Mitchell Kaminski
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The process of verifying more than 300,000 petition signatures aimed at forcing a statewide vote on Missouri’s newly redrawn congressional map is now underway.
The redrawn congressional map — which is backed by President Donald Trump — are designed to shift political control in Missouri’s 5th Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, potentially giving Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House.
In October, a referendum petition seeking to repeal the redistricting legislation was submitted to the office of Secretary of State Denny Hoskins. Hoskins approved the referendum on Oct. 15, allowing the sponsoring group, People Not Politicians, to begin collecting signatures from registered Missouri voters.
Missouri’s Constitution allows voters who oppose a new law to gather petition signatures to place the measure on the ballot statewide. If supporters submit about 110,000 valid signatures — including required minimums in at least two-thirds of Missouri’s congressional districts — the law is suspended until a referendum can be held at the next November election.
Hoskins warned that any signatures collected before Oct. 15 would not be considered valid. Petition signatures were submitted to the Secretary of State’s office on Dec. 11.
On Dec. 23, the signatures were distributed electronically to election officials in 116 counties, who now have until July to complete the verification process. County clerks will review each signature to confirm the signer is a registered voter in the county, that the signature matches voter records and that all required information is accurate.
“If everything seemed to be in one handwriting on one page, that would be a red flag,” Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon said. “If there’s just blank pages or small anomalies, not red flags. Things can get marked as crossed out, and that is a pretty normal thing to see on petitions.”
Lennon said about 1,300 pages of signatures were rejected before the petitions were sent to county election officials, largely because they were collected before Oct. 15. Boone County received about 2,500 pages of signatures. Each page can include up to 10 signatures, though Lennon said past experience shows many pages are not fully filled so there is no current estimate for how long the process will take.
“In our case there’s a couple thousand signature pages that have been submitted. Some of those pages may have all ten lines filled out as 10 signatures. Some may only have two. So we won’t actually know until we get into how many actual signatures per page,” Lennon said.
ABC 17 News on Tuesday also reached out to Camden, Callaway, Cole and Randolph counties for information on how many pages of signatures they received, but has not yet heard back.
Several lawsuits have been filed since state lawmakers approved the redrawn congressional map during a special session, challenging whether the plan can take effect. The litigation raises questions about Gov. Mike Kehoe’s authority to call the special session, the legality of redrawing district boundaries mid-decade, whether the map meets constitutional compactness and contiguity requirements and whether the legislation should have been automatically suspended earlier this month after opponents submitted more than 300,000 petition signatures seeking a statewide vote.
People Not Politicians was one of the groups that filed a lawsuit. Judge Christopher Limbaugh said he will not make a ruling until the signature verification process is complete.
“All of the surrounding litigation that’s happening has more to do with the content of the actual referendum itself, the timing of the referendum, the effect of submitting the signatures in general, so our process is very ministerial, really doesn’t have an impact on the any of the litigation that’s happening now,” Lennon said. “When we get to the summer, when everything is wrapped up in terms of the signature collection verification, then we’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking at for November.”
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A side-by-side map shows changes suggested to Missouri’s congressional districts.