Petition Rejecting Missouri’s Redistricting Effort To Be Submitted Next Week

Missouri is one of several states that engaged in a mid-decade redistricting effort at the behest of President Donald Trump. While the state legislature approved a new map that would give the GOP another House seat in Missouri, a referendum campaign has gained enough signatures to potentially take the map out of play during the 2026 midterms. 

According to the Missouri Independent, the campaign to repeal the gerrymandered map was spearheaded by the People Not Politicians PAC. Should the referendum campaign have enough signatures, the map will be placed on hold until voters approve it next year. 

For a referendum petition to be placed on the ballot, it must have at least 106,000 signatures from voters across six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. The People Not Politicians’ referendum reportedly has 206,000 signatures. 

“This unprecedented show of grassroots power signals the overwhelming public demand for Missourians to have a say in whether (the map) becomes law,” People Not Politicians said in a statement Wednesday. 

Missouri Republicans have been doing their damnedest to shut down the ballot initiative. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins said he would not accept any signatures that were placed before Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the map into law, which could invalidate 90,000 signatures. 

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican who was recently appointed to the role, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the map shouldn’t be subject to a citizen referendum even though the legislation was approved by the General Assembly. 

Hanaway has also levied unsubstantiated allegations against Advanced Micro Targeting (AMT), a company hired by People Not Politicians to gain signatures, that they are bringing undocumented people into Missouri to sign the petition. AMT has filed a federal lawsuit alleging four Republican consulting firms have been paying AMT’s employees to quit their jobs, turn over signatures, and speak poorly of the company’s reputation, all in an effort to derail the referendum campaign. 

Every time I have to write about the GOP, I find myself asking the same question: Why are these people so weird? 

Should the petition pass muster, it would be yet another in a series of setbacks Trump’s redistricting effort has faced in recent months. Starting in July, it appeared Trump and the GOP were going to successfully gerrymander their way into a win during the 2026 midterms. Democrats only needed a net gain of three seats to flip control of the House, and midterm elections historically favor the opposition party. The nationwide redistricting battle began in Texas when Gov. Greg Abbott used the Kerr County floods as cover for calling a special session focused on redrawing the state’s congressional maps. While the process was incredibly fraught, it ultimately ended with the Texas state legislature approving a map that created five new House seats in districts that favor Republicans. Missouri and North Carolina launched redistricting efforts of their own soon after, passing maps that gave the GOP an extra seat in both states. 

The first sign that the GOP’s redistricting effort wasn’t going to plan came in Indiana, where Trump has continually pressured the state legislature into launching a redistricting effort of their own. Redistricting is overwhelmingly unpopular with Indiana’s voters, and Indiana’s Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray has repeatedly said it doesn’t have the votes in the state Senate. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the first Democratic leader to respond to the GOP’s redistricting effort. The “Election Rigging Response Act” put Prop 50 on the ballot for a special election in November. Prop 50 passed overwhelmingly, shifting control of California’s electoral maps from an independent committee to the state legislature. Newsom intends to implement a new electoral map that neutralizes the gains made in Texas. The Virginia Grand Assembly announced a surprise redistricting effort in November that would potentially give Democrats two to three extra House seats. 

One of the biggest blows facing Trump’s redistricting effort came last month, when a panel of federal judges ruled the new Texas map was racially gerrymandered and said Texas must conduct the 2026 midterms using its previously drafted map. While Texas Republicans appealed the ruling and are currently waiting for the Supreme Court to make a decision, the Dec. 8 deadline for candidates to declare their candidacy is quickly approaching, leaving many potential candidates unsure of which map to use. 

So essentially, the GOP went through all this drama just for the electoral math to more or less remain the same. It’s almost like the Republican Party should’ve been focused on policy that actually solves the problems facing working-class Americans, instead of trying to gerrymander their way to a midterms win. Of course, doing that would upset the billionaires who keep them in power, so instead they’re left with deeply unpopular policies and a president whose approval rating is steadily underwater. 

SEE ALSO:

Virginia Democrats Launch Surprise Redistricting Effort

North Carolina Lawmakers Announce Redistricting Effort