Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

GOP arranges a do-over for Missouri voters on revamping redistricting

Missouri voters

In 2018, a majority of Missouri voters supported a ballot measure for redistricting reform, but the latest action from the Republican-controlled Legislature threatens to undo that result.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Voters in Missouri will decide this fall whether to abandon a decision they made just two years ago, which was to minimize power politics and maximize fairness and competition in the drawing of legislative boundaries.

A measure added to the November ballot on Wednesday by the Republican-majority General Assembly would essentially reverse those priorities, and also do away with plans to put dominant power over redistricting in the hands of a nonpartisan statistician.

The referendum now looms as an ominous, and rare, potential counterweight to a string of good-government reforms adopted across the country by the will of the people in recent years. Its adoption would be the most prominent repudiation in years of a citizen-driven effort to fix democracy's challenges.


Democracy reform groups lambasted the Legislature's move and vowed to mount a campaign to persuade the electorate to reject the measure — which many may not see coming, or be confused by its meaning, while preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic.

"We need to make sure everyone in America knows that these politicians exploited a national crisis to make a political power grab," said James Jameson, who runs national voter mobilization for RepresentUs.

"In a shameful and undemocratic power-grab, politicians are trying to overturn the will of the voters to serve their own interests," said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.

The outcome of the referendum will set the rules for mapmaking in the state for the coming decade, once the detailed population counts from the ongoing but delayed census are finished next year.

The system now in place, approved with 62 percent support in 2018, created the new and nonpartisan post of state demographer in charge of drawing the 197 state House and Senate districts. It also sets "partisan fairness" and "competitiveness" as the top criteria in the line drawing. The demographer's maps are the final word unless a supermajority of a citizen's commission rejects them.

The referendum would eliminate the demographer's job and instruct equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats on the commission to come up with compromise maps where those characteristics are bumped down to the lowest priority — behind such other characteristics as compactness and the promotion of minority voting rights. If the panel could not reach a deal, the line-drawing would be assigned to a special team of judges.

Under the new proposal, maps could be drawn with such a significant partisan gerrymander that a party winning 50 percent of the vote statewide could nonetheless end up with 65 percent of the seats in Jefferson City, according to the nonpartisan organization of demographers PlanScore.org. They said no state legislative maps anywhere in the country in the last four decades have had a difference of as much as 15 percentage points — what's known in redistricting as an "efficiency gap."

Critics also said the wording of the ballot measure would allow the state to stop accounting for the entire population in the drawing of districts — as required by the "one person, one vote" Supreme Court standard for setting of congressional boundaries — and could instead exclude non-citizens and children in mapmaking, a departure from language in the Missouri Constitution since 1875.

Critics of this switch said it would disproportionately affect the state's big cities, which are dominated by Democrats.

"It would weaken protections for communities of color, undermine independence, deprioritize partisan fairness, and deprive voters of their fair day in court," said Yurij Rudensky, the progressive Brennan Center for Justice's redistricting expert.

A lawsuit to stop the referendum over the "one person, one vote" arguments was vowed by Clean Missouri, which led the successful campaign for the redistricting measure two years ago.

The measure, which the Senate approved in February, was endorsed in the House on a mostly — but not entirely — party-line vote of 98-58. Some Democrats supported the proposal, for two reasons: They expect the altered system would preserve their political futures, and the referendum also proposes such popular-sounding reforms as a ban on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers and a slight reduction in campaign contribution limits.

Even some Republicans in the General Assembly had doubts about the measure before it passed. State Rep. Rocky Miller, who chairs the Legislative Oversight Committee, said during a hearingon Monday that the measure would be another strike against the GOP.

"This is going to go down in flames if it makes it to the ballot. This will not pass at all," he said.

Read More

Defend Democracy Against Bombardments on the Elections Front –A Three-Part Series
Voted printed papers on white surface

Defend Democracy Against Bombardments on the Elections Front –A Three-Part Series

In Part 1, Pat Merloe examines the impact of the political environment, the necessity of constitutional defense against power-grabbing, and the detrimental effects of proof of citizenship on voting.

Part One: Bellicose Environment, Constitutional Infringements, and Disenfranchisement by Proof of Citizenship

The intense MAGA barrage against genuine elections, leading up to 2024’s voting, paused briefly after Election Day - not because there was diminished MAGA hostility towards typically trustworthy processes and results, but mainly because Donald Trump won. Much valuable work took place to protect last year’s polls, and much more will be needed as we head toward 2026, 2028, and beyond.

Keep ReadingShow less
Rear view diverse voters waiting for polling place to open
SDI Productions/Getty Images

Open Primaries Topic Creates a Major Tension for Independents

Open primaries create fine opportunities for citizens who are registered as independents or unaffiliated voters to vote for either Democrats or Republicans in primary elections, but they tacitly undermine the mission of those independents who are opposed to both major parties by luring them into establishment electoral politics. Indeed, independents who are tempted to support independent candidates or an independent political movement can be converted to advocates of our duopoly if their states have one form or another of Open Primaries.

Twenty U.S. states currently have Open Primaries for at least one political party at the presidential, congressional, and state levels, including Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. At least 15 states conduct "semi-closed" primaries, a middle position in which unaffiliated voters still have an option to choose to vote in one of the major party primaries. 

Keep ReadingShow less
Voter registration
The national voter registration form is now available in 20 non-English languages, including three Native American languages.
SDI Productions

With Ranked Choice Voting in NYC, Women Win

As New York prepares to choose its next city council and mayor in primaries this week, it’s worth remembering that the road to gender equality in the nation’s largest city has been long and slow.

Before 2021, New York’s 51-member council had always been majority male. Women hadn’t even gotten close to a majority. The best showing had been 18 seats, just a tick above 35 percent.

Keep ReadingShow less
Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

"On Las Vegas Boulevard" sign.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash. Unplash+ license obtained by IVN Editor Shawn Griffiths.

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

CARSON CITY, NEV. - A surprise last-minute bill to open primary elections to Nevada’s largest voting bloc, registered unaffiliated voters, moved quickly through the state legislature and was approved by a majority of lawmakers on the last day of the legislative session Monday.

The bill, AB597, allows voters not registered with a political party to pick between a Republican and Democratic primary ballot in future election cycles. It does not apply to the state’s presidential preference elections, which would remain closed to registered party members.

Keep ReadingShow less