In battling a GOP gerrymander, Missouri voters are fighting for American democracy

President Donald Trump’s redistricting arms race is wreaking havoc across the country, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. 

From the still-pending lawsuits to remove Democrats from office in Texas to the surgical targeting of Black voters in North Carolina and the threats and intimidation against lawmakers in Indiana, it’s bad news wherever it lands. 

But in Missouri, the fight has grown into something that threatens to cut democracy to the bone. What began as a Trump scheme to tilt the 2026 midterm elections in Republicans’ favor has provoked a fundamental battle over who ultimately holds power in the state: politicians or the voters.

Unlike in other GOP-controlled states that have redrawn their congressional maps at Trump’s behest, the Missouri constitution guarantees voters the right to veto legislation by putting it to a statewide referendum vote. To get the GOP gerrymander on the ballot, Missourians had 90 days after the legislative session adjourned in September to gather more than 100,000 signatures. 

In December, they handed in nearly three times that amount.

But rather than follow the state constitution, GOP officials have made their position clear: They’re hellbent on doing whatever it takes to stop Missourians from voting. 

It’s not clear yet which side will win this fight, but the battle is about far more than the one congressional seat at stake. National Republicans have already spent $2.9 million on the ground just trying to stop the referendum campaign. 

Denise Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition and an adjunct professor at Washington University School of Law, told Democracy Docket that Missourians are trying to win this fight on behalf of voters across the country. 

“I hope that can be a lesson — not just in Missouri, but in other states as well — that the people can still retain power,” she said, “even in the face of this growing authoritarianism around voting.”  

‘Why are they allowed to do this?’

Until recently, Benjamin Roesler had never been involved in political organizing. He watched the news and felt hopeless, like there wasn’t anything he could do about the threats to democracy under the second Trump administration. 

Then, last year, Missouri Republicans passed a new congressional map. For the Kansas City resident, the plan hit close to home, breaking up the diverse population of his neighborhood and scattering their votes across multiple Republican-leaning congressional districts. When Roesler heard about a group collecting signatures to put the plan to a referendum vote, he jumped at the chance to volunteer.

Roesler collected 150 signatures in a single day, talking to his neighbors near their polling location while a local election was underway. 

“I sat out there all day. I was there from like nine to five,” Roesler said. “I just looked at it as clocking in for a shift at America.”

Months later, he still doesn’t know whether any of those signatures will count. 

In October, Missouri’s chief election official, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, announced that he would reject nearly 100,000 signatures, including the 150 Roesler gathered that day. Hoskins claimed any signatures collected before he approved the referendum petition on Oct. 14 were not valid. People Not Politicians, the group organizing the referendum effort, immediately challenged Hoskins’ decision in court, but the case is on hold pending verification of the roughly 200,000 signatures collected after Oct. 14. 

That was only the beginning of Republicans’ all-out attack on the referendum.

Roesler got back to work, collecting more signatures and helping to coordinate a team of fellow volunteers. 

But he started receiving alarming reports from the volunteers: They were being harassed by people who yelled from pickup trucks, telling others not to sign the petition. When the volunteers spoke with them, the agitators said they were brought in and paid to stop the signature gatherers. 

A new ethics report filed this week revealed that Put Missouri First – a Republican political action committee (PAC) formed in October to stop the referendum – spent $2.9 million on efforts to thwart signature gatherers. Virtually all of that money was paid to Patriot Grassroots, a political campaign company that has been promoted by Donald Trump Jr. 

The referendum volunteers were “a lot of women, many of them of retirement age, out there just doing their duty as citizens, being threatened by paid agitators from out of state,” Roesler said.

Patriot Grassroots did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. In Utah, where the company has been heavily involved in a GOP signature drive to repeal an anti-gerrymander law, voters said canvassers gave them misleading information about the campaign. 

After the threats came the text messages warning voters to remove their names from the petition “before it’s too late.” They were paid for by the Republican National Committee.

Roesler was horrified. “That’s literally voter intimidation. That is a threat. And they sent that via text to thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.

