Missouri voters celebrate and hold signs above their heads as Director of Missouri Jobs with Justice Voter Action, Caitlyn Adams, announces that Amendments 4 and 5 were rejected during the opponent’s watch party at The Combine on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026.
Every county in Missouri rejected Gov. Mike Kehoe and Republican lawmakers’ plans to reshape the state’s tax structure and constitutional amendment process, handing GOP leaders overwhelming defeats on two of their signature ballot measures.
Amendment 4, which would have changed Missouri’s constitutional amendment procedures, and Amendment 5, which would have eliminated the state’s income tax, were rejected at the polls Tuesday.
Both measures received less than 20% of the vote.
In many counties that reliably support Republican candidates, voters firmly rejected the proposals. In Shannon County, where President Donald Trump won 84% of the vote in 2024, 83% of voters rejected Amendment 4 and 92% voted against Amendment 5.
Grundy County, where Trump won 80% of the vote, rejected the amendments by similarly wide margins.
David Kimball, chair of the political science department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the Missouri GOP leaders who backed the amendments will want to “turn the page as fast as they can on both of these issues.”
“Both Amendment Four and Amendment Five were incredibly unpopular,” Kimball said. “To lose every county, you’re basically uniting Democrats and Republicans against them. And given it was a Republican legislature and governor that put these on the ballot in the first place, that’s kind of surprising.”
How Amendment 4 fared
In Jackson County, Amendment 4 was struck down by nearly 86% of voters, with 124,970 votes against the proposal, according to unofficial results from both the Jackson County and Kansas City election boards. Only 14.3% of the county’s voters chose yes for the change, with 20,803 votes for the measure.
Amendment 4 would have imposed new requirements on Missouri’s initiative petition process, changes that opponents argued would make future constitutional amendments practically impossible to pass.
In a statement, Kehoe defended the measure as a “common sense solution centered on transparency, integrity, and protecting our state’s Constitution.”
“Unfortunately, special interests succeeded in keeping our Constitution vulnerable with the defeat of Amendment 4,” Kehoe said. “I will continue working to fight for election integrity, transparency, and a system that does not allow our Constitution to be up for sale.”
The rejection pattern that emerged across the state was also seen in the Kansas City metro area. Clay County voters rejected the amendment, with 82.1% of the vote, or 48,330 votes, while 17.4%, or 10,517 votes, supported Amendment 4.
Platte County voters also decisively struck down Amendment 4, with 80.4%, or 22,129 votes, rejecting the proposal. Another 5,387 votes, or 19.6%, supported it.
Amendment 4 received its strongest support in the Kansas City area in Cass County, where 23.8% of voters supported the change. Still, the 5,914 votes were not enough to overcome the 76.2%, or 18,976 votes, who wanted to keep the current system.
Even in rural Shelby County, where Amendment 4 received its strongest support statewide, it still failed. The proposal received 660 yes votes, or 41%, to 945 no votes, or 59%, in the county, which Trump carried by 66 points in 2024.
Amendment 5’s demise
Missouri voters, including across Kansas City, rejected Amendment 5, which would have replaced Missouri’s income tax with expanded sales and use taxes.
Missouri collects nearly $9 billion in income taxes each year. Eliminating the tax would have depleted the state budget and required increases in other taxes, decreases in government services or both.
Jackson County led Kansas City-area counties with 124,369 no votes. More than 83% of voters rejected the proposal to eliminate the state’s income tax. Only 21,215 people voted yes. In Kansas City alone, nearly 90% of voters said no to the amendment.
While Amendment 5 was fiercely debated by political figures in both parties, including with millions of dollars in advertising, voters across the state firmly rejected the measure.
Three Kansas City-area counties — Platte, Clay and Cass counties — that voted for Trump in 2024 rejected the proposal championed by state GOP officials. That mirrored a trend across the state, where voters who reliably support Republican candidates rejected one of their primary agenda items.
Voters in Cass County, where Trump won by more than 30 percentage points in 2024, rejected the measure with 78.1% voting no. That was 19,433 no votes to only 5,437 yes votes.
In Clay County, 81.8% of voters said no to the amendment, for 48,112 votes. Only 10,686 voted yes. In Platte County, nearly 80%, or 21,923 people, voted no. Only 5,593 voted yes.
Despite Kansas City’s strong opposition to the measure, some rural counties across the state voted even more strongly against it. In Benton County, where Trump won by 59 points in 2024, 627 voters supported Amendment 5 while 4,488 rejected it.
The results underscored a statewide consensus, with Democratic strongholds and many of Missouri’s most Republican counties alike rejecting both proposals.
Kimball said the disparity between the candidates and policies Missouri voters have supported at the polls could be because many of the issues are not top of mind for voters when selecting candidates.
“I think what’s different about Amendments 4 and 5 yesterday is the extreme or radical nature of both of those proposals,” he said. “I think voters are used to Republican politicians cutting taxes, lowering tax rates. At least in Missouri, I don’t think they’re used to Republicans eliminating the income tax entirely. And they’re certainly not used to Republicans essentially eliminating the simple majority rule for ballot measures.”
Loading…
Related Stories from Kansas City Star
Ben Wheeler
The Kansas City Star
Ben Wheeler is the Law Enforcement Watchdog Reporter for The Star. He joined The Star after spending the last five years of his career in Memphis, Tennessee where he worked as an investigative reporter focused on law enforcement accountability reporting, covering everything from budgets to Tyre Nichols death at the hands of police officers and the subsequent Department of Justice pattern or practice investigation.
