On Nov. 8, Missouri voters will have the opportunity to vote “yes” or “no” on this year’s midterm election ballot in response to a proposed amendment to the Missouri constitution. 

A vote “yes” on the proposal would effectively amend Section 21, Article X of the Missouri Constitution and allow the Missouri General Assembly to increase the minimum funding required for police forces that are established by a state board of police commissioners. The amendment would create an exception to Section 21, which otherwise forbids funding increases of services unless the state specifically pays for that increase. Because the Kansas City Police Department is currently the only state-controlled police force in Missouri, the proposed amendment would only affect the KCPD and Kansas City for the time being. The primary outcome would be an increase in the KCPD’s minimum funding by 2027 without reimbursement to the city. A vote “no” would veto this proposal. 

Advocates of Amendment 4 suggest that this bill would prevent further attempts to defund the KCPD, as explained by Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer (R-34) who sponsored the measure.

“This [amendment] ensures the brave men and women in the KCPD have the resources they need to keep our city safe,” Sen. Luetkemeyer said.

Other advocates for the amendment express concern that our local officials are not equipped to make these decisions themselves: “The actions of the mayor and city council last year raised tremendous alarm regarding the stability of funding for something as important as the Kansas City Police Department,” Rep. Doug Richey (R-39) said.

However, critics of Amendment 4 argue that the proposal would be an overreach of government power, noting that every other city in the state maintains lo CXCV cal control.

“It just makes absolutely no sense that the state legislature would dictate how our local government should allocate its resources – all for the protection of the police in response to a false narrative of defunding,” Gwen Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas weighed in on the matter earlier this year, expressing a similar sentiment: “I do not support anything that takes away our ability to work with our local police department and neighborhood leaders in terms of how we get to better solutions for violent crime.”

While the common talking points appear to mirror a two-sided debate between Republican and Democratic parties, some argue that the issue should be a place of common ground between parties.

“This is not a Black or white issue,” Vernon Percy Howard Jr., adjunct professor of at William Jewell College, said. “This is an American issue, symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and under siege, where state overreach is rampant in the stripping of voting and governance power from the people.” 

Howard – a Jewell graduate (‘86), pastor at St. Mark’s Church in Kansas City and President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Kansas City – continues: “[Amendment 4] further erodes democratic principles by stripping from local communities the voice and power to determine their own policies and budgets which impact the well-being of their children, families and communities…Don’t local communities reserve the right to self-governance on key local issues?”

In 2020, Howard was also the recipient of Jewell’s Invictus Social Justice Award and the Harold L. Holliday Civil Rights Award from the Missouri branch of the NAACP for his work in organizing and educating Kansas City communities about civil rights issues and activism. With proposals such as Amendment 4, Howard emphasized that voters should be aware of their historical and local implications.

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr….called this kind of overreach ‘interposition and nullification,’ citing the early mid-twentieth century movement among states to disrupt and turn back the rights of Blacks to vote and gain access and inclusion within the mainstream of American prosperity,” Howard said. “Critical thinkers and 21st century global leaders own the moral responsibility to remain awake on these issues. Particularly, the Jewell educated scholar, who takes seriously one of the critical questions of our core curriculum, which is, ‘how shall we live?'”

Election Day is on Nov. 8. Registered voters in Clay County can find their polling place here, and check their registration status here. For more voter resources, click on the link here.

The #MeToo Movement, a movement to help survivors of sexual violence and to advocate against sexual violence and for systems that hold perpetrators more accountable, has already made itself known on Capitol Hill, triggering the downfall of numerous representatives like John Conyers (D-Mi.), and of Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.).

The dynamic is one that predates the entrance of the #MeToo Movement to the mainstream. The 2016 presidential campaign pitted the first female major party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, a man that has been accused by multiple people of sexual harassment. Female voters have always been less enamored with President Trump than their male counterparts, but the development of the #MeToo movement in October of 2017 widened that chasm.

