reproductive rights amendment voters approved in 2024 to legalize abortion.

Weeks later, Hoskins’ attorneys acknowledged in court that he had written a ballot summary “likely to create prejudice” against a possible referendum on Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map. That same day, a Cole County judge rejected his summary for a proposal aimed at making it harder for lawmakers to overturn a successful initiative petition.

And last week, Hoskins lost a fifth time, when an appeals court struck down his summary for an initiative petition that would bar state funding for private education.

Taken together, the rulings paint a picture of an office repeatedly testing how much advocacy it can embed into what is supposed to be a neutral description.

So what gives?

One possible explanation lies in a law passed by Republican lawmakers last year that gave the secretary of state three chances to rewrite ballot language deemed insufficient or biased before a judge could intervene. The Missouri Supreme Court struck that law down last month as unconstitutional, but while it was in effect, critics say it functioned less as a safeguard than as a tool to burden the initiative petition process.

An unfair or misleading ballot summary forces initiative backers to divert time and money into litigation — resources that might otherwise be spent gathering signatures or persuading voters. Delay alone can be decisive in a process governed by hard deadlines.

Hoskins has done little to tamp down that criticism. Facing questions over a ballot summary warning that repealing a stadium financing law would “likely cause the Kansas City Chiefs to move” to Kansas, he called his summary a “first bite at the apple” — suggesting opponents could just sue if they objected.

Missouri law charges the secretary of state with distilling complex proposals into a few dozen words. Those words matter enormously. Research shows voters rely heavily on ballot language, particularly for down-ballot measures where campaigns are less visible and partisan cues are weaker.

That reality has always tempted secretaries of state to push the boundaries. What distinguishes Missouri’s current moment is not partisan disagreement, but frequency — how often judges are concluding those boundaries have been crossed.

The danger is not simply biased wording on a handful of measures. It is the gradual erosion of trust in a system meant to give citizens a direct voice when the Legislature will not — and the growing perception that the referee, not the voters, may be shaping the outcome.