How Clay, Platte counties are handling guidance on Missouri’s gerrymandered map
.jpg "A crowd gathers outside of the Missouri Supreme Court after legal arguments in a trio of cases that could decide whether Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map, which slices through Kansas City, can be used in the 2026 midterm election.")
Local election officials across Missouri, including those in Clay and Platte counties, received official notice Thursday afternoon to move forward with the state’s new, gerrymandered congressional map despite ongoing questions regarding a referendum petition against it.
Confusion around which map — the new map that carves up Kansas City or the previous map approved in 2022 — local election officials across the state should use for ballots in the upcoming primary mounted this week after the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the state’s gerrymandered congressional map in a pair of landmark rulings.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court found that the map was legal and did not violate the state constitution. Justices also stated that the map was not currently blocked even though a referendum campaign turned in signatures to force a statewide vote on it.
However, the second ruling left open the possibility that if Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins certified the more than 300,000 signatures submitted to prompt a referendum vote, the map would then be blocked, creating confusing conditions for local election officials preparing for an August primary.
The state Supreme Court wrote in its opinion on Tuesday that Hoskins must make a decision on whether the referendum can reach the ballot by Aug. 4, the same day as the primary election.
But local election officials need to finalize their ballots for the August election well before then, in the next few weeks.
On Thursday, Hoskin’s office sent out a news release instructing local election authorities across the state to continue election preparation activities, like candidate filing and ballot programming, based on the congressional districts established under the gerrymandered map.
“As Missouri’s chief elections official, my priority is protecting the integrity of the elections process,” Hoskins said in the news release. “The Supreme Court’s decision provides important guidance, and we are directing all local election authorities to follow the letter of the law and proceed under the provisions of House Bill 1.”
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway also issued a legal opinion asserting that local election authorities should move forward with the new map.
But the state of the referendum campaign — and the map itself — remains unclear.
In Platte County, the director of the local election board, Chris Hershey, said the situation is fairly straightforward since the county remains in the same congressional district in both maps.
The new map, approved by Republican lawmakers last year under pressure from President Donald Trump, slices Kansas City into three Republican-leaning congressional districts, placing Clay and Platte counties together into the 6th District, which stretches across northern Missouri to the Illinois border.
Kansas City voters will be split into the 4th, 5th and 6th Congressional Districts under the new map. The 5th District would extend more than 100 miles east to central Missouri, while the 4th District would stretch from downtown Kansas City to the Ozarks region.
“Fortunately for my office Platte County only contains representative District 6 under the old map and the new map. There is no decision to be made,” Hershey said in a statement to The Star.
Meanwhile, Tiffany Ellison, the Democrat director of the Clay County Board of Election Commissioners, said the board received formal guidance from the Secretary of State office Thursday afternoon.“The correspondence states that, following the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling, the HB 1 map remains in effect until the certification process for the referendum petition is completed,” she said in a statement.
In the notice, Hoskin also indicated that he will be sharing further directions on redistricting with local election officials next week, according to Ellison.
Ellison did not immediately respond to requests for comment about if Clay County plans to prepare and finalize its primary ballots with the new map yet.
