‘This is not right’: grassroots campaign aims to repeal Missouri Republicans’ gerrymandering | Missouri

KWhen campaigners spread out into neighborhoods, they often rely on complex lists that tell them things like the voter’s political party and their likelihood of supporting a particular cause. Jill Imbler isn’t interested in any of this.

The 69-year-old man has lived his entire life in Moberly, Missouri, a town of about 14,000. It doesn’t use GPS when driving around, it knows where people live and when they will return home. And there’s a pretty good chance that, or one of their six siblings knows them personally.

He also knows that there is a very good chance that they may disagree with him politically. Imbler is president of the Randolph county Democratic club, and Randolph county is about as Republican as it gets. Donald Trump won the district by more than 50 points in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. He carried the state easily in all three elections.

But Imbler nevertheless began collecting signatures to repeal a new congressional map abruptly adopted by Missouri Republicans in mid-September. At Donald Trump’s request, Republicans held a special legislative session and voted out longtime Democratic representative Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City congressional district and replaced it with a Republican one.

It was part of Trump’s nationwide push for about a half-dozen Republican-controlled states to reshuffle maps to find more GOP seats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. But Missouri offers something different: a chance for voters to rebuke politicians and block the map from going into effect.

A provision added to the Missouri constitution in 1908 allows voters to pause the enactment of most enacted laws and submit them to a referendum if they collect enough signatures. Since 1908, Missouri voters have used the citizen veto process nearly two dozen times. Inside almost every casevoters chose to repeal the law they were asked to vote for.

The Missouri legislature approved the map in mid-September, and Republican Governor Mike Kehoe signed it into law at the end of the month. Imbler, her husband, Lynn, and campaigners in Missouri have until Dec. 11 to turn in more than 106,000 signatures, which must come from six of the state’s eight congressional districts. If they can, the new map will remain on hold until voters decide whether to accept it in a 2026 referendum. Canvassers say they’ve already raised more than 200,000 They sign and say they plan to deliver more. “We’re turning in the signatures, the map is on hold,” said Richard Von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, the group leading the signature-gathering effort.

The Missouri effort is being closely watched amid a redistricting battle between Democrats and Republicans that will determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives by the middle of the decade. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin three-seat majority, but they redrew congressional districts in Missouri, Texas and North Carolina to add up to seven seats. (The Texas map was recently struck down by a three-judge panel, but the U.S. supreme court on Friday temporarily stayed the decision pending an appeal.) Democrats are preparing to counter those gains with redrawn maps in California and Virginia.

Aware of the huge implications of the Missouri effort, outside groups poured money into the campaign. Committees on both sides have raised the issue 7 million dollarsIt includes funding from national Republicans who oppose the effort.

Imbler, a retired teacher’s aide, ran for several local offices in the ’90s and said she was outraged to see Missouri lawmakers move to weaken ballot referendums approved by Missouri voters last year that protected abortion and increased the minimum wage.

“I realized, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t have the final say,'” he said over a cup of coffee at the Bean, a coffee shop just a few blocks from the old train station downtown. “It made me angry; I realized it wasn’t right.

“When we first went over this, there were a lot of comments of ‘oh my god,’ you’re actually going to be going door to door in Moberly,” he said. “I said, ‘Yes, I will.’ If the door closes on me, it will close on me.”

But on a warm autumn afternoon earlier this month, the doors outside Imbler were never closing.

As Imbler went door to door at a retirement apartment complex, he didn’t even have to mention gerrymandering before people said they were willing to sign. “Have you heard of gerrymandering, where entire congressional districts are reapportioned?” ” he would begin. “They flipped all of our congressional districts to push for power so the Republicans could get the majority of the seats. They’re trying to unseat Emanuel Cleaver,” he said.

“Normally we do this at the end of the decade after the census, and Gov. Kehoe made the decision to do this in the middle of the decade — he didn’t give us any reason,” he added. Almost everyone he talked to for an hour agreed to sign.

“I feel this way because I think they are cheating to get their votes concentrated in one spot,” said one voter who signed the petition.

“I think some things should be left alone,” said another voter who signed. “There are some things that shouldn’t be changed.”

Imbler has been giving a similar speech in Moberly since early October, when he started collecting signatures. A few weeks ago, he said, he went to Cairo, a small town just outside Moberly, to find a man who wanted to sign. She left him her phone number and told him to forward it to anyone who might be interested. By the time he got home, he had nine more signatures on the gerrymandering petition.

“People know me. So if I don’t know you personally, I either taught your child, went to school with your brother, or rode the bus with your sister, or worked with you,” he said. “When people see that this is an issue on which I would come forward and ask for signatures, they realize that I am not a radical in any way.

His tour also included a stop at a local motorcycle shop in town during a toy drive in late October. Imbler went to school with the two men who now run the shop, and they let him set up a table in their showroom. He and Lynn set up a table between the Trump 2024 sign and the rebel flag. “[They] “We are willing to sign, and we agree that this is not about Democrat or Republican, it is about the vote of the people,” he said, and by the end of the day, they had collected 56 signatures.

Aware of the possibility of blocking the new map, Republicans launched an all-out effort to stop the referendum. Republican Denny Hoskins, Missouri secretary of state, More than 90,000 signatures was thrown out. A group funded by the Republican National Committee recently sent out a text message encouraging people. withdraw their signatures on petitions.

Missouri attorney general also filed a lawsuit separate case It is based on a fringe legal theory that holds that the state legislature has exclusive authority to draw congressional districts and therefore cannot be overturned through citizen veto. A shadowy group, the Kansas City Star, offered $5,000 to campaigners to stop collecting signatures reported.

“This is not an easy task. This is not something you do just because you’re a little upset,” von Glahn said. “It is really reserved for gross violations of the legislature.”