COLUMBIA — The Missouri Secretary of State's office has thrown out nearly 17,000 pages of signatures collected by political campaign committee People Not Politicians Missouri for its effort to force a statewide vote on Missouri's new gerrymandered congressional map, according to court documents.
The number was listed in a document filed Monday in the docket of People Not Politicians' case against Secretary of State Denny Hoskins over the validity of signatures for the campaign committee's referendum petition.
The document, filed by People Not Politicians Director Richard von Glahn, said Hoskins' office provided von Glahn with the number of pages submitted to each county for signature verification and counting. Every page does not necessarily contain the same number of signatures.
The Secretary of State's office deemed 33,068 pages valid and sent them to local election authorities, according to court documents. The Secretary of State's office rejected 16,695 pages of signatures, and the secretary of state's director of elections told People Not Politicians that their office determined the validity of pages using the date of the signatures, according to the document.
Court documents said the Secretary of State's office is still reviewing signature pages.
People Not Politicians submitted more than 300,000 signatures to Hoskins to get the new congressional map on the state ballot. The group needed to gather a minimum number of signatures from six of eight of Missouri's congressional districts for a total that would add to more than 100,000.
Hoskins has said he would throw out around 90,000 signatures that People Not Politicians gathered before his office certified the referendum petition.
People Not Politicians has disputed this and argued that signatures gathered before the certification of a referendum petition are valid, citing a 2022 Missouri Supreme Court ruling. The document von Glahn filed Monday reaffirmed this argument.
A judge has heard arguments in the lawsuit but postponed a ruling until the Secretary of State's office either certifies or rejects enough signatures to determine whether or not People Not Politicians' referendum goes on the ballot.
A case review hearing for the lawsuit is set for 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Cole County Courthouse.
