Anti-gerrymandering group People Not Politics is working to prevent Missouri Republicans from using a newly gerrymandered congressional map for next year’s midterms, and on Tuesday, the group said it had submitted enough signatures to force a referendum so voters can weigh in on the map.
The new map shores up Republicans’ electoral chances in part by breaking up largely Black, liberal-leaning communities in the state.
People Not Politicians’ Executive Director Richard von Glahn told NBC News prior to submitting the signatures that the referendum process is “an important historic check on legislators’ power or power grabs.” People Not Politicians had until Thursday to submit around 107,000 signatures from six of the state’s eight congressional districts, and the group said it has submitted nearly three times that many.
NBC News explained the obstacles the referendum effort needs to clear before it reaches voters, including a “slow and steady review” of the signatures promised by Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins.
Per NBC News:
From here, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, must determine whether the group has submitted a sufficient number of valid signatures. His office faces a July deadline for signature verification, though the process will likely be completed much earlier. Hoskins has previously signaled his opposition to the measure, having initially rejected in October the legal grounds for the petition effort. Hoskins’ spokesperson Rachel Dunn said their office wouldn’t comment on the process moving forward until after the Thursday deadline had passed. If the petition is certified, the Legislature would then move to schedule an election that allows voters to weigh in on the map.
Hoskins told The Associated Press, “I’m going to do everything I can to protect Gov. [Mike] Kehoe’s Missouri First Map — the map the General Assembly passed.”
Hoskins’ efforts to protect the new map are operating in parallel with similar efforts by the Republican state attorney general, who last month launched a probe into unsubstantiated allegations that undocumented immigrants have helped another anti-gerrymandering group to gather signatures, and that the signature-gathering efforts may have involved human trafficking (the president of that group, Advanced Micro Targeting, vehemently denied the claims). And earlier this week, a federal judge refused to grant a request from Hoskins and other Missouri Republicans to block the referendum.
It’s not a certainty that voters in Missouri will get a chance to endorse or reject the nakedly partisan and functionally racist effort, but the momentum seems clearly in favor of the people working to stop Missouri’s antidemocratic Trump-backed map.
