Missouri Supreme Court Upholds Redrawn Congressional Map, Voter ID Law
“The obligation to legislate congressional districts once a decade does not limit the General Assembly’s power to redistrict more frequently than once a decade.”
The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the state’s new Congressional map, 4-3, saying that the legislature can pass a new map between censuses.
“The obligation to legislate congressional districts once a decade does not limit the General Assembly’s power to redistrict more frequently than once a decade,” wrote Judge Zel Fischer.
Fischer pointed out that “when” does not mean “only when.”
The new map could give Republicans a new seat in Congress, which Gov. Mike Kehoe signed into law in September 2025.
Right now, Missouri has six Republicans in the House and two Democrats.
The Republicans could make it 7-1.
The map splits the seat based in Kansas City “by reassigning portions to two neighboring districts and stretching the remainder into Republican-heavy rural areas.”
“The Missouri Supreme Court has reinforced what we’ve known all along – the Missouri First Map and mid-decade redistricting are constitutional,” stated Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway.
Opponents still disagree with the decision and refuse to back down.
People Not Politicians, a force behind the opposition, claimed it has enough valid signatures to trigger a referendum.
“Missouri voters are going to be the final deciders on this issue,” insisted the group’s executive director, Richard von Glahn. “Our democracy belongs to us, not to politicians, and we’re going to have the final say.”
The group said they have “at least 129% of the required signatures in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th districts.”
“The move to redistrict was never about good governance, sound policy, or listening to diverse viewpoints in Kansas City,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. “Instead, special interest redistricting has always been an effort to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voices in the halls of Congress.”
They still need the 7th district, but already have 102% valid signatures. The group needs to check 6,000 signatures.
The majority also left the 2022 law requiring people voting in person to show a valid government-issued photo ID.
Those four judges explained how the plaintiffs did not prove the law prevented anyone from voting:
A four-judge majority said the individual voters and civic groups challenging the law had not shown that the requirement had actually kept them from voting, so the courts could not decide the broader constitutional question. Three other judges disagreed, saying the challengers had shown enough to sue but still would have lost on the merits.
The case centered on stories that opponents said showed the burden of the law. One voter testified that a seizure disorder made travel difficult and left her worried a signature mismatch could sink a provisional ballot. Another said she feared trouble because her first name was spelled differently on her identification and voter registration.
[Featured image via YouTube]
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is a posturing idiot and doesn’t know what disenfranchising actually means. Without knowing anything about him I can guess he is a black democrat. It’s like they all read from a common playbook and lack any original words let alone original thoughts.
He is a communist retard scumbag, and yes, he’s black
Imagine my shock and surprise.
If someone continues to be able to cast a ballot but the results of the election don’t turn out the way the voter likes is that now being disenfranchised? Is the mayor and people fighting this arguing that only one race can represent them in Congress so are all for segregation and racist policies? There are a lot of grounds to not care for redistricting like what is going on in VA right now but fighting it because the person being elected isn’t your skin color isn’t one of them.
According to the logic used to create and maintain the ‘majority minority’ districts …yes. The obvious problem with the logic is where group A ‘must’ form a majority of the electorate or be ‘disenfranchised’ what do that do for group B and group C? Clearly the other groups within the district who aren’t the majority will by the logic be ‘disenfranchised’. If that’s true what do we do about the illegal disenfranchisement in States with only one Congressional District? There’s 5 or 6 of those. The entire majority minority district logic KS seriously flawed. There’s a couple cases coming that may chip away some of this and restore the principle of individual rights v group/tribe rights in elections.
102% valid signatures. That says it all right there.
It doesn’t mean the signatures are all 102% validity, it means they have 102% count of the number of valid signatures necessary to qualify the referendum for the ballot.
It is the rule to gather more signatures than needed for a ballot initiative. The number needed is based on a percentage of registered voters or votes cast in the previous election. In this case I think the number is something like 5% so if there were 100,000 voters across the districts they would need 5,000 valid signatures. To preclude invalid signatures the number gathered would be well in excess of that.
“The move to redistrict was never about good governance, sound policy, or listening to diverse viewpoints in Kansas City,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. “Instead, special interest redistricting has always been an effort to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voices in the halls of Congress.”
But it’s (D)ifferent when Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, or California do it.
“The group said they have “at least 129% of the required signatures in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th districts.”
Wow! How many people did they need to open all those envelopes?
I see a red state and I want it painted redder…
“The new map makes significant changes to Missouri’s 5th Congressional District, which is now held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.”
This is a good thing, and not merely because I despise Cleaver, the 81 y.o., ten times re-elected since 2005 incumbent who votes with his party 95.8% of the time.
Simply put Kansas City, Missouri is Jackson County, and that county is the 5th district under the old map. That’s three layers of government concentrated into the state’s 2nd biggest population center, after St. Louis. That’s wa-ay too much power layered on top of one another, imho.
The new 7-1 map will split KCMO in half, north to south. The northern half will be grafted into roughly a dozen rural counties to the east of Kansas City, for a new 5th, and the southern half will be grafted into roughly a dozen rural counties in the center-west of the state, for a new 4th.
Naturally, lefties are mad as a wet hen because this destroys their urban monopoly on voters in the old 5th who slavishly re-elected Rep. Cleaver(D) ten times, and shifts electoral power out to the rural counties which typically vote deep red.
I see a red state and I want it painted redder…
They should embrace that change b/c after all ‘diversity is our strength’ or so we’re constantly told.
“The new 7-1 map will split KCMO in half, north to south. The northern half will be grafted into roughly a dozen rural counties to the east of Kansas City, for a new 5th”
This is not accurate. The northern half of KCMO will be returned to the 6th district where it used to be.
Replied to the wrong post.
“The new 7-1 map will split KCMO in half, north to south. The northern half will be grafted into roughly a dozen rural counties to the east of Kansas City, for a new 5th”
This is not accurate. The northern half of KCMO will be returned to the 6th district where it used to be.
‘…voter said their name is spelled differently on ID than on voter registration’.
Bruh, that means ‘you’ can’t vote b/c ‘you’ ain’t registered. Pretty simple. Go to the County voter registration and get it fixed. If you can’t be bothered to make sure the data you provided on application to register is accurate and complete, then double check registration and submit corrections why should anyone else give a hoot?
Stop being ‘nice’ about it, stop accepting excuses and entertaining sob stories. The Counties should proactively verify the voter registration lists for accuracy, purge the dead, those who moved and any legally insufficient/incomplete or registrations. Flag all suspicious registration like registration with 100 year old birthdays and physical address that ain’t a complete address and schedule them an appointment to clear it up or be purged…their choice.
Democrats that are opposed to this simultaneously support CA and VA redistricting this year.
If it weren’t for double standards Democrats would have none at all.
To see the problem with some of these proposed districts being made for a specific outcome take a look at Virginia’s map. 5, I think, districts are drawn snakelike to extend to the Potomac River specifically to get the suburbs of DC into them overriding the rest of the district. In a number of states Democrats have always loved redistricting to keep specific voting blocks, read reliable black voters, intact then when Republicans got in power like in NC suddenly fought tooth and nail to stop it. We are seeing the same thing now.