Country clerks confused as Missouri AG forces gerrymandered map down their throats | Opinion
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway isn’t seemingly too fond of dissent. How else to explain her office’s proclivity to take legal action against those who don’t fall in line with the Republican agenda under her leadership?
Almost on cue, this week she promised to use the weight of her office to bring legal action against any county clerk who refuses to use the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map during the upcoming primary election in August.
Keep in mind, because of an ongoing referendum process that needs to wrap up ASAP, there are serious questions about the legality of the redrawn map known as HB 1 anyway.
“State and local election officials must take all appropriate steps to ensure the HB 1 map is fully implemented in advance of the 2026 primary elections,” Hanaway wrote in a legal opinion issued this week, The Star reported. “Failure to do so is a clear violation of the law.”
We all must question whether Hanaway’s motive here is simply driven by a partisan agenda to remove longtime Democratic 5th District U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City from office. I strongly suppose that is the case.
In an email sent to me on Friday, Miller County Clerk Clinton Jenkins, president of the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities, said the association has “concerns about the petition that continues to loom over the situation.”
When I asked Jenkins if the group planned to take a stance against Hanaway’s legal opinion, he wrote that members would meet next week to discuss the issue.
“We are planning to discuss a stance for the association on Monday, I believe,” he wrote.
If I was in one of those duly-elected positions as clerk, I’d push forward with the old map. Until Secretary of State Denny Hoskins certifies a petition referendum that would give Missourians an opportunity to vote on the redrawn map in November, county clerks statewide still have the old — and legal— map on their side.
Besides, opinions such as the one Hanaway issued are considered non-binding legal advice for state officials and agencies and carry no weight under law, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled more than 50 years ago.
After a series of legal rulings surrounding the new map — redrawn and enacted by the Missouri GOP’s supermajority in Jefferson City to curry favor with President Donald Trump — questions remain about which map is legal: the one used statewide in 2022 or the new one.
And we won’t know until Hoskins, a hard-right Republican from Warrensburg, acts on the petition to vote on the so-called “Missouri First Map” state Republicans have shoved down our collective throat.
Threat against officials not surprising
When it comes to litigation, the Missouri attorney general’s office has shown it isn’t afraid to file baseless lawsuit after baseless lawsuit — so Hanaway’s threat to county clerks still needs to be taken seriously. In recent years, she and her predecessor Andrew Bailey have sued a private business (Starbucks Coffee), a nonprofit governing body for high school sports (the Missouri State High School Activities Association) and a political action committee (People Not Politicians Missouri), among other questionable legal filings. Her threatening to take legal action against other public officials that don’t fall in line and use a map we don’t even know is legal isn’t all that surprising.
Until Hoskins certifies the signatures on the petition — he told reporters this week that the new map is in play for the Aug. 4 primary election — all Missourians will remain in a weird, chaotic and confusing holding pattern. The redistricting saga is so convoluted in this state that there is a very strong possibility that we could go to the polls in August and vote for candidates for Congress in a district that we don’t even live in, and cast ballots in November using an entirely different map.
That is, unless county clerks unite until this legal mess is sorted out. If and when Hoskins certifies the referendum for the ballot — People Not Politicians Missouri executive director Richard von Glahn told me that data from Hoskins’ own office confirmed the more than 305,000 signatures the PAC collected were sufficient — the new map would become null and void until the public voted on it.
Sidenote: In Jackson County, elections are handled by a board of election commissioners appointed by the governor, so commissioners may face more pressure to implement the new map. However, before Hanaway issued her opinion, Tammy Brown, — the Republican director of the Jackson County Election Board — told The Star that the local election board would not finalize the new map for the August primaries until Hoskins makes a decision.
When I called Brown’s office on Friday, I was told she was out of the office and unavailable to comment. A follow-up email to her hadn’t been returned.
Meanwhile, other area election officials have said they are undecided on which map to use in the Aug. 4 primaries, according to The Star. Others have said they plan to use the new one.
Locally, Shawn Kieffer, the Republican director of the Kansas City Election Board, told The Star the board was planning to move forward under the new map, but needed guidance from Hoskins.
Tiffany Ellison, the Democratic director of the Clay County Board of Election Commissioners, told The Star the board had not taken an official position yet.
And Ray County clerk Heather Maulsby told The Star election officials there are waiting to implement the new map until Hoskins decides on the referendum campaign.
Election boards in holding pattern
Adding to the statewide confusion is this: According to Jenkins, the clerks’ association president, election officials can’t revise voter rolls to reflect the new map because Hoskins’ office has not opened the statewide voter registration system to accept the changes. Jenkins told the Missouri Independent that county clerks and election boards all over the state are waiting on Hoskins to proceed — as we all are.
In Columbia, Boone County clerk Brianna Lennon said the board would use the 2022 map on Aug. 4. In a letter she wrote to Hoskins on Wednesday, Lennon said it was almost impossible to update voter rolls to align with the redrawn districts in Boone County until Hoskins determined enough valid signatures were collected on the referendum petition to force a statewide vote on the map.
“Until that time, I have no actionable legal information as to what congressional map is in effect,” Lennon wrote, “so I will not be making any changes to the map that was in place prior to the enactment” of the gerrymandered map.,
Hanaway’s threat soon followed.
My hope is that all local election officials would ignore Hanaway’s edict and use the old map, as Lennon said she planned to do. It’s not too late, either. Clerks have until May 26 to finalize ballots in Missouri.
In a recent ruling, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the gerrymandered map as constitutional. In a separate ruling, the court determined that that act of merely turning in the redistricting referendum signatures did not automatically suspend the map. Therefore, it was impossible to say if the new map was legal or not until Hoskins certifies the petition, the state’s highest court ruled.
Under Missouri statute, once the referendum is certified, the new map would retroactively be blocked from the day the petition was submitted, which was Dec. 9, 2025, in this case.
So why shouldn’t county clerks all over Missouri use the old map that we already know is legit?
