Who should count? Details of Missouri GOP redistricting plan could mean big changes
Who should be counted when Missouri’s 197 legislative districts are redrawn: everyone who lives in the state or only citizens old enough to vote?
It’s not a question that’s gotten much attention in the more than a year lawmakers have been debating whether to repeal the redistricting plan overwhelmingly enacted by voters in 2018.
Yet legal scholars say in nearly every version of legislation targeting the plan there is one line that could have a massive impact — a change in the state constitution requiring that districts be drawn “on the basis of one person, one vote.”
Republicans downplay the significance, saying the change is merely an effort to match federal law.
But critics contend the revision could result in a redistricting process that forgoes the use of total population to draw districts and instead excludes all non-voters, specifically children and non-citizens.
That change could also shift political power to Republican-leaning parts of the state.
“I don’t know if putting one person, one vote into the state constitution is intended to serve as a predicate for citizen-only districting, but it’s certainly a possibility,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. “What is the alternative explanation?”
“If you switch to a voter or citizen standard,” Hassen said, “you’d shift power from mostly Democratic cities to mostly Republican rural counties, where you’d find fewer non-citizens and fewer children as well.”
Rep. Curtis Trent, R-Springfield, acknowledged that the “one person, one vote” provision hasn’t gotten a lot of public attention, even among lawmakers like himself who are sponsoring versions of the legislation.
“It should come as no surprise that this legislation has been the product of a lot of compromise,” Trent said.
He expressed support for the idea that the provision could be interpreted as blocking non-citizens and undocumented immigrants from being counted in the legislative redistricting process. But he was hesitant about any possible exclusion of children.
“I would need to examine the language closer,” he said. “I know typically when drawing districts you count all citizens. Kids can’t vote but they are still citizens. I’d have to think about that issue before I could answer with any authority.”
One person, one vote
In November 2018, 62 percent of Missourians voted to amend the state constitution to enact a series of campaign finance and legislative ethics proposals, along with a new system for redrawing legislative districts following the U.S. Census.
Among the changes to the redistricting process, the constitutional amendment requires that a state demographer use a mathematical formula to try to engineer “partisan fairness” and “competitiveness” in legislative elections.
An Associated Press analysis found that while the new method appears unlikely to impact overall control of the Missouri General Assembly, it will likely increase Democrats’ chances of winning elections and cut into Republicans’ supermajorities in the state House and Senate.
Republicans decried the redistricting changes, calling the proposal a Democratic power grab.
Lawmakers have proposed constitutional amendments to roll back the redistricting changes. If approved by the House and Senate, the amendments would go on the statewide ballot later this year for voters to decide.
The “one person, one vote” provision was added as an amendment to one of the bills last session. But the legislative push ran out of steam with a procedural hiccup in the session’s waning days that doomed for the bill’s chances.
Republicans returned this year vowing not to make the same mistake again.
The legislation has been fast tracked, with the Senate taking it up for debate Wednesday evening in the face of fierce resistance from Democrats.
The U.S. Supreme Court first forced states to draw legislative districts with roughly equal populations in two landmark decisions: Baker v. Carr in 1962 and Reynolds v. Sims in 1964.
The two decisions enshrined the one-person, one-vote rule in American constitutional law.
In 2016, the Supreme Court revisited the issue in the case of Evenwell v. Abbott.
The lawsuit was brought by a pair of Texas voters who argued that using total population to draw legislative districts violated the one person, one vote rule, as well as the the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
That’s because, they argued, counting everyone gives districts with high numbers of non-voters -- children and non-citizens in particular -- a disproportionately weighted vote.
The Supreme Court held that states are allowed to use total population in order to comply with one person, one vote. But it did not resolve the question of whether other methods, such as counting only voting-age citizens, are permissible.
Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida who specializes in elections and voter turnout, said the change to Missouri constitution will likely have one of two outcomes. Either the state will move away from use of total population, or a lawsuit will point to the change to challenge the use of total population.
In both cases, McDonald said, the question will ultimately once again find its way to the Supreme Court.
Republican advantage
If Missouri shifted to counting only eligible voters in drawing legislative districts, the advantage would be to older, rural areas of the state that tend to vote Republican.
Michael Li, senior redistricting counsel for the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, said Missouri doesn’t have a huge immigrant population.
“So by far, the biggest group who might not be counted would be children,” he said. “That would take political power away from suburbs and urban centers, places with lots of children, and push the power to rural areas.”
Sean Nicholson, a longtime progressive strategist who led the 2018 campaign in support of the redistricting ballot measure, called the GOP-backed proposals “a gerrymanderer’s dream.”
“Missouri counts everyone when drawing maps, just like every other state,” Nicholson said. “It’s required in our constitution, and it should stay that way.”
Sen. Dan Hegeman, a northwest Missouri Republican, said he would need to study the one person, one vote provision before he could offer any comment about it.
But he insisted that the only goal of any repeal legislation would be to give Missouri voters another option for how they would like their legislative districts drawn.
“This question will go to the voters,” he said. “They had one choice in 2018 and they picked it. We want to give them the opportunity to have another choice.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 9:54 AM.
