In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey sit down to discuss the “kerfuffle” that has been the mid-decade redistricting process in Missouri.
This process began last September — and even though the Missouri August primary is completed and absentee ballots for the November general election have already begun to go out — uncertainty still remains about which congressional maps Missouri local election administrators will use.
Note: At the time that this episode is being produced — 7:00 p.m. on September 23, 2026 — the decision on Missouri’s congressional map is once again in the hands of the United State Supreme Court.
To all of our listeners in Missouri, please check with your local election office for more information on your ballot.
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Brianna Lennon: So, it feels a little bit like that meme where there's all the stuff on the bulletin board and they're trying to follow the lines and, like, create this whole story out of a bunch of unrelated things. That's what redistricting has felt like for me because there's so many unrelated parts, but they all still kind of touch each other because there's been litigation specifically about the referendum petition, there's been litigation about whether redistricting could even happen, there's been litigation about how the Secretary of State's office has a role to play in the redistricting process, and then, there's been this new area of litigation, which is one particular map was used for our primary, and now a different one is going to be used for our November election.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Managing Producer Aaron Hay: In this episode, hosts Brianna Lennon and Eric Fey are going to try and break down the many twists and turns of the Missouri mid-decade redistricting process which has been ongoing since last fall.
Due to the many lawsuits involved in the process, things have been changing pretty frequently, and this episode is no different. Brianna and Eric sat down to record this episode on Monday, September 21 at 3:30 p.m. and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling while they were recording it, and that ruling could… again… change which map they use in the November election
Brianna Lennon: Welcome back to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. My name is Brianna Lennon. I am the County Clerk in Boone County, Missouri, and with me is my co-host —
Eric Fey: Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Brianna Lennon: And today we have a special explainer type episode because Missouri has been in the news pretty frequently, as we've been getting ready for the midterm elections about the redistricting process that we've been undergoing since almost a year at this point. Well, a little over a year because the special session was called in September of last year to call for a redistricting for our congressional map, and that process happened with our Missouri legislature in September of 2025, and became a little more complicated in December of 2025 when some folks filed a referendum petition with the Secretary of State's office.
So, we've been getting a lot of questions about what it's like to run elections in Missouri, specifically right now, and we wanted to dive into some of those most frequently asked questions, and also just give some background as to how we ended up here.
Eric Fey: Yeah, and adding to that, it's kind of a weird position to be in now in Missouri, to be in the headlines of election administration news, because we haven't been for so long. When I started — first election I worked was in 2004, when Missouri was a swing state, and during those elections in '04 and '08, you know, we had satellite trucks from all the major national news media out in our parking lot and everything waiting on returns, and now, it's kind of nice because on election night — there's the local media here, and that's about it. So, we've been flying under the radar for a while, and now we're a huge dot back on the radar screen because of this craziness around our mid-decade redistricting process. So, I guess we want to kind of walk through it step by step, kind of.
Brianna Lennon: Yeah, and, I think, I mean, the important thing to know is — obviously, if you're listening from another state that is also doing redistricting, we're very aware that this is part of a broader redistricting effort in different states. So, we know that we're not alone. I think the complicating factor for our situation is that we had this referendum petition that was filed, and that's what's led to a lot of the litigation and uncertainty that we've had going into the midterms.
Eric Fey: I was just going to say, and here as we sit the evening before absentee voting for civilian domestic voters is set to begin — we still don't know with 100% certainty which set of congressional districts will be the ones in this November midterm election.
Brianna Lennon: Eric, do you want to take us back to, like, September of last year and maybe even a little bit earlier than that to what we saw on the ground as local election officials.
Eric Fey: Yeah, we can go back in time, like Wayne's World.
Brianna Lennon: I don't even want to know which one that makes me and which one that makes you.
Eric Fey: Yeah, we'll leave that one there. Yeah, so back in 2025 — not even this year, over a year ago now, Governor Mike Kehoe, here in Missouri, called a special session of the Missouri General Assembly for the express purpose of mid-decade redistricting. That occurred in September of 2025, and I think it's important to note that the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities sent a letter to the governor and legislators, laying out some of the timeline concerns about congressional redistricting and when things would have to be decided and put into place, so we wouldn't run into any election administration hurdles. Needless to say, that letter went unheeded by those that received it.
