Missouri judge strikes ballot summary for Trump-backed congressional redistricting plan

JEFFERSON CITY – If Missouri voters get to decide whether to adopt new U.S. House districts backed by President Donald Trump, the ballot proposal presented to them won’t say a word about gerrymandering.

A state judge on Friday ordered a new, toned-down description of the redistricting plan after Missouri’s Republican secretary of state acknowledged that he had crafted an unfair summary likely to create bias for the new districts by describing the old ones as “gerrymandered.”

The ruling marked at least a partial victory for opponents of the new map, who previously submitted more than 300,000 petition signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum. But it remains to be seen whether the referendum actually will occur this November.

Election officials are still in the process of verifying whether opponents gathered enough valid petition signatures. And the state Supreme Court is considering a separate lawsuit seeking to invalidate the new map while asserting that mid-decade redistricting isn’t allowed under the state constitution.

Missouri lawmakers approved new congressional districts last September — the second Republican-led state after Texas to respond to Trump’s call to redraw districts to try to give the GOP an advantage in this year’s midterm elections.

That triggered an unusual tit-for-tat redistricting battle that also spread to Republican-led North Carolina and Ohio and Democratic-led California and Virginia. Republican-led Florida is set to join the congressional redistricting debate with a special legislative session in April.