Hundreds of Kansas City residents could get 2 votes in Congress because of redistricting error

Updated September 17, 2025 at 8:38 PM CDT

It took Missouri Republicans in the state legislature a little more than one week to pass new Congressional maps that carve up the Kansas City area.

In their efforts to give the GOP a leg up ahead of next year's midterms, Gov. Mike Kehoe and state lawmakers may have overlooked something: House Bill 1 appears to include the same Kansas City precinct in two Congressional districts.

The newly drawn maps that legislators passed last Friday, and that now await final approval from Kehoe, contain an area of about 875 Kansas City voters who seemingly would have two Congressional representatives, according to reporting from St. Louis Magazine.

The unexplained error would also appear to allow those voters to cast two ballots for Congressional representation.

The redistricting process creates what are called "voting tabulation districts," then determines which Congressional district they reside in. This particular voting tabulation district, KC 811, is in southeast Kansas City.

It appears to stretch from East 70th Street south to East 75th Street, and Holmes Street east to Troost Avenue. KC 811 also includes a triangular island to the northwest, bound by Rockhill Road, East 69th Street and Oak Street. If so, it would make the voters of KC 811 part of the new 4th and 5th congressional districts.

Kehoe's office said there are two separate and distinct 811s in Kansas City, and that the same name was assigned to two different tabulation district by the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Any suggestion that someone could vote in two congressional districts is false," Kehoe communications director Gabby Picard said in an email. "Governor Kehoe directed his staff, which includes members with extensive knowledge and experience in the redistricting and map drawing process, to create the Missouri First Map. The map meets the Constitutional requirements of population equality and contiguousness."

Mark Gaber / X

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Troost Avenue, a historic racial and economic dividing line in Kansas City, borders the two districts. Under the new map, majority Black neighborhoods east of Troost would be subsumed into the new 5th District that stretches all the way to rural middle Missouri. The new 4th District includes all of Kansas City west of Troost Avenue to the Kansas state line, and 150 miles south to Dade County.

The ACLU sued Missouri last Friday over the new maps and the redistricting process, arguing they are both unconstitutional. The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal group that advocates for fair redistricting, is also part of the suit.

"Either they double-assigned one precinct, or there is one precinct that has noncontiguous parts to it — where it has a main part and a separated part — or it means there's two precincts that have the same name," Mark Gaber, the center's senior director for redistricting, told St. Louis Public Radio on Monday. "You can't tell from the text of the law which geography for this set of about 800 people goes to which district."

"This doesn't happen very often," Gaber said. "And the reason it doesn't is because usually states don't pass their map in a week and a half's time — they have some amount of, you know, public viewing of it, vetting, to make sure errors like this don't happen."

Kehoe's communications director called the lawsuit "dark money-funded," and said its claims were false.

State lawmakers passed the maps without any changes, even though the borders of Congressional districts are often hotly contested. It satisfies the wishes of President Donald Trump, who called on social media for Missouri Republicans to pass the maps "as is."

Though Republican state Sen. Joe Nicola voted in favor of the new maps, even he complained his power as a state senator felt diminished in the process.

"I don't appreciate being handed one map or one piece of legislation without the ability to be able to make changes on it in a special session like this, because that's what I was elected to do," Nicola told St. Louis Public Radio. "When I don't have my voice, then 185,000 people I represent also lose their voice. And that's extremely irritating to me."

Kehoe has not signed the new maps into law yet, though he has indicated that he will. Kehoe has 45 days after the maps were approved by the state legislature to sign them into law, putting the deadline at the last week in October.

Missouri Senate Democrats questioned the discrepancy on X on Wednesday, asking, "Did the GOP mess up their own map?"

"Senators were told to get in line and not ask questions," the post reads. "No one received the mapping software file. Nobody would say who 'drew' the map."

States normally redraw their Congressional districts every 10 years, in line with the U.S. Census' decennial report. President Donald Trump ignited a nationwide redistricting battle in July, as he seeks to maintain a Republican majority in Congress following next year's midterm elections.

Missouri Republicans followed suit. They hope the new maps will give the state one more Republican representative, and redraw current Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver out of his 5th District seat.

"We can sit here and give all the political theater that we want. The question is: Are we actually representing the constituency of Missouri with our congressional delegation?" asked Republican State Sen. Rick Brattin, who represents the Kansas City suburbs, during the special session. "A seven-to-one map does that."

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