Managing Producer Aaron Hey: Here is an excerpt from Mike Kehoe, Governor of the state of Missouri.
Excerpt from Governor Mike Kehoe’s Announcement: Missouri's conservative common sense values, rooted in faith, family, and freedom, should be truly represented at all levels of government — local, state, and federal — because representation isn't just about districts and lines on one map, and our Constitution shouldn't be the victim of out-of-state special interests who spend millions to deceive voters and pass out-of-touch policies. It's the responsibility of the state legislature to ensure that values of Missouri families and communities are represented in Washington D.C. and in our state.
In Missouri, Republicans hold over 90% of local county offices and have held every statewide seat. I have been reminded time and time again through both good times and bad times, Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our Missouri values across both sides of the aisle are closer to each other than those of the extreme left representation of New York, California, and even as close as Illinois.
That's why today, I'm calling for a special session on congressional redistricting and initiative petition reform to ensure our districts and constitution truly reflect Missouri values and put Missourians' priorities first. I appreciate President Donald Trump for raising the level of conversation on this matter because his leadership on this nationally underscores just how important this moment is for Missouri.
So, beginning Wednesday, September 3, the Missouri Legislature will reconvene in Jefferson City, and today, I'm prepared to show you what we believe that map looks like. This is the Missouri First map. This map was drawn here, made here, for here, by our team.
Eric Fey: So, that special legislative session went pretty quickly. It didn't last long. It was just it just days long, if my memory serves me correctly?
Brianna Lennon: Yeah, I think so.
Eric Fey: And the new maps were decided pretty quickly. So, Missouri has eight congressional districts. Currently, six are represented by Republicans, two by Democrats. And the new map would have changed, more than likely, the partisan makeup from six Republicans and two Democrats to seven Republicans and one Democrat. So, this whole kerfuffle, really, is over one congressional district on the western side of Missouri.
Once the special legislative session ended, and they adopted the new maps — almost immediately there was an effort to overturn those maps, or maybe more correctly to say, to utilize Missouri's referendum process, or what some folks refer to as “the citizens' veto.”
And Brianna, you're probably more learned in that than I am. It might be worth explaining what that is, since it doesn't exist in a number of states.
Brianna Lennon: Yeah. So, I think, maybe a little bit more than half of states, have some form of initiative petition process, and I think most folks are familiar enough with having to check petition pages and check signatures and things like that in a situation where somebody wants to put something on the ballot, and there's a group of citizens that want to create a change.
But in Missouri, we also have a referendum process where anything that is passed by the legislature, and, in this case, the referendum was on the actual bill that passed redistricting. So the special session created House Bill One because that is an act of the legislature and it's a House bill — it’s subject to a referendum.
So, what the voters need to do when they want to effectuate a referendum is they have to gather signatures to a certain percentage, and they need to submit those signatures to the Secretary of State's office with[in] a certain amount of time, and, in this case, they started collecting signatures for this process pretty immediately after the bill was passed, even before it was signed by the governor, and they collected over 300,000 signatures and submitted these to the Secretary of State's office.
The way that referendum and initiative petition timelines are built into Missouri's statutes, though, primarily rely on this concept that no one would be submitting an initiative petition or a referendum on something until about the spring. So, the deadline to submit any kind of petition, in statute, is the beginning of May, and so, all of the deadlines related to initiative petitions and referendums and signature checking hinge on that May date. So, the signatures themselves don't need to be fully checked by local election officials until the summer, and the Secretary of State's office doesn't need to make a final determination as to whether there are enough signatures and it could go on the ballot until the August primary. So, for most things, that doesn't make too big of a difference because there's not a lot of election-related referendums and initiative petitions that would impact the actual administration of the election, but for this, it made a huge difference because through the process of referendum there was a big open question about what we should do as local election administrators in effectuating the map that was passed by the legislature. Should we tie voters to it? Was it in effect? Was it paused because the referendum was filed? All of those were open questions that we were working through, kind of independently. Like, all of the counties really had to make their own choices about things, and I think, collectively, we all discussed these things at our conferences, but there was no real clear path about what we should be doing.
