Shawn Griffiths
Missouri state officials are getting slammed with lawsuits over a new congressional map that People Not Politicians (PNP) says should be frozen after it submitted over 300,000 signatures to let voters decide to keep or reject the map.
However, despite legal and political precedent to back up the expectation that Missouri will now have to use the pre-2025 map, the secretary of state and attorney general are moving forward with the gerrymandered districts.
Right before Christmas, PNP filed a lawsuit on behalf of Missouri voters to force the suspension of HB 1, a map that carves up Kansas City in order to give Republicans 7 out of the state’s 8 congressional seats.
Suspending the law would mean the map should be frozen until voters have a say.
“The constitution does not allow the attorney general or secretary of state to unilaterally implement a statute that has been lawfully suspended,” said PNP Executive Director Richard von Glahn.
This 180-degree pivot, made after People Not Politicians successfully turned in over 305,000 signatures, is just the latest in a series of legally baseless claims made by the Attorney General via social media. People, not unelected politicians, will have the final say on the maps.”
Von Glahn points to previous cases where a law being challenged by a veto referendum was suspended the moment signatures were submitted, like a “right to work” law in 2017 when Jay Ashcroft was the secretary of state and Josh Hawley was the attorney general.
Current Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway and Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins say the new map will not be frozen until after the signatures are verified and Hoskins certifies the referendum for the ballot.
The verification process generally takes 8 to 10 weeks, but Hoskins has already gone on record saying he will do everything in his power to protect the new map. Election officials have until July 28 to verify the signatures.
Absent a court order, there is nothing to stop Hoskins from dragging his feet on certification.
It’s possible that once candidate filing opens on February 24, state officials will go before the courts and say it is too late to use the pre-2025 map. This is why PNP wants an expedited ruling – but the group is not alone.
A set of lawsuits in Jackson County are asking a circuit court for the same thing as candidates want to know their district before filing. All these lawsuits will have a 4-day trial in January.
There is also a lingering case in Missouri over Hoskins' refusal to count 92,000 signatures collected by PNP prior to October 15, the date he approved the veto referendum for petition circulation.
At the time, Hoskins cited a law that no longer exists as justification. Specifically, he said under the law signatures gathered before a referendum is given a title don't count, but the state Supreme Court ruled that this violates citizens' constitutional rights.
Still, Hoskins says he won't count the signatures unless ordered to by a court. A ruling on the matter has been delayed until after the signature verification process is complete.
Republican officials and aligned groups pulled out all the stops to keep PNP from being successful. Advanced Micro Targeting, Inc., the signature gathering group hired by PNP, alleged in a lawsuit that its contractors were bribed to switch sides.
And if the contractors refused, they were threatened and harassed.
But there’s more.
A federal court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Hanaway in an effort to have the veto referendum declared unconstitutional. She also reported the referendum campaign to ICE, alleging it was using undocumented migrants to collect signatures.
And on Black Friday, mass text messages sponsored by the Republican National Committee were sent out to Missouri voters warning them not to trust “out of state” signature gatherers trying to trick them while shopping.
The irony, of course, is that the RNC is an out-of-state organization pushing an agenda.
PNP needs about 110,000 of its signatures to be verified in order for its veto referendum to qualify for the ballot. Even if 92,000 signatures remain disqualified, the campaign has more than enough to be certified.