At the request of President Donald Trump, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe called lawmakers for a special session last September to redraw congressional maps.
The choice was challenged in court as unconstitutional because it did not use new census data, breaking the norms long used by Missouri and many other states. The last map was drawn in 2022 following the 2020 census.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state. But the advocacy organization People Not Politicians (PNP) still wants to take the decision to the ballot.
Currently, PNP has collected more than 300,000 signatures to put the redistricted map to a vote in November. But Secretary of State Denny Hoskins says a third of them are invalid because they were collected too early. PNP is currently suing Hoskins over his decision.
According to PNP Executive Director Richard von Glahn, the campaign is likely to exceed the number of signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot. For him, the lawsuit over 100,000 signatures is about asserting citizen’s power over referendums.
“Every signature on these pages is an act of a Missourian exercising the most American tradition, which is petitioning your government for redress,” von Glahn said. “This gets back to American Revolutionary War values about what it means to be an American that you have the right to petition your government for redress of a wrong, and that is what all of these signatures on all of these pages are.”
Cole County judge Chris Limbaugh postponed arguments on the case until April 7 — about a week after a March 31 filing deadline. Von Glahn believes this is an attempt by Republicans to slow down this process.
“They're both slow walking the resolution of the legal questions, and then saying, ‘Well, but once the resolutions come, it’ll be too late to do anything with (them),’” von Glahn said.
There are other questions about which map is currently in effect. One of PNP’s attorneys, Alix Cossette, said when the referendum petition was filed in December, the redistricted map was effectively blocked. That would mean midterm elections would use 2022’s map regardless of the referendum status.
“I think the law is very clear, in fact, that when you submit a referendum petition with signatures, that law that you're asking for the referendum on is suspended,” Cossette said.
Hoskins and other Republicans disagree. According to them, because the redistricted map was signed into law in last year's special legislative session, it is currently in force. This could mean that if the map is rejected by voters in November, Missourians would have Congress members based on the redistricted map for one term, then revert to the prior map for the 2028 cycle.
Candidates for congressional positions have until March 31 to file. The Missouri Attorney General's office did not respond to a request for comment.