Then came threats of ICE. In November, Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced an investigation into a firm working in support of the referendum, accusing the company of hiring undocumented workers to gather signatures. She provided no evidence for those allegations.

Soon, Donald Trump Jr. targeted People Not Politicians executive director Richard von Glahn on social media, claiming he was “trying to STEAL a GOP house seat in Missouri through an unlawful referendum.” 

GOP officials also wrote up a summary of the referendum measure that would appear on the ballot, telling voters the new map “better reflects statewide voting patterns.” People Not Politicians is challenging that ballot language in court, and Hoskins’ office has admitted it likely would prejudice voters against the measure.

Hoskins is now also claiming that the new map is already in effect – even though Missouri Republicans have suspended challenged legislation in the past until voters had a chance to hold the referendum. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Missouri is fighting that decision in a separate lawsuit.

Even if referendum supporters have the law on their side, what they may not have is time. 

Missouri Republicans defeated a similar effort in 2019, running out the clock on a referendum that could have vetoed the state’s new abortion ban. They created administrative delays until the organizers of that referendum, the ACLU of Missouri, had only two weeks to gather signatures. 

Roesler said he’s not discouraged by the games Republicans are playing to stop the referendum – if anything, he’s more determined. He believes Missourians need to take away power from officials who literally don’t want them to vote. 

“Why are they allowed to do this?” Roesler asked. “It’s kind of the same story as we’re seeing all over the country and at the federal level: Why is no one stopping them?”

Canary in the coal mine

Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, is also co-counsel in a lawsuit challenging the new map, which argues that the Missouri constitution bans mid-decade redistricting. 

When Missouri became the second state to give in to Trump’s redistricting demands, she worried the administration was testing out its national plans in the Show-Me State.   

“I think we’re kind of a canary in the coal mine. I think they wanted to try it in Missouri to see what would happen,” Lieberman said. “And guess what? People fought back.” 

She believes states like Indiana and Kansas may have refused to redistrict after they saw how unpopular it was in Missouri. 

As Missourians fight back, the battle over redistricting is deepening the fault line between voters and Republican officials, revealing that the GOP is willing to torch a century-old state constitutional right in the name of partisanship. 

“That’s the biggest shame of all of this: that our leaders really don’t want you to vote,” Lieberman said. “They don’t want the citizens to participate.” 

Unfortunately, she also thinks the GOP campaign is working. 

“The nastiness, the vitriol, the not playing by the rules, the outright lies — this is the kind of stuff that makes people turn off the news at night and say ‘Screw this, I’m not going to go to my local community meeting because it’s filled with rage and vitriol and lies and I can’t trust any of it,’” Lieberman said. 

Von Glahn, the People Not Politicians executive director, said he expected Republicans to put up a relentless fight to stop the referendum, but he didn’t fully anticipate the desperation of their tactics – namely, Hoskins’ recent insistence that the new map is now in effect, despite all the signatures turned in.

Republicans spent nearly $3 million because they understood “that signature gathering mattered, and that if we turned in enough signatures, their map would be paused,” he said. But after People Not Politicians got enough signatures, the GOP has “taken the complete opposite position and said that the signatures don’t matter.” 

What happens next?

Missouri’s redistricting battle has opened a Pandora’s Box of litigation. Meanwhile, the clock is counting down to the election. 

Missouri candidates are scheduled to file for a place on the 2026 primary ballot between Feb. 24 and March 31. The primary election is set to be held on Aug. 4. 

But legal certainty about the map remains out of reach.

Multiple cases have been filed challenging the gerrymander, including one that has been appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. If that litigation is successful, the growing number of lawsuits would be moot. 

Some Missourians are also concerned the very referendum process enshrined in the state constitution could be at risk. They worry that the GOP may make curtailing it a major goal in the next legislative session. 

Tori Schafer, an ACLU of Missouri attorney working on the map suspension case, said Missourians understand that this fight is bigger than one U.S. congressional seat.

“We know that this is a direct attack not only on Missouri’s democratic process, but on democratic processes across the country as it relates to voting on their congressional representatives,” she told Democracy Docket. “And we’re not taking that lightly.”