Dear Editor:
The Clean Missouri amendment passed in 2018 contained a glaring problem that no one has addressed, besides being funded by huge amounts of out-of-state money. The depths of the trenches of party politics sunk to bedrock with this constitutional amendment. The clean up of lobbying money in the Clean Missouri amendment would have been great by itself had it not been there to cover up an underhanded way for one party to gain power. Without quoting the amendment at length, it centers on making voting districts equal in representing the two parties. Now reread the previous sentence and note that it says two parties. For example, "demographer shall calculate the average electoral performance of the two parties for governor U.S. Senate and President."
To summarize the 2018 Clean Missouri amendment, we shall eliminate gerrymandering by instituting constitutionally mandated gerrymandering, by swaying voters using overwhelming amounts of out-of-state money under the cover of a good rule cleaning up lobbying activity. Also don't forget the part about enshrining the two-party system into the state Constitution.
Elections for governor and president have traditionally come down to two candidates but votes for other candidates can often impact which candidate wins. OMGoodness let us create a district that starts out in the sticks, where there are both kinds of music, country and western. Then we can snake that district into an urban area where there are the other both kinds of music, '90s rap and hip-hop, to create the perfect voting district that achieves the perfect outcome. Wait though that leaves out those that like jazz, blues, classical, old rock, etc. Maybe we can create a district that has both kinds of religion, Catholic and Protestant. Both genders? The possibilities are endless. Thanks if you tolerate the sarcasm, but the point is that Clean Missouri did not represent the interests of voters and seriously opposed diversity in thought to achieve a political party outcome.
There are many, many issues our government takes on, more than it should. It is unfair to pigeonhole voters and districts into blocks based on the electoral outcomes for governor, senators and president. The forces behind clean Missouri did not know or care about unintended consequences in their quest to gain power. I believe it is in our best interest to vote for Amendment 3, which removes this flawed gerrymandering scheme, and start over.