Missouri Judge Rewrites GOP-Crafted Abortion Ballot Language

The Missouri secretary of state must change his voter-guide statement for an abortion rights measure on the November ballot, a state judge said Thursday in a decision siding with the campaign behind the amendment.

The language written by Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft didn’t meet the state’s requirement that language posted at polling sites next to sample ballots be “true and impartial statements of the effect of a vote for and against the measure,” Judge Cotton Walker of the Missouri Circuit Court, Cole County, wrote in his decision. Ashcroft had said in his description that a “yes” vote ...