Missouri becomes the ninth state in 2025 to prohibit foreign spending in ballot measure campaigns

By

Ballotpedia staff

Welcome to the Friday, July 11, Brew. 

By: Briana Ryan

Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

  1. Missouri becomes the ninth state in 2025 to prohibit foreign spending in ballot measure campaigns
  2. Building a sustainable path to complete coverage of every election in the country, by Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia Founder and CEO
  3. Two indirect initiatives to appear on ballot in Maine, one more legislative referral in Arizona

Missouri becomes the ninth state in 2025 to prohibit foreign spending in ballot measure campaigns

On July 9, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) signed SB 152, prohibiting the foreign funding of ballot measure campaigns. This move makes Missouri the 19th state to prohibit foreign nationals or governments from contributing to ballot measure committees, and the ninth state this year. That’s the most states that have enacted such a law in a single year.

California passed the first such ban in 1997. Before Kehoe signed SB 152, Louisiana was the most recent state to pass such a law when Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed HB 693 on June 20. Looking at the trifecta status of the 19 states at the time of their bans, 11 had Republican trifectas, six had divided governments, and two had Democratic trifectas. Of the nine states that have enacted bans this year, seven had Republican trifectas, and two had divided governments.

Campaign finance rules for ballot measures differ from those for candidates. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that spending on ballot measure campaigns is similar to issue advocacy in lawmaking. In 2012, the Court affirmed that foreign nationals were prohibited from contributing to candidates under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). However, FECA “does not bar foreign nationals from issue advocacy,” which includes ballot measure campaigns. Following the Court’s orders, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has held that ballot measure campaigns are not regulated under FECA. According to the FEC, since ballot measure campaigns are similar to issue advocacy, foreign individuals, corporations, and governments can contribute.

SB 152 prohibits any ballot measure committee from using funds from foreign nationals for campaign activities. It also requires these committees to refuse any contributions or in-kind support from foreign nationals and individuals or entities that have received contributions from foreign nationals. Donors who contribute more than $2,000 must certify that they are not foreign nationals and have not received contributions from foreign nationals of more than $10,000 in four years.

The Missouri Senate passed the bill 28-2 on March 27, and the Missouri House of Representatives passed it 94-47 on May 15. Six state Senate Democrats joined 116 Republicans across both chambers in supporting the bill. All votes opposing it were from Democrats.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Ezra Bitterman wrote, “The policy comes as the Sixteen Thirty Fund backed by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss invested millions of dollars into ballot measures last year. The fund contributed $4.6 million to the campaign to pass Amendment 3 which enshrined abortion rights in the Missouri Constitution. It also spent millions on a successful measure to raise the minimum wage.”

Voters approved Amendment 3, establishing a state constitutional right to reproductive freedom, 52% to 48%. The campaigns supporting the amendment raised $31.4 million, while the opposing campaigns raised $1.9 million. The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $4.59 million in support of the amendment.

Voters approved Proposition A, increasing the minimum wage in the state, 58% to 42%. The campaigns supporting the amendment raised $6.4 million, while no campaigns registered to oppose the measure. The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $3.5 million in support of the measure.

Missouri’s SB 152 is one of at least 64 bills that have passed in 48 states this year concerning ballot measures, initiatives, veto referendums, referrals, local ballot measures, and recall elections.

Click here to read more about laws governing foreign spending in ballot measure campaigns.

Building a sustainable path to complete coverage of every election in the country

In an earlier column, I wrote about how Ballotpedia’s work is like mountain climbing. We know what our goal is — to climb that peak in the distance, where every voter has the facts about the candidates and issues on their ballot.

But as the peak baggers among Brew readers know, there’s an adage attributed to the legendary Ed Viesturs that puts summiting mountains into perspective:

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”

In an interview with PBS Nova several years ago, Viesturs expanded on this idea, saying that getting down a mountain is arduous and that many accidents happen on descents because climbers “have used all their energy just to get to the top.”

Viesturs would halt an ascent and head back down if any of the clients he was guiding on an ascent showed signs of exhaustion. The reason, he said, is that “it is more important for us to get them home than to get them to the summit.”

In other words, health and safety are infinitely more important than ambition. 

I’ve thought a lot about how these words apply to Ballotpedia’s goal of providing comprehensive coverage for every election in the country by 2034.

That’s an ambitious goal because it means we’ll be providing voters with information on elections for nearly 520,000 offices — the vast majority of which are local offices like school boards and city councils.

It was also an ambitious goal we could have reached in 2024. But it would have required such an enormous investment in personnel, resources, and time that we would have reached our metaphorical summit thoroughly and completely exhausted as an organization. 

We wouldn’t have had anything left to get down from that peak — never mind having the resources to do it all over again for the 2026 midterms, the 2028 presidential elections, and every election at the state and local level in between.

Rather than let ambition win, we chose sustainability — a word we increasingly use in our discussions with supporters and others who’ve invested in our mission.

In Ballotpedia’s case, sustainability means we have the resources on hand — including staff (both professional and volunteer), technology, and financial — to fully cover every election in the country.

Sustainable also means we have established, tested, and refined systems that enable those three resources to work together as efficiently as possible.

All of this works against the backdrop of our values of being humble in the face of our responsibility to deliver the accurate, trustworthy information people need, hungry to find new and better ways to do that, and smart about how we do all of it.

The smart, sustainable way to get to our goal of complete coverage of every election in the country is (to borrow another climbing term) to acclimate ourselves before pressing on.

That’s why this year, we’re covering every election in 26 states — plus the nation’s 200 biggest school districts, the 100 most populous cities, and every state capital — as well as special elections and ballot measures (local and statewide).

That translates into a significant amount of election coverage.

Our local elections editor recently pointed out to our team that we’ve covered at least one election every week so far this year. Our last week without an election to report on was Dec. 23, 2024. According to the election calendar, that streak won’t end until Sept. 16. 

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve covered more than 22,000 local races and 41,641 local candidates. We’re already ahead of the record pace we set in 2024, when we covered 37,000 local races and more than 44,000 local candidates in the entire year.

That’s what sustainability looks like: continual progress alongside constant improvement. But with an overarching understanding that we won’t push on to the summit unless and until we are confident we can get there and back, year after year.

Two indirect initiatives to appear on ballot in Maine, one more legislative referral in Arizona

As of July 8, the number of certified statewide ballot measures for both 2025 and 2026 is trending above average compared to previous election cycles.

Twenty-nine measures have been certified for the 2025 ballot in Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Voters have already decided on six measures, while the other 23 are scheduled for elections on Nov. 4.

Over the past two weeks, two indirect citizen initiatives qualified for the ballot in Maine:

Fifty-five measures have been certified for the 2026 ballot in 28 states. Over the past two weeks, one measure has been certified in one state:

The next and final signature deadline for initiatives intended for the Nov. 4, 2025, ballot is Aug. 4 in Colorado.
Click here for a deep dive into the measures certified for the 2026 ballot. You can also check out certifications for the 2025 ballot here.