And, just from a practical standpoint, there was no congressional — there was no new congressional district in our statewide voter registration database. So, while all this conversation happened, and we were trying to get ready for our August primary — no voters were tied to their new districts, so we had this weird juxtaposition of people telling us that the new map was in effect, but then not actually being able to make the new map go into effect from any kind of, like, process standpoint of creating ballots. So it was a very weird time in the Spring. I don't know if you want to add to that?
Eric Fey: Yeah, I just want to back up a little bit from that, just to reemphasize the timeline for people. So, the special session happened in September of 2025. The group that initiated the referendum and collected signatures started almost immediately after that bill was signed into law, or even before. And they, I believe, submitted their signatures to the Secretary of State's office just before the end of the year in 2025.
So, the Secretary of State's office sent out all those petition signature pages to the local election authorities, basically at the beginning of the year. And while those signatures were being verified, the Secretary of State's office was posting on its website the number of signatures that were accepted and rejected, by county, across the whole state of Missouri.
Now, along with this, it's important to realize that candidate filing for the August primary election begins in late February of 2026 and goes through late March of 2026. It's a month long. I don't know, by memory, if there were enough signatures verified by February for the Secretary of State's office to make a decision as to what if the petition would have been sufficient — I'm not sure about that, but certainly by the time the certification deadline rolled around for the August primary election — which is in May — pretty much all the signatures had been checked with, you know, a couple stragglers out there.
So, I just want to frame that for everybody — signatures turned in, end of the year. The counties got the signatures, beginning of the year. They checked those signatures. Candidate filing happened before all the signatures were probably checked and verified. And then I forgot about this: the April municipal election. Missouri has municipal elections every April, every single year. And the way our statewide voter database works, the software is such that you can't make alterations to districts and precincts while there's an open, active election.
I'll stop there and let Brianna take it from there as to how the new map was ordered and put into effect because our hands were tied till very late in the game to actually effectuate that.
Brianna Lennon: Yeah, so taking us to the April election, I think is a good place to start because it was kind of a trip, anyway, I think, getting through the April election with most of our thoughts on “what's the next part of this process.”
So, once we were through the April election, we were hoping to get the ability, in our statewide voter registration system, to update all these records. Well, there was also this lawsuit that was ongoing about the impact of the referendum petition on whether the new map or the old map was in effect, and the Missouri Supreme Court, in May, made the decision that while the referendum petition being filed was not enough to put the map on pause — if the Secretary of State's office made the determination that there were enough signatures and that it should go on the November ballot, it would pause the map. But not only would it pause the map at that time, it would pause it retroactively back to December of 2025 when the referendum petition was filed.
So, what that meant was that if we moved forward with having an election on the new maps in 2026, in the August primary — we knew that if the Secretary of State were to say, "All right, the referendum has enough signatures; it's going on the ballot,” and, as Eric said — we all saw that there were enough signatures because they were posting them on their website — then we were effectively running an election on maps that did not exist. Because on August 4, on Election Day, we would be in the middle of running an election while potentially being told that those district lines were paused as of December 2025.
Which is a crazy place to be, to think about, like, that's the situation we ended up in for the August primary.
And, ultimately, as Eric said, the Secretary of State's office did not certify the petition based on a lack of signatures, they didn't certify the election based on a constitutional argument that they had, which they have lost that in court, as well. So, while we weren't in a situation where on Election Day the maps got paused, the maps did get paused a couple weeks later — through other court cases that were happening.
So, we went through as local election officials and did our due diligence and certified the results of the August primary, and then we were immediately thrust into a conversation about whether the results of that primary were legitimate, whether the winners of those races should be the winners for the November election — because while the winners themselves stayed the same, the districts that they represent changed.
And congressional district representatives don't need to have residency in their area, but it has, you know, created this open question for candidates to say, well, “I'm now campaigning in a completely different district than I did for the August primary. How is that fair?” So, all of that litigation is ongoing, too.
