Judge rewrites ‘unfair’ ballot language for Missouri GOP repeal of redistricting plan
A Cole County Judge on Monday rewrote language on the November ballot for a proposed constitutional amendment that seeks to replace a redistricting process approved by voters in 2018.
Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled that the summary of the amendment, written by Republican lawmakers, was “insufficient and unfair” because it failed to inform voters that adopting the amendment would “eliminate redistricting rules Missourians overwhelmingly adopted two years ago to combat political gerrymandering and replace them with a redistricting process similar in substance to the one they just voted to abandon.”
The redistricting changes were also included as the third of three bullet points in the summary, preceded on the ballot by provisions banning lobbyist gifts and reducing campaign contributions.
Joyce concluded that the “central purpose” or “primary objective” of the GOP-written amendment is to repeal the voter-approved redistricting process.
In rewriting the ballot language, Joyce put the redistricting changes first. It would now ask voters if the Missouri Constitution should be amended to “repeal rules for drawing state legislative districts approved by voters in November 2018 and replace them with rules proposed by the legislature.”
Joyce also rewrote the other two bullet points, asking voters whether to amend the constitution to “lower the campaign contribution limit for senate candidates by $100; and lower legislative gift limit from $5 to $0, with exemptions for some lobbyists.”
“As the summary statement is currently drafted, voters are likely to be misled,” Joyce wrote. “This sort of deception is the exact evil the summary statement is meant to combat, not promote.”
Republicans can appeal Joyce’s decision, but the deadline for changes to the November ballot in Missouri is early September.
Chris Nuelle, spokesman for Attorney General Eric Schmitt, said of a possible appeal, “we’re reviewing the decision and deciding on next steps.”
Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, R-Franklin County, vowed to appeal the ruling in a statement, calling Joyce’s rewritten summary “insufficient, unfair and completely misleading.”
Sean Soendker Nicholson, who is leading the campaign to defeat the GOP-backed amendment, said the summary approved by lawmakers contained objective falsehoods and misleading language designed to trick voters and hide the true intention of the measure.
“Everyone needs to understand that politicians are trying to trick voters by hiding a deceptive gerrymandering plan in the state constitution,” Nicholson said.
The 2018 Clean Missouri constitutional amendment, overwhelmingly approved by voters, included a number of proposals, ranging from a cap on lobbyist gifts for lawmakers to a requirement that all legislative records be open to the public.
But its most sweeping change was how it overhauled the way state legislative districts will be drawn following the 2020 census.
Under the old method, every 10 years following the census Missouri’s 197 legislative districts were drawn by commissions appointed by Republican and Democratic committees and the governor.
Under Clean Missouri, a nonpartisan state demographer will craft maps, which will then be reviewed by a citizen commission that can only make changes if 70 percent approve.
Like the previous system, legislative districts would have to be contiguous and compact, and protections to ensure minority representation remain.
But Clean Missouri added a partisan competitiveness as a factor in how districts are drawn. The goal would be to have a more even mix of voters in redrawn districts so that one party wouldn’t have an advantage over the other.
Missouri is the only state that mandates the use of a specific 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 have painted Clean Missouri as a Democratic power grab, arguing that voters were forced to swallow changes to the redistricting process in order to enact popular ethics reform proposals such as a lobbyist gift ban.
They quickly got to work trying to repeal it, passing a proposed constitutional amendment earlier this year to be placed on the November ballot.
The GOP-backed plan largely reverts back to the old method, with a few significant changes. The most significant would require that districts be drawn “on the basis of one person, one vote.”
Republicans have downplayed the significance of the change, saying the purpose is to ensure only citizens are counted when drawing legislative districts.
But election law experts say that revision could result in a redistricting process that forgoes the use of total population to draw districts and instead excludes all non-voters, most notably immigrants and children.
This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 12:27 PM.
