In an effort to redistrict the state mid-decade, Republican lawmakers in Missouri passed a new congressional map featuring a precinct in Kansas City that is accounted for twice.
State Republicans took about one week to pass a new congressional map that slices the Kansas City area in an effort to dilute Democratic votes and create an additional Republican-held district. However, their efforts appeared to overlook that the same Kansas City precinct is in two congressional districts.
Under the new map, about 875 Kansas City voters would have two congressional representatives and be able to cast two ballots for congressional representation, according to a report from St. Louis Magazine.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri argued that the approved bill improperly designates the voting district of Kansas City, VTD 811, into both the 4th Congressional District and the 5th District. While the lawsuit argues that the map should be thrown out, it also challenges it on the grounds that it splits communities and violates the Missouri Constitution by changing the districts between federal censuses, which occur every 10 years per the Constitution.
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal group that advocates fair redistricting, is also involved in the suit.
“Either they double-assigned one precinct, or there is one precinct that has noncontiguous parts to it — where it has a main part and a separated part — or it means there’s two precincts that have the same name,” Mark Gaber, the center’s senior director for redistricting, told St. Louis Public Radio on Monday. “You can’t tell from the text of the law which geography for this set of about 800 people goes to which district.”
“This doesn’t happen very often,” he added. “And the reason it doesn’t is because usually states don’t pass their map in a week and a half’s time — they have some amount of, you know, public viewing of it, vetting, to make sure errors like this don’t happen.”
Gov. Mike Kehoe (R-MO) still needs to approve the map, but he has indicated he will sign the bill as is. However, he went on the offensive on Wednesday, saying it is wrong that the precinct is included in two districts.
He said there are two distinct geographic areas with the VTD 811 distinction in the Census Bureau files used for determining the population of a particular location. However, he argued that does not mean the same voters are in two different districts.
“The entire source of confusion is due to the existence of two entirely different VTDs using the same number,” he said.
Missouri Senate Democrats have also questioned the discrepancy, posting on social media on Wednesday, “Did the GOP mess up their own map?”
“Senators were told to get in line and not ask questions,” the post said. “No one received the mapping software file. Nobody would say who ‘drew’ the map.”
REDISTRICTING WARS THREATEN TO MAKE CONGRESS MORE PARTISAN
The new map also satisfies President Donald Trump’s request. He told Missouri Republicans to pass the map “as is.”
A nationwide debate over redistricting began earlier this year after Trump successfully pressured Texas Republicans to redraw their map mid-decade ahead of the 2026 midterm elections to give the GOP a further advantage and defend House Republicans’ razor-thin majority.