Are voters headed for a second trip to the ballot box for Clean Missouri in 2020?

In 2018, Missouri voters approved Amendment 1 with a 62% majority, triggering a partisan fight over the mother’s milk of politics: the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans. The weapon of choice is legislative districting, which outlines the shape and location of the areas members of the state House and Senate will represent.

Every 10 years, state legislatures are tasked with the chore of updating these maps, with the stated goal of making them more fairly representative of the political configuration of the states, and thereby the nation, but everyone has known for years decennial redistricting has become primarily a tool for the party in power in each state to expand political influence by jiggering the coming decade’s map. For several years, Republicans have had majorities in the Missouri General Assembly, allowing them to craft voting district maps to keep them in power.

Having come to believe this cycle of power maintenance would not likely change under current rules, Democrats proposed Amendment 1, otherwise known on the 2018 ballot as Clean Missouri. The initiative made window-dressing changes in campaign and lobbying rules, but the big deal was a substantial change in redistricting rules that would diminish partisan political control — causing Democrats to look forward with increasing optimism, and Republicans to fear loss of the electoral advantage they had come to savor.

At the heart of the Clean Missouri change is the requirement a state demographer be chosen to oversee the redistricting process.

As a determined independent on matters of this type, I will agree with worried Republicans there’s no way to predict the effect of a state demographer. They have reason to believe any change is likely to be for the worse and the opposite is true for Democrats, setting the stage for the coming partisan warfare.

As the new legislative session gets under way, we are hearing noble-sounding arguments from both sides: Republicans wanting a do-over because they say voters were confused in choosing Clean Missouri and deserve a chance to rethink the issue, and Democrats outraged because Republicans want to deny the value of the public vote that created the new system.

Make no mistake. Concern for the integrity of the Missouri Constitution and the prerogative of voters are econd to the desire for plain old partisan power. In this struggle, the weaker group tends to appear most innocent and worthy, and the powerful looks most greedy and undemocratic. As we perfectly high-minded and fair citizens at large observe as the titans seek to gain a selfish advantage, we will have a hard time keeping focus on the fairness of the system, while not letting our own partisan leanings creep into what we think are the best ways to draw utterly fair voting districts.

Rather early, we are likely to decide there is no way to guarantee independence, nonpartisanship and all the other virtues we might imagine should attend the perfect system. Some years ago, I wrote that perhaps we should turn the job over to a computer programmed to draw districts based on the basic essentials of equal population and cartographic configuration, leaving out the impossible determinations of how many partisans live in the redrafted districts. One might notice this is almost the exact opposite of today’s criteria displayed in each decade’s new map except for population parity, the mathematics of which are hard to fudge.

In this sort of game the will of statewide voters is bound to carry weight, but don’t underestimate the ability of a powerful bloc in office to mess with the process. The redistricting fight pits two majoritarian blocs against each other: Republicans in the General Assembly versus voters who approved Amendment 1. Let the battle begin.

Another trip to the ballot box may be in the offing for a redo or reaffirmation of Clean Missouri. In that case, the campaign we might expect during election year 2020 is a frightening prospect.

This story was originally published January 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Are voters headed for a second trip to the ballot box for Clean Missouri in 2020?."