Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) announced Tuesday — Missouri’s primary day, the latest he could legally push the decision — that he will not certify a petition that would’ve challenged Republicans’ new 7-1 gerrymander.
He deemed the attempt to force a veto referendum to be “insufficient” because “challenging a congressional map is unconstitutional under Missouri law.”
Missouri law lets voters block legislation if they gather enough signatures on a petition, then win a statewide vote.
“At issue is not the number of signatures turned in to challenge the new congressional map, but the fact that the referendum itself is null and void by virtue of the fact that it is unconstitutional,” he said at a press conference. “Therefore House Bill 1 — the ‘Missouri First’ map — continues to be the law of the land.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that I will be challenged on this,” he added.
His rationale seemed to mostly rest on the fact that the ability to challenge a map is not explicitly written into the state constitution.
People Not Politicians, the group behind the petition to challenge the map, immediately responded that it plans to file a lawsuit against Hoskins’ declaration of insufficiency.
The new gerrymander eliminates Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver’s (D-MO) Kansas City seat, turning a 6-2 Republican gerrymander into a 7-1.
Hoskins dragged out certification as long as he could, despite People Not Politicians asking the state Supreme Court to force his hand. The court rejected that effort, in addition to ruling that the new map is not unconstitutional, and that the map was not automatically suspended when the group turned in its signatures.
Hoskins overread that latter decision to mean that the new gerrymander went into effect immediately, despite the court ruling that it could only decide whether the map is in effect after Hoskins certified the petition. People Not Politicians argued, unsuccessfully, that by delaying until the day of Missouri’s primary, Hoskins was informally declaring the map insufficient but also shielding that decision from judicial review.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said at the time: “As long as the status quo is the new maps, delay works in our favor.”
Missouri is one of the Southern states that raced to eliminate its majority-Democratic, majority-Black seats after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais made racial discrimination in redistricting virtually impossible to prove. The furious gerrymandering in these states has turned a projected Democratic flip of the House of Representatives into a much closer call.
Stop voting for Republicans! They can’t win fairly, so they lie, cheat, and steal. GOP delenda est!
He should be thrown out of office for wearing such a hideous red sports coat