But we wanted to have this conversation now because absentee ballots are starting this week, and we needed to have a decision about what we should do with with the ballots and what we would be telling voters when it came time to vote, and we really didn't have an answer until last week — and even that was like 85% sure, 95% sure — we still have this this 8th Circuit opinion kind of hanging over our heads. The Supreme Court of the United States has handed down a stay of the new map, pending anything happening with the 8th Circuit, and then it coming back to the Supreme Court.
So, it is pretty unlikely that anything would change at this point, but the fact that it is open is concerning, as a local election official, where all you want is some closure and we're not able to get that right now.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Midbreak]
Eric Fey: You know, we're talking about this kind of in, from the frame of election administration, and it might seem a little strange to somebody listening — why wouldn't the Secretary of State just certify the petition back when he knew there were enough signatures, and/or why wouldn't the state Supreme Court, back in May of 2026, just mandate that that happen?
And so there was, as Brianna said, there was this Missouri state Supreme Court case in May of 2026 called the Maggard case, and that was part of the question swirling around that decision, you know, does the Secretary of State, does he have to certify this referendum petition and put it on the November ballot now, before we get into the primary election? And the state Supreme Court said essentially, “No, the Secretary of State doesn't have to certify it now. The statutory deadline is August 4.”
Excerpt from Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins press conference: I know there's been a lot of questions and a lot of misinformation been going around since the Supreme Court's decision this past Tuesday. But what I have highlighted to the clerks is, “Hey, we have an attorney general's opinion that the new map is in effect, the Missouri First map. Based on my direction as the chief election officer in the state of Missouri, we've also said the new map is in effect, and we have the Supreme Court decision, unanimous Supreme Court decision, that said that the map is in effect.
So, I know that one county clerk has said that she is not going to institute the new map, but that would be defying guidance from the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, as well as the chief election officer here in the state of Missouri.
So, this is a process. The redistricting is a process. That process and procedures started a long time ago when the map was actually first passed by the legislature, as well as Governor Kehoe, last September. It's a process. I know many of the county clerks have started that process, and we're going to continue that process. But there's checks and balances, as well. And I'm going to be working and furthering that process, obviously, so the clerks can get in and make those changes starting this week.
Eric Fey: And the Secretary of State, I think, decided to engage in this game of chicken with the state Supreme Court, and said, very publicly, he was taking using the full statutory timeline that the law allows him to utilize to go through the signature verification process, and I can only assume — but, you know, assuming things can get you in trouble sometimes — but, I can only assume that the Secretary of State's office and the Missouri Attorney General's office, that they assumed there would be no way to implement or go back to the old map if we used the new map for the August primary election.
And now, we're in this very bizarre circumstance, where at least, as of today, where we sit this evening, we're going to start voting tomorrow with a map different from what we used in the primary.
Brianna Lennon: Yeah. So, and real quickly, I will also say I think the great irony of this is, from an election administration standpoint, this was probably the simplest redistricting that we've had to go through when it comes to changing maps because, in order for us to run elections on the new map, they had to create a new definition called “2025 congressional districts,” which we then all across the state tied to their appropriate precincts and splits and addresses, so that we could run elections on them. So, that made both of them available in the statewide voter registration system, and we simply had to toggle between the two. So, from the practical standpoint of — which one are we going to use — there was no lag in time, there was no additional work that had to be done — we had done all of that work in May, and we simply had to choose one or the other.
Eric Fey: There, there were some counties that seriously considered, for the August primary election, putting both sets of congressional districts on the ballot. So, you know, administratively, at least, that that even could have been done. Just to add to Brianna's point, that all the information was there for both sets of districts.
Brianna Lennon: Yeah, absolutely. There was a lot of litigation, and there were opinions coming down from the courts as we were getting ready for the November election — near the end of August and the beginning of September.
So, there was a series of cases in the Missouri Supreme Court about whether it was constitutional to hold a referendum on the congressional districts at all, and then there were separate cases about another initiative petition that had been submitted, and the Secretary of State's office had, for similar reasons, said that it could not be on the ballot.
