Two statewide petitions - one for early voting and one relating to teacher performance evaluations - are making their way around Jefferson City.
Both petitions propose an amendment to the Missouri Constitution, but must first be voted on in November's election.
According to the Secretary of State's office, to make it on November's ballot, "an initiative petition proposing constitutional changes shall be signed by eight percent of legal voters in any six of the eight congressional districts."
For November's election, the deadline for submission of signatures to the Secretary of State is 5 p.m. May 4.
Early voting
Faith Voices for Jefferson City is collecting signatures to get early voting on November's ballot.
Matthew Dameron - a Kansas City attorney who served as Attorney General Chris Koster's chief of staff from 2009-12 - submitted the petition to the Secretary of State's office, along with several other early-voting initiative petitions.
"The early voting would provide all voters a period of six weeks prior to elections to cast a ballot in all federal and state general elections," said Rev. Michelle Scott-Huffman, a Faith Voices organizer. "The last three weeks of those six weeks would include weekend hours to allow more time for folks who aren't able to get to the polls during that one day of voting."
Scott-Huffman said the organization is concerned with economic dignity and racial equity.
"One of the ways that we see of maintaining a person's dignity is to protect their right to vote and to participate in the democratic process," she said. "We find that a lot of low-income people, citizens, folks who are disabled, or folks who just don't have transportation have sort of been checked out of the voting process because it's just too difficult for them.
"So, we want to try to give them that opportunity back."
The group will collect signatures through the first week of April.
If you are interested in volunteering with signature collection, you may attend a 9 a.m. training on Saturday at First Baptist Church.
"There's an opportunity for that, or we can go to any events where folks are interested in having signatures collected," Scott-Huffman said.
Teacher performance evaluation
Cole County Presiding Commissioner Marc Ellinger submitted an initiative petition to the Secretary of State's office, with the goal of making sure that teachers are hired, fired and payed based on performance.
Ellinger said the hope is that enough signatures will be collected to get the petition on November's ballot.
"Good teachers should be retained and teachers that are not effective should not be retained," he said. "Because of existing tenure laws, that's just not the case."
Ellinger used Jefferson City's Public School District as a hypothetical.
"If there was a big revenue shortfall and they had to lay off teachers under the existing tenure law, they would have to lay off the newest teachers, not the worst performing teachers," he said. "We don't think that's the right way. It should be done in a way with the best teachers being retained and paid."