By Nathan Henderson-James

Partisan efforts to keep up to 300,000 eligible Missouri citizens, mostly progressive-leaning voters from elderly and low-income demographics but also including such large blocks as married women, permanently off the voting rolls are coming to a head in the Missouri Senate today as the Legislature prepares to adjourn. Measures not passed by that time will die, pending the Governor calling a special session.

Voting rights and progressive activists, led by Missourians for Fair Elections are fighting back and report an extremely tough but increasingly winnable fight against what the Kansas City Star is calling a "real deception...being perpetrated by legislators, whose claims of fraud are driving what appears to be a political agenda".

Robin Carnahan, Missouri's Secretary of State, and an opponent of the measure, HJR 48 - which would amend Missouri's constitution to require proof of citizenship to register and vote, will be holding a press conference today in Kansas City to point out the partisan agenda behind this measure.

As previously reported in these diaries from last Friday, Monday,  and yesterday, Missouri politicians are pushing a measure to change the state constitution to allow strict voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements. This was prompted by a 2006 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that struck down a strict voter ID bill as unconstitutional.

Local Missouri activists expect that Secretary of State Carnahan will emphasize the following points in her press conference today:

*Missourians have already been through this in 2006 and our identification requirements in Missouri are fine, and they work – we have fair elections without fraud and people are allowed to vote.  There’s no need to take the drastic step of altering our constitution just so that restrictive measures that suppress votes can be imposed on voters.

*In 2006, a more restrictive photo ID law was passed that was ruled unconstitutional because it was a burden and poll tax on voters, so now the Republicans just want to change the constitution to strip away voting rights protections.

Reports from officials with Missourians for Fair Elections suggest that the field work and wave of publicity and editorials from across the state are having the effect of exposing the partisan nature of this campaign while putting pressure on Senate leadership to refuse to consider the measure before the Senate adjourns.

Using flyers and door-to-door canvasses to generate on-the-spot calls to specific legislators, MFE has been able to to generate an unprecedented number of calls on this issue, which seem to be limiting the number of Senators willing to stop a potential filibuster of this measure and facilitating the disenfranchisement of poor, elderly, and low-income citizens.

For more information on this urgent work and how you can get invovled, contact Missourians for Fair Elections at mofairelections@gmail.com or 314-363-5571.