So, the Missouri Supreme Court came back and said, in the beginning of September, basically, “We told you this was going to happen in May. You went ahead and did it anyway, and now you have to go back and use the old maps.”
And, in Missouri, we have an eight-week deadline, under state law , or making a change to the ballot. So, the Missouri Supreme Court decision — the Secretary of State's office tried to appeal that directly to the Supreme Court of the United States, and on that eight-week deadline day, the Supreme Court of the United States came down in the afternoon and said — I think it was 3:30 or 4 o'clock on the day of that deadline — and said, “No, we're not going to take the case. The Supreme Court of Missouri's case stands. You have to use the old maps.”
And then, like immediately after that, within, you know, 45 minutes or so — there had been a separate lawsuit that we had kind of been keeping track of, but it was filed in federal court. It was by the candidates that were in the August primary that were suing the state to try to maintain the new districts for the November election, and so, as we were getting that final dispensation from the Supreme Court of the United States and expecting to use the 2022 maps, this district court and federal court says that we can't use the old maps, that we have to use the new maps because of federal law in the in the U.S. Constitution.
So, then we had this conflict, and from the perspective of the Secretary of State's office — right after the Missouri Supreme Court decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States, the Secretary of State's office sent guidance to the local election officials that said, "Okay, we're going to use the ‘22 maps. We're going to put everything in the statewide voter registration database for you, tied to those maps. Go ahead and do it.”
Then an hour and a half later, after the district court had issued their injunction, [they] turned around and said, "Nevermind, we're deleting everything from the ‘22 maps. We're going to do them in the 2025 new district boundaries. Use those.”
Well, as that guidance was issued, the Supreme Court of Missouri was made aware that the Secretary of State's office had directed local election officials to use the new map, which was a direct contradiction to the Missouri Supreme Court's opinion. So, there was then a motion made to hold the Secretary of State in contempt for basically trying to subvert the Supreme Court of Missouri, and that was, as Eric said earlier, pretty unprecedented. I don't know what's ever happened before.
But, since that time, even though we have — this was all a week and a half ago — since that time, the 8th Circuit has been sitting on the appeal of that original federal district decision, because the merits of the case have not played out yet, and once the 8th Circuit makes that determination, the Supreme Court of the United States will have another chance to go through and decide to uphold what the 8th Circuit says or to kind of stop the entire process and allow the old maps to be used.
So, that's where we are right now. We're waiting to see what happens.
Eric Fey: Yeah. There there were a couple very exciting days — for lack of a better term — for election administrators in Missouri, and one was, as Brianna said, when we got two competing court decisions within an hour of each other, and two emails from the Secretary of State's office changing guidance within that hour, as well. That was nuts. It's been a ride that is not completely over yet, it doesn't look like.
Brianna Lennon: Yeah, and I think, I mean, my frustration, in addition to it delaying our ability to create ballots and all of the downstream effects from that, is that this was all avoidable. This was all a completely avoidable situation. And, as people have reached out to me to ask about our reactions to things, it's hard not to say, you know, “Well, we all saw this coming, and we did our best to try to raise the concerns to the people that were making decisions about this process, and it just didn't matter.”
I mean, I think it's probably preaching to the choir to say — we don't have very much interest in which map gets used, just that somebody instructs us which map to use.
So, I think it's hard when you're dealing with such a politically charged environment and a politically charged situation, for local election officials to get caught in the middle — it's hard not to be frustrated, but, hopefully, this becomes a learning experience, and it certainly sets some court precedent that lawyers will have to take notice of when they are either advising their clients at the state level or the local level, or people that are trying to get ballot measures put on the ballot or removed.
So, I think it will have a long-lasting impact, whether it's on the behavior of the Secretary of State's office or whether it's on, you know, litigation in general.
Managing Producer Aaron Hay: At the time that this episode is being produced — 7:00 p.m. on September 23, 2026 — the decision on Missouri’s congressional map is once again in the hands of the United State Supreme Court.
To all of our listeners in Missouri, please check with your local election office for more information on your ballot.
Eric Fey: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I'm your host, Eric Fey alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
