Missouri’s top election official has rejected a citizens’ petition seeking a statewide referendum on the states redistricting plan backed by Donald Trump.
Supporters of the referendum had submitted hundreds of thousands of petition signatures in a bid to force a November election on a new US House map approved by the Republican-led state legislature. But the Republican secretary of state, Denny Hoskins, asserted Tuesday that the petition is void because congressional redistricting plans cannot be subject to voter referendums.
The number of petition signatures submitted doesn’t matter, Hoskins said, because “challenging a congressional map is unconstitutional under Missouri law”.
A group backing the referendum effort said it will contest Hoskins’ decision in court.
“Secretary of State Hoskins is making a last desperate attempt to silence the people’s voice in Missouri,” Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in a statement, while asserting there are more than enough signatures to qualify the referendum for the ballot.
Missouri was the second Republican-led state, after Texas, to respond to Trump’s call last year to redraw congressional districts to the GOP’s advantage in hopes of holding on to the party’s slim House majority in the midterm elections.
The new map, which is being used in Tuesday’s primaries, dramatically reshapes the Kansas City-based fifth congressional district, held by longtime Democratic representative Emanuel Cleaver, by stretching it into rural central Missouri to give it a Republican tilt. Republicans already hold six of Missouri’s eight congressional seats and hope to gain another under the new map.
Hoskins shoots down amendment on citizen initiatives
Hoskins also rejected a potential November ballot measure seeking to fortify the initiative process.
The proposed amendment would bar the legislature from making it harder to qualify citizen initiatives for the ballot or approve them at an election. It also would make it harder for the legislature to reverse or amend voter-approved initiatives by requiring an ۸۰% vote in both the House and Senate, instead of the current simple majority.
Although supporters had submitted thousands of signatures, Hoskins asserted that the petition violated a constitutional prohibition against rolling multiple subjects and sections of the constitution into a single amendment.
The Respect Missouri Voters coalition said it will take legal action to try to get its amendment on the ballot.
“This brazen disregard for the will of the people is exactly why the people of Missouri came together to gather signatures … because we are sick of these games in Jefferson City,” said Bob Johnson, a coalition member and former Republican state senator.
For both the redistricting referendum and the citizen initiative measure, Hoskins released opinions from the Republican attorney general, Catherine Hanaway, laying out the rational for his decisions.
People Not Politicians, the group sponsoring the referendum drive, submitted more than ۳۰۰,۰۰۰ signatures to the secretary of state’s office in December. Local election officials reviewed the signatures’ validity over the ensuing months and approved well more than the roughly ۱۱۱,۰۰۰ needed to qualify for the ballot.
But Hoskins waited until the last day allowed under state law to announce his decision about the referendum – a move that let the new districts be used in the meantime.
Hoskins had long signaled that he was likely to reject the referendum. He asked a federal court last fall to block the referendum petition from being submitted, arguing that congressional redistricting is not subject to a referendum under the US and Missouri constitutions. A judge dismissed the lawsuit as premature, noting in a December ruling that Hoskins had the authority to reject the petition himself if he thought it was unconstitutional.
When Missouri candidates began filing for office in February, Hoskins said they were doing so under the new districts and told the Associated Press that “the referendum process was never meant to be used for redistricting”.
If Hoskins is wrong, and a court orders him to place the redistricting referendum on the ballot, it’s unclear what that means for the ۲۰۲۶ elections. Would candidates who win Tuesday’s primaries be allowed to continue running under the new districts in November while voters simultaneously decide whether those districts can be used in future elections? Would candidates run in different districts for the general election than were used in the primaries? Or would courts order a do-over for the congressional primaries using the state’s prior congressional districts?
Missouri’s mid-decade redistricting effort already has been among the most litigated nationally, triggering about a dozen lawsuits over the past year.
Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn at the start of each decade, immediately after a census. But Trump’s call for Republicans to redraw districts to their advantage led to an unusual outbreak of mid-decade mapmaking. The redistricting effort gained additional steam when the US supreme court struck down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana in late April, prompting Republicans in several southern states to also redraw districts that had large minority populations.
All told, Republicans think they could win as many as ۱۶ additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states – Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack faced several setbacks , think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah.
Voters ultimately will determine whether the new districts perform as intended. Even with redistricting, Republicans are facing headwinds. The president’s party historically has lost congressional seats in the midterms, and Trump’s poor approval ratings could provide an extra hurdle for Republican candidates.
Nearly ۱۴۵ million people – about two of every five US residents – live in states with new congressional districts for this election. Additional states are considering redistricting before the ۲۰۲۸ elections. Maryland lawmakers voted Tuesday to place an amendment on November’s ballot that could pave the way for mid-decade redistricting.
