Wrench in the works

A new lawsuit aims to stop people in Missouri from voting on sports betting legalization on November 5.

claims that Secretary of State John Ashcroft shouldn’t have approved the petition

The complaint, filed on Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Cole County, claims that Secretary of State John Ashcroft shouldn’t have approved the petition from the “Winning for Missouri Education” group to get the measure onto the ballot, as the campaign failed to reach the necessary signature target in enough districts in the state, despite passing the overall signature goal.

If the judge sides with the plaintiffs, the sports betting question won’t be on the ballot in November.

Possible calculation error

The campaign gathered over 340,000 signatures before the May 5 deadline, which more than doubled the overall requirement, and it has support from all the professional sports teams in the state. Leading sportsbook operators also back the initiative, with DraftKings recently donating an additional $3.5m to help promote the proposal ahead of the vote, bringing its total contribution to nearly $6m.

Political consultants Blake Lawrence and Jacqueline Wood, the plaintiffs in the complaint, allege that the campaigners failed to collect enough signatures in the First and Fifth Congressional Districts in Missouri. They say that the Secretary of State’s math was wrong due to the use of old congressional district lines from before their redrawing in 2020 and that some of the signatures were, in fact, not valid.

Opposing opinions

The petition needed a certain number of valid signatures in at least six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts to make it onto the ballot.

surplus in the first district was just 82 valid signatures

The campaign confirmed it didn’t get signatures from at least 8% of the valid voters from the most recent gubernatorial election in the sixth and eighth districts, with the lawsuit claiming they also didn’t reach the target in the first and fifth districts. The official surplus in the first district was just 82 signatures and 1,064 in the fifth district.

Numerous stakeholders have criticized the complaint. One of those is St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III, who said the lawsuit is “completely without merit.” The “Winning for Missouri Education” campaign also submitted a motion to intervene on Thursday.