Earlier this month, the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office certified that a sports betting ballot initiative gained the needed signatures from registered voters to appear on November’s ballot.
A lawsuit filed last week disputes that certification. The suit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, claims officials did not correctly tabulate the signatures. It also argues that some of the signatures were not legal.
According to reporting by the Missouri Independent, Bill DeWitt III, president of the St. Louis Cardinals, said the lawsuit is “completely without merit as Missourians came out in force to sign the petition that will be on the ballot in November.”
Lawsuit makes several accusations
For the Missouri sports betting question to appear on the ballot in November, Winning for Missouri Education – the political action committee behind the initiative – needed to secure roughly 170,000 signatures from Missouri registered voters. Signatures had to come from at least 8% of the registered voters in six of the eight congressional districts.
Winning for Missouri Education submitted more than 340,000 signatures in May. Over the next three months, the Secretary of State’s Office (SoS) tabulated the signatures, ruling that the requirements were met.
The lawsuit claims that instead of taking the 8% from each district’s total, the SoS should have divided the total number of voters from the 2020 election and made requirements equal in each district.
Because of that, the suit claims that District 1 voter signatures weighed more than those in District 3, violating the plaintiff’s 14th Amendment rights.
Additionally, the lawsuit claims the SoS used old district maps when figuring out signature requirements. It says Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and his team used the previous map from the 2020 election, even though the state has drawn up new districts since then. The suit argues that if the SoS had used the updated district maps, more signatures would have been required in District 1 and District 5.
The lawsuit further claims that authorities did not count signatures properly in those two districts, which were decided by a little more than 1,150 signatures.
Who filed the lawsuit?
According to reporting by PlayUSA’s Matt Kredell, one of the plaintiffs in this case is Jacqueline Woods. She owns JWood Political Strategies, a lobbying firm dedicated to campaign and governmental consulting. The other plaintiff, Blake Lawrence, runs a consulting company as well. Lawrence is the former chief counsel for the Missouri Senate.
That could possibly point to the lawsuit coming from Missouri lawmakers who oppose the initiative. Failed legislation in the past at the statehouse spawned the ballot drive. Some lawmakers have criticized what they see as a low tax (10%) on sports betting. Some may also oppose all the tax revenue going toward education in Missouri.
Before this lawsuit, rumors of potential opposition to the sports betting ballot initiative swirled. Steve Ruddock’s newsletter Straight to the Point noted that an opponent powerful enough “to kill the initiative at the ballot box” could emerge.
In addition, recent polling shows that it could be a very close vote. A June poll showed that just 38.3% of residents favored sports betting, with 35.4% against it.
What does lawsuit mean for Missouri sports betting?
All eyes will now be on Judge Cotton Walker. Should his ruling favor the plaintiffs, Missouri sports betting will not appear on the ballot this fall.
It would be a crushing blow for Winning for Missouri Education and the state’s professional sports teams.
The lawsuit comes shortly after DraftKings donated $3.5 million to the Winning PAC. Combined, DraftKings and FanDuel have contributed almost $10 million this year to efforts to legalize sports betting in Missouri.
DraftKings’ latest donation signaled that the operator felt confident that sports betting would become legal in Missouri or at least remain on the ballot.
