Rocheport Is a Boone Electric Member — Here’s What’s on the Ballot Sept. 10

If your power bill says Boone Electric Cooperative, you’ve got a vote coming up this week — and it’s worth five minutes of your time.

Boone Electric serves all of Rocheport, along with Harrisburg and parts of five other counties (Boone, Randolph, Audrain, Callaway, Howard) — more than 35,000 meters across over 3,100 miles of line. At the co-op’s annual meeting Thursday, Sept. 10, members will vote on four bylaw amendments, including Amendment 3, a change to how someone can run for the board of directors by petition instead of through the nominating committee.

According to the Columbia Missourian and the co-op’s published amendment text, the petition amendment would do three things: move the deadline for naming the nominating committee from 120 to 150 days before the meeting (and the posting of its slate from 90 to 120 days), shorten the window for a petition candidate to gather signatures to 30 days, and — the big one — raise the number of member signatures a petition candidate needs from 0.25% of membership to a full 1%. With roughly 28,000 members, that’s the difference between needing about 70 signatures and needing about 280.

Laura Baker, Boone Electric’s manager of member services, told the Missourian the co-op’s board sees it as a simple matter of scale: “Because it’s been that way for so long and our membership has gotten to be so much more, our board thinks it’s better to have more signatures (from co-op members) if you’re running by petition.”

Not everyone agrees. State Rep. Gregg Bush, D-Columbia, called the change “anti-democratic”: “A cooperative is to serve the members of the cooperative, right? I can’t get behind increasing barriers for people to be involved.” Renew Missouri, a statewide utility watchdog nonprofit, is also urging members to vote no.

Here’s the practical part: drive-through voting runs 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Boone Electric headquarters, 1413 Rangeline Road in Columbia, and the business meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. Every voting member gets a $20 credit on their utility bill just for showing up — so however you feel about Amendment 3, there’s no reason to skip it.

A co-op board sets the rules for who gets to run for its own board, which is exactly the kind of quiet, structural vote that’s easy to miss and hard to undo once it passes. If you’re a Boone Electric member, Thursday’s the day to weigh in.

Correction, Sept. 25, 2026: An earlier version of this story misnumbered the petition measure (it was Amendment 3 of four), gave incorrect voting hours and headquarters address, and misstated the nominating-committee deadlines. The story has been updated.