Just how badly would Missouri’s Amendment 4 have failed if Gov. Mike Kehoe had left the initiative on the ballot for November instead of moving it to August? That’s about the only question left after a mammoth beatdown of a measure designed to minimize the power of the voters in this deep-red state.

Amendment 4 emerged from Republicans’ anger at the temerity of their citizens to display independent streaks rather than down-the-line conservatism. Beginning in 2020, voters unleashed a successful series of ballot initiatives legalizing abortion, approving recreational cannabis, expanding Medicaid, raising the minimum wage, and enabling sports betting. Voters also approved a paid sick leave mandate: one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

Lawmakers managed to dispense with the last one: Since the measure was a state statute and not a constitutional amendment, legislators passed a law to repeal it. But the rest of these rapid-fire victories added up to a massive assault on ultraconservative orthodoxies in the Show-Me State.

Bent on invalidating voters’ prerogatives, the legislature introduced Amendment 4 to change the voting process for ballot measures. Instead of a statewide majority, statewide constitutional amendments would have to secure a majority vote in each of the state’s eight congressional districts. Voters recognized that one district could block the rest of the state. Or, as one Facebook poster explained it, “If 4 people want ice cream and the 5th person doesn’t, then nobody gets ice cream.”

But Republicans also opened a back door to Amendment 4—for themselves. Constitutional amendments proposed by state legislators would still only need a statewide majority vote. One of the flimsier premises behind this line of thinking was that since voters chose their elected representatives, they’d already participated in the initiative process, another sterling example of “fine for thee but not for me” reasoning.