The effort by Missouri's Republican-led Legislature to overhaul the process for changing the state constitution has nothing to do with non-citizens voting. But some voters are likely to think otherwise since the very first question in a proposed ballot referendum asks voters whether only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote — even though this is already the law.

Beware: The confusion is intentional.

This is a brazen attempt to lull voters into approving the measure without understanding the real purpose, which is to make it harder to change the state constitution via ballot referendums in the future. This is how GOP lawmakers plan to prevent Missourians from using the referendum process to roll back the draconian state abortion ban that went into effect last year. Democracy apparently is too frightening for them to bear.

Currently, ballot referendums seeking to amend the state constitution need a simple majority of those voting to pass. With the growing gap between the priorities of Missouri's increasingly radical Republican rulers and their constituents, that process has been used several times recently to do what lawmakers refused to, including expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana.

With polls showing that Missourians (like Americans generally) support some level of abortion rights, Missouri's almost total ban at all stages of pregnancy likely wouldn't survive a statewide up-or-down vote. Pro-choice advocates are already gearing up for just such a ballot effort.

So the Legislature's Republicans aren't taking any chances. As the Post-Dispatch's Jack Suntrup reports, the measure passed by the state Senate last week would raise the bar for approving a constitutional amendment to 57% of the vote statewide. Alternatively, it would allow passage with 50% of the vote if there is also majority passage in at least five of the state's eight congressional districts — a caveat clearly designed to dilute the influence of Democratic voters, who are largely concentrated in the districts that encompass St. Louis and Kansas City.

As if that's not cynical enough, there's the ballot language itself, written into the legislative proposal. Before any mention of making it more difficult to approve constitutional amendments, it would ask whether the constitution should be amended to allow "only U.S. citizens to vote on initiatives." Which is already the law.

Critics call it "ballot candy," designed to draw "yes" votes with the false and distracting suggestion that non-citizens are currently allowed to vote in Missouri. The measure's supporters can't even explain why it's on there. "I couldn't tell you," House Speaker Dean Plocher told the Missouri Independent in February.

By Republicans' logic, why not just top-load the ballot language with odes to apple pie and baseball? It wouldn't be any more irrelevant than this random non sequitur about citizenship. The fact that this referendum sleight of hand is specifically designed to fool voters should infuriate them.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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