Missouri Republicans push redistricting changes during session shortened by COVID-19
In a Capitol hearing room that was nearly empty because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Missouri Republicans took another step Thursday evening toward repealing redistricting changes enacted by voters in 2018.
The Missouri House’s general laws committee held a contentious hearing and quick vote on legislation that would put a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot later this year targeting the new redistricting process approved by 62 percent of voters two years ago.
The bill cleared the Senate earlier this year, so if it is approved by the full House without changes it would go on the ballot for voter approval sometime in 2020.
Critics of the GOP-backed bill are crying foul, saying they are overturning the will of the people at a time when the public is being asked to stay away from the Capitol because of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.
“Leaders in the Missouri House thought now would be a great time to force their extreme gerrymandering plan forward, hoping that no one back home would notice,” said Sean Nicholson, who led the 2018 campaign in support of Clean Missouri.
Republicans counter that the issue is timely because the 2020 election is the last one where voters will be able to weigh in before the next decade’s districts are drawn.
Missourians are under a stay-at-home order at the moment, but anyone who wants to attend a legislative hearing is legally permitted to do so, said Rep. Dean Plocher, a St. Charles County Republican and chairman of the general laws committee.
“The Capitol is open,” he said.
Clean Missouri
The redistricting process, enshrined in Missouri’s Constitution thanks to the 2018 ballot measure known as Clean Missouri, calls for a nonpartisan state demographer to craft maps for all 197 legislative districts with the goal for each to be as competitive as possible.
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.
It would have no impact on Congressional redistricting. Those districts will continue to be drawn by the legislature.
Republicans have been trying to repeal and replace the redistricting changes almost from the moment they were approved by voters. They’ve called Clean Missouri a deceptive power grab by Democrats that will create districts that split up communities of interest for the sake of creating competitive districts.
But staunch Democratic resistance, and unexpected procedural hiccups, have thwarted GOP efforts to push their alternative proposal.
This year it was COVID-19 that unexpectedly presented the biggest obstacle.
The bill putting redistricting back on the ballot managed to clear the Senate despite threats of a Democratic filibuster. But the General Assembly was forced to adjourn for weeks as COVID-19 spread across the state.
Now, back for an abbreviated session set to adjourn on May 15, the redistricting bill is on a fast track.
The GOP plan would largely go back to the old method of drawing districts, where every 10 years following the census commissions appointed by Republican and Democratic committees and the governor would craft maps with an emphasis districts that are contiguous and compact.
“I want to go back to where communities are kept in tact when we draw districts,” said Sen. Dan Hegeman, a Republican from northwest Missouri who is sponsoring the bill. “I worry the area I represent will see its voice diminished.”
Hegeman also pointed to the fact that Clean Missouri started the process of choosing the nonpartisan demographer with the auditor’s office, which is the only statewide post held by a Democrat.
“That is partisan,” he said.
While applications for state demographers are submitted to the auditor’s office, the names of the applicants are turned over to the Missouri Senate, where the leaders of the majority and minority are tasked with making the choice.
If Senate leaders agree on a name, the selection process ends there. If not, each party’s Senate leader would remove one-third of the nominees, and the auditor would then select the demographer from the remainder through a lottery.
“The auditor’s job is to say who meets the qualifications,” said Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis.
One person, one vote
There are key differences between the way Missouri used to draw maps and the new method suggested by Republicans.
The bill approved in committee on Thursday would require districts be drawn on the basis of “one person, one vote.”
Hegeman said the point of the change would be to forgo the use of total population to draw districts in order to leave out non-citizens.
“Not the total population,” he said. “Not the illegals that are here.”
But election law experts say the revision could likely result in a redistricting process that excludes other non-voters, most notably children. That would advantage older, rural areas of the state that tend to vote Republican.
Hegeman objected to the idea that children wouldn’t be counted Thursday. But in January, when asked during debate in the Senate what the impact of the “one person, one vote” provision would be he said, “the people that are able to vote are the people that are counted.”
The Missouri NAACP submitted testimony to the committee saying more than 90 percent of those excluded if Missouri draws districts based only on voting-age citizens would be children who are American citizens.
And more than a quarter of Missouri’s black population and more than a third of the state’s Latino population would not count, the group contends, because they have higher proportions of people under 18.
“It would make redistricting in Missouri less protective of communities of color and less independent of partisan politics, and would result in less fair maps,” the NAACP testimony said. “What is more, the resolution would threaten Missouri’s longstanding practice of counting everyone.”
‘False goods’
In addition to redistricting changes, the bill approved by the Senate also lowered caps on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers and campaign contributions that were enacted as part of Clean Missouri.
Rep. Nick Schroer, R-O’Fallon, argued the Clean Missouri campaign was misleading because it focused on these popular ethics reforms proposals instead of the redistricting provisions.
“They were sold false goods,” he said of Missouri voters.
Behind-the-scenes, there are discussions about the House including another provision in the legislation. It would ask voters to change the state constitution to say that “only” U.S. citizens can vote. The constitution currently says “all” citizens can vote.
The Republican behind that idea, Rep. Curtis Trent of Springfield, has argued the change is needed to ensure undocumented immigrants can’t vote.
Critics of the change say it is meaningless and is only being included to stir anti-immigrant sentiment during an election year.
Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office clarified earlier this year under current state law, “you have to be a citizen to register to vote.”
If the bill is changed in the House it will need to be approved by the Senate again before going on the ballot.
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 6:22 PM.
