Missouri election chief rejects bid to hold public vote on Trump-backed
congressional districts
[August 05, 2026]
By DAVID A. LIEB
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri's top election official has rejected
a citizens' petition seeking a statewide referendum on new congressional
districts backed by President 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 U.S.
House map approved by the Republican-led state Legislature. But
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 5th Congressional District, held by
longtime Democratic Rep. 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 80% 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 Republican Attorney General
Catherine Hanaway laying out the rational for his decisions.
Missouri's redistricting plan has faced lots of litigation
People Not Politicians, the group sponsoring the referendum drive,
submitted more than 300,000 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
111,000 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.
[to top of second column]
|
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins talks to reporters
Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, at his office in the state Capitol in
Jefferson City, Mo. (AP Photo/David A. Lieb)
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 U.S. 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 2026 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.
Republicans are ahead in the national redistricting fight
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 U.S. 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 16 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 145 million people — about two of every five U.S. residents —
live in states with new congressional districts for this election.
Additional states are considering redistricting before the 2028
elections. Maryland lawmakers voted Tuesday to place an amendment on
November’s ballot that could pave the way for mid-decade
redistricting.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