#MeToo, which went viral after explosive reports against the media mogul Harvey Weinstein, has become a powerful social movement within the United States. It shone a bright spotlight on the depth and magnitude of the sexual predation in American society. The movement launched an intense, far-reaching and ongoing national conversation on how reprehensibly entire elements of American society has failed survivors of sexual violence and what lengths and means are best suited to ensuring it does better in the future.

Since the earliest days of #MeToo, the Democrats have largely embraced the movement – a trend evident in their primaries this election cycle. A record number of women ran in the 2018 Democratic primaries and a record number won out to be nominees in the general election Nov. 6. A historic one hundred women may serve in the House next year. The 2018 midterm cycle has been called “The Year of the Woman,” like the 1992 cycle after the Clarence Thomas hearings.

The movement has electrified Democratic voters and resulted in heightened awareness, fundraising and energy on the left, leading indisputably to a much more energized left coming into the fall of this year.

Then came the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, he was accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault. These allegations coming late in the process infuriated congressional Republicans who accused the Democrats of attempting character assassination and for the most part Republican voters agreed. They were angered by the Democratic senators’ treatment of Kavanaugh and a negative view on the #MeToo Movement quickly gained traction to voice an opinion that the #MeToo movement has gone too far.

The hearings and the anger they generated on Kavanaugh’s behalf saw a spike in energy on the right in opposition to #MeToo. Conservatives began to become more involved and active in the midterm cycle desiring to punish the Democrats who had attempted to smear Kavanaugh in their view.

Their argument is that, in this environment, to be accused is to be convicted in the public perception and that some sense of due process in the public opinion must be established.

The president, who has been accused by at least 15 individuals of sexual harassment, has aligned his party with this view, denouncing #MeToo at a number of his rallies and declaring, “It a very scary time in America to be a young man.”

The left was quick to fire back with the abortion rights group NARAL tweeting:

It’s a very scary time for young women in America, you know, because 1 in 6 of us have been the victim of rape or attempted rape. #BelieveSurvivors https://t.co/c6azjCM1aK

— NARAL (@NARAL) October 2, 2018

Political scientists perceive that this dynamic might signal a fundamental shift in American politics. Recent polls show Trump with staggeringly low approval ratings among women voters and that women in general seem to be trending more towards the Democratic Party.

No matter which side ultimately proves to be more energized in the midterms this cycle has been defined by the #MeToo Movement and American politics may continue to be molded by this force. A common term that has increased in usage since the Kavanaugh hearings is that of a gender war. Whatever happens Nov. 6, the debate over #MeToo will continue.

Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Andrew Harnik and iStockphoto.

Amendment 2, a measure concerning addition of evidence in criminal cases concerning sexual crimes against minors, was affirmed by 71 percent of voters.  The legislation allows for prosecutors to submit evidence concerning past criminal acts that are deemed relevant to the court case.  Evidential submissions such as these are designed to imply that a person who has committed an offense of some kind in the past would be more likely to commit a subsequent offense.

Amendment 3 was rejected on Nov. 4 by over 50 percent following several months of intense argumentation concerning the amendment’s merits. It was initially proposed by the “Teach Great” campaign in an attempt to quantify teacher qualifications based on academic growth of students and limit teacher contracts to three-year periods in order to ensure regular evaluation of teaching performance.  The “Teach Great” campaign, headed by the Children’s Education Council of Missouri, made the decision to withdraw support for this initiative in early September after seeing less-than-expected levels of support for the legislation.

Rejected by roughly 40 percent, Amendment 6 attempted to reform voting regulations to allow for early voting in the six days preceding the election.  The measure was proposed in the Missouri Legislature by Republican Representative Tony Dugger argued that this would provide a chance for those working to vote during the normal open voting hours or those with other limitations.

Amendment 10 passed by a relatively close vote of 57 supporting and 43 rejecting.  The amendment is designed to prevent the governor from utilizing estimations of available government funds in budget recommendations to the Missouri legislature, while allowing him or her to speculate concerning projected surplus.