Donald Trump Said SHOW ME A Gerrymander For 2026, MO Republicans Obeyed
But a voter referendum could put the scheme on hold though the 2026 election.
In a special session of the Missouri state Legislature this week, Republicans crammed through a new electoral map in hopes of adding one more Republican seat to the US House of Representatives. The move came just weeks after Republicans in Texas redrew maps to add five new districts with a Republican advantage.
Republicans already hold six of Missouri’s eight congressional seats. But as a favor to Donald Trump, the Lege sliced and diced the Black population of the Kansas City-area district currently held by Democrat Emmanuel Cleaver, who has served for 20 years. The new map divides the KC metro area’s Black voters among three of the newly drawn districts, and gives Republicans a majority in Cleaver’s Fifth District.
Such deliberate dilution of minority voting is a pretty explicit violation of what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, so expect lawsuits once the bill is signed into law by Gov. Mike Kehoe (R), who called the special session after Trump told Republican governors to give him more seats, fairness be damned. Whether the Alito Supreme Court will still follow the plain text of the law is another question altogether.
State Rep. Dirk Deaton (R), the redistricting bill’s sponsor in the state House, blithely insisted after the bill passed that the new voting maps will “ultimately result in Missouri values being reflected and represented in Washington DC — and we know Missouri is a very conservative state.”
Guess that may depend on which “Missouri values” you’re talking about, since one of the new district boundaries chopping up Cleaver’s district runs right down a Kansas City street that used to mark the racial dividing line during official segregation. Maybe the Lege could have found a worse way to reinforce the “values” of the bad old days, but it would have taken some work.
The lead sponsor of the bill in the state Senate, Republican state Sen. Brad Hudson, acknowledged that redistricting between Census years “is not something that happens all the time,” but then explained you gotta understand this year is different: “It’s important to note that this is something that we can do. It is certainly within our power.” Isn’t it refreshing to see Republicans speak so honestly, without pretending there’s any civic good at stake here? “Reasons” are a relic of the pre-Trump era. Republicans want to decrease fair representation, and they’re pretty sure they can get away with it, so why not?
Fortunately, even though there’s not much that can be done legislatively by Democrats and the few Republicans who opposed the gerrymander, there’s another option or two. There’s the inevitable lawsuit that’s likely on the way, but Missouri voters are also almost certain to petition to get a referendum on the ballot that would repeal the law.
Missourians have a long history of using the referendum process to roll back terrible ideas foisted on them by Republicans. After the Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade, voters passed a constitutional amendment last fall to protect the right to abortion — although Republicans promptly got to work trying to undermine it, which is why you gotta pass the referendum and not elect Republicans.
Another really good thing: If volunteers get enough petitions to put repeal of the new voting maps on next year’s ballot, that would actually freeze the electoral maps from going into place until voters decide, putting the gerrymandering threat on hold for the 2026 midterms.
But of course there’s always a “but.” By law, referendum elections go on the general election ballot by default. But the GOP supermajority in the Lege could vote to hold the referendum earlier than November 2026. They’ve already made clear that they’re happy to fuck over democracy because they can. But here too, there’s a built-in complication that might make such fuckery difficult to pull off in time to gerrymander the congressional maps before the midterms. District boundaries have to be “locked” during an election, and as the Missouri Independent explains, the timing for administering Missouri’s elections next year could actually make it difficult for Rs to set a vote on the new maps in time for next year’s primaries — and even if the referendum is shunted to a special election, pissed-off voters might still show up in large numbers to pass it.
In fact, the last 27 times Missourians had the chance to vote on repealing a law passed by the Lege, they did so in all but two elections. The most recent was in 2018, when unions organized a referendum to toss out a “right to work” law that passed easily in the GOP-dominated lege.
Given that record of success, it’s little surprise that the other major goal of Missouri Republicans in the special session was pushing through a constitutional amendment bill that would make passing any referendum nearly impossible, by requiring that voter initiatives pass not only with a simple statewide majority, but also with a majority in each of the state’s eight congressional districts. That means that as few as five percent of voters could kill any voter initiative.
The people of Missouri keep rejecting terrible Republican laws and passing things like the abortion amendment, Medicaid expansion, and recreational marijuana use, so they must be put in their place, goddamnit. Needless to say, the new rule would apply only to voter-initiated referenda, not to constitutional amendments put forward by the Lege. Fortunately, this one is also going on the 2026 ballot, so voters can say hell no to it.
[NBC News / Missouri Independent / Kansas City Star]
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𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑜 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑤 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑙𝑡𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟.
There isn't any questions about it - the Liberals on the Court will do so, but the cons on the Court will rule whichever way Dear Leader wants, so the answer is NO!