Missouri election officials will begin mailing Aug. 4 primary ballots Tuesday to military and overseas voters using the state’s gerrymandered congressional districts, even as the legal status of those districts remains unresolved.
Missourians in 28 counties have been assigned to a different congressional district than they were in 2024, thanks to a map that was drawn by Republicans last year as part of a plan to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanual Cleaver in the 5th District. Voters can check their registration through the secretary of state’s office to see whether their district changed.
Along with the changes that added voters in 14 counties to the 5th District, boundaries for five of the state’s seven other districts shifted as well. For example, St. Charles and Warren counties in eastern Missouri, previously split between the 2nd and 3rd districts, are now entirely within the 3rd District.
Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon, who in May said she would not update her voter lists until Secretary of State Denny Hoskins decided whether there will be a referendum on the new map, said Monday that she has her lists ready with voters assigned to the districts that will be used in the primary.
“There isn’t anything that we could do at this point, and I talked to all of the boards of elections in the St. Louis and the Kansas City areas,” Lennon said. “They all met last week, and they have all elected to go with the new maps, and so, in the interest of making sure that we’re all consistent at the local level, I am also going with the new maps, because it’s going to cause chaos if the locals are not consistent.”
When Lennon pressured Hoskins for a decision on the referendum, she objected to going through the time-consuming process of reassigning voters if the new districts were never used. In turn, Hoskins accused Lennon of violating election law.
Other local election officials defended Lennon’s stance, urging Hoskins to make a decision on the sufficiency of a petition filed by a political action committee People Not Politicians. Based on individual county reports posted by Hoskins’ office, People Not Politicians calculates that the petition is qualified in the necessary six districts, with just 250 signatures remaining to be checked.
Under the Missouri Constitution, a petition seeking a referendum on a new state law prevents it from taking effect until approved by voters. Under a recent Missouri Supreme Court ruling, that clause is only triggered when the secretary of state, after reviewing the petitions, decides that it has sufficient signatures and that the law is subject to a review by referendum.
Hoskins has refused to make a decision prior to the Aug. 4 deadline. That is why the districts designed in the September 2025 special session will be used in the primary.
If Hoskins determines the petition is sufficient, it means it never took effect, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ginger Gooch wrote in the May 12 opinion. If the petition lacks the required signatures, or is illegal for another reason, she wrote, the map has been in effect since Dec. 11.
The actual status of the map, Good wrote, “is impossible to say as of this opinion.”
Hearings on a last-chance lawsuit to force Hoskins to make a decision have been set for July 15, far too late to change the districts in use on Aug. 4.
Hoskins’ pending decision on the referendum creates the possibility that voters will nominate candidates in districts under one configuration in August but elect members of Congress in November using the districts as they were in 2022 and 2024.
The Missouri Centralized Voter Database is retaining the information identifying which voters would revert to the older map if the referendum petition is deemed sufficient. When a voter checks their information, it shows both district designations.
Lennon is also displaying both district assignments in the voter search feature of her webpage.
Under the map used in 2022 and 2024, Boone County was split between the 3rd and 4th districts. Under the gerrymandered map, the county is split between the 3rd and 5th districts and the boundary through the county changed.
Posting both district designations for voters will help people understand the change, Lennon said.
“We did it for transparency,” she said.
Whatever Hoskins decides about the referendum is likely to be challenged in court. Voter assignments can be reverted to the previous districts at any time, Lennon said.
“We retain the ability to do that,” she said.
A decision that suspends the effect of the 2025 redistricting law could raise questions about the primary results, Lennon said.
“Even though we will have, knock on wood, a seamless election for Aug. 4, that doesn’t mean that we won’t have litigation about it after the fact,” Lennon said.
Absentee voting for people who will be away from home, or have another accepted reason for not voting in person, begins next week. The two-week early voting period, called “no-excuse” absentee voting in state law, begins July 21.
The last day to register to vote in the Aug. 4 primary is July 8.