How unfortunate that in a year when millions of Americans and thousands of Missourians are taking such extraordinary steps to vote, Missourians are likely to throw away the right to vote.

Again.

For the third time, by our count.

Amendment One puts term limits on the Lieutenant Governor, State Auditor, Secretary of State and State Auditor.  Two terms and they never again can fill those offices no matter how well they have done their jobs, no matter how many people want to vote for a third term for them.

Missourians are likely to throw away their right to decide if these people should be in office longer than eight years.

Missourians threw away their right to vote for a fifth term or more for their state representative or a third term for their state senator about thirty years ago.   Many years later, Missourians threw away their right to decide whether their city ever could levy an earnings tax. The same amendment required St. Louis and Kansas City to get voter approval of earning taxes every five years. But a not-well publicized additional provision means local voters can never decide an important local issue.

Now here we are with Amendment one.

In an election cycle that will be remembered for, among other things, the intentional promotion of distrust in and confusion about our election system, when tens of millions of people are determined to vote despite a pandemic and the generated chaos in the system, citizens of this state are being asked to approve a third constitutional amendment taking away a voting right.

Past results indicate they’ll do it.  And then they will hypocritically prove they don’t really believe in what they are approving.

Prove it, you say? Easily. The term limits do not affect the listed statewide officers until the next time they come up for election. If State Auditor Nicole Galloway remains the State Auditor after this year’s governor’s race is decided, she will have a chance to serve two MORE terms as Auditor.  Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who could be elected to a second term this year would be eligible for election to two MORE terms—giving him four terms in office. Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe and Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who are serving out unfinished terms of Mike Parson and Josh Hawley could be elected to full terms this time and be eligible to run for two MORE terms, if they want to do so.

We saw this happen with legislators when the original term limits were enacted.  Those lawmakers elected that year were eligible to four MORE terms in the House no matter how many they already had served and those elected to another four-year term in the Senate were eligible to run for two MORE four-year terms.

And their constituents did vote for them for those additional terms after saying eight years was a limit for their service.

It is a fact proven by experience that voters are more likely than not to support an incumbent time after time after time if they have the chance—-despite saying they want term limits.

Term limits paints with a size 30 brush when voters would be better served with a size four brush. It misses the target it should have.  The biggest danger of unlimited terms is not in positions of  service; it is in  positions of power.  Controlling government power is one thing.  Limiting the opportunity of trusted and responsible office-holders to continue providing service is another.

It is appropriate that Missouri has term limits for the Governor and the State Treasurer—although making them nuclear limits as they are (never again serving in those offices after, for example, waiting four years before trying to come back) can be and has been questioned—because these two officers have executive and financial powers that set them apart from the other statewide officials whose roles are more management-oriented.

In an extended age of loud voices that undermine trust in public institutions of all sorts and the easy acceptance of paranoid conspiracy fictions, we are willing to sell out, again, one of the great gifts our founders gave us—the right and the opportunity to decide who deserves to stay in office.

Our founding fathers gave us a system that can work if we are responsible enough as citizens to make it work.  If the national polls are correct, we might find out in a few days that voters decided Donald Trump’s term limit is one, a proof that the system can work if we are responsible enough to protect that system and use it.

Your pessimistic observer knows that his voice is unlikely to influence a wide audience on Amendment One and it probably is too late in the process for it to make any difference.  But giving away our right to vote, one increment at a time, is not something that should never happen quietly—or ever happen again.