• A lawsuit has been filed to invalidate the Missouri sports betting initiative
• The plaintiffs assert Missouri Secretary of State John Ashcroft incorrectly calculated number of valid signatures to appear on the ballot
• Plaintiffs believe the campaign actually came up short regarding necessary signatures

Hold on just a second, Missouri sports betting, you’re not cleared for the November general election ballot just yet.

A lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Cole County against Missouri Secretary of State John Ashcroft asserts that the official improperly certified the sports wagering petition for the upcoming general election.

The plaintiffs allege that Ashcroft incorrectly calculated the necessary number of valid signatures for the petition to appear on the ballot and the campaign did not reach the signature threshold in all necessary Missouri counties.

If Judge Cotton Walker rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the sports betting initiative will not appear on the November general election ballot.

Did the Campaign Actually Come up Short?

The plaintiffs, who are listed as Jacqueline Wood and Blake Lawrence on the court documents, claim the Winning for Missouri Education campaign actually came up short in Missouri’s First and Fifth Congressional Districts and Ashcroft’s determination of sufficiency was incorrect.

The Winning for Missouri Education coalition submitted more than 340,000 signatures to place the sports betting question on the state’s November general election ballot. The St. Louis Blues, Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis CITY SC, and the Kansas City Current are supporting the sports betting initiative in the state.

On Aug. 13, Ashcroft announced the initiative petition received a sufficient amount of valid signatures in six of eight Missouri Congressional Districts to be placed on the November 2024 general election ballot. According to the official signature results, the initiative did not reach the necessary requirements in districts six and eight.

Missouri requires a referendum initiative to collect signatures from 8% of valid voters from the previous gubernatorial election in at least six of its eight total congressional districts to be placed on a ballot.

However, the plaintiffs allege that Ashcroft did not correctly calculate the number of signatures because he failed “to take the total number of people who voted for governor in 2020, multiply that number by eight percent, and then divide that number equally among Missouri’s eight Congressional Districts.”

The lawsuit claims that if Ashcroft had correctly calculated the number of necessary signatures, the initiative would have also fallen short in the state’s first and fifth Congressional District.

The lawsuit also alleges the following points:

• Ashcroft’s method of calculating the number of necessary signatures was incorrect because it failed to use the vote in the current boundaries of the First Congressional District as established in
  Section 128.461, RSMo, and that as a result, the petition did not have enough valid signatures in the First Congressional District.
• The plaintiff’s believe that Ashcroft incorrectly certified a sufficient number of signatures that were submitted from the First and Fifth Congressional Districts. The plaintiffs claim that a “significant number of the signatures determined to have been valid” in the two Congressional Districts were not legal signatures.
• Wood claims her rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were deprived in that “the method employed impermissibly and knowingly decreased the weight of a third Congressional District voter’s signature when compared to the weight of a First Congressional District voters signature.

The plaintiffs allege that both the First and Fifth Congressional District signature totals came up short for the campaign. In the Secretary of State’s report, for District 1 the campaign needed 25,632  signatures and submitted 55,864 signatures. The report noted that 25,714 signatures were valid, surpassing the necessary threshold by just 82 signatures.

In District 5, the campaign submitted 34,818 signatures, of which 29,612 were classified as valid. The necessary signature threshold in that district was 28,458.

Professional Sports Teams Stand Behind Initiative

Bill DeWitt III, President of the St. Louis Cardinals, released the following statement regarding the lawsuit.

“All six Missouri professional sports teams support Amendment 2, which would make Missouri the 39th state to legalize sports betting, while providing tens of millions in new funding for Missouri classrooms each year. This effort to decertify our ballot initiative is completely without merit, as Missourians came out in force to sign the petition that will be on the ballot in November.”

If approved at the polls, each Missouri sports team and casino will be eligible to operate retail and online sports betting. Each sports team and casino would be eligible for one retail sports betting license through the bill. Additionally, each sports team and casino would be eligible for one online sports betting license. Each team and casino would be able to partner with one online sports betting operator.

Sports betting would be taxed at a rate of 10% and allows for promotional deductions against sports betting revenues. It’s estimated by sports betting proponents that the state could see upwards of $28.9 million annually in sports betting tax revenues.

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