Kansas and Missouri voters have redistricting questions. KCUR held a town hall to help answer them

By Laura Ziegler,

Published November 7, 2025 at 4:00 AM CST

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Two men in suits sit in club chairs on a stage engaged in answering qurestions. — Dr. Samuel Wang, at left, created the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a voting rights laboratory, to understand distortions in congressional districts. Edward D. Greim, partner at the Kansas City law firm of Graves Garrett Greim, recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Louisiana's redistricting plan.

KCUR, Generation Listen and the Kansas City Public Library recently convened a community forum to explore the complex issue of redistricting in Missouri and Kansas. Up to Date host Steve Kraske moderated a panel and took questions from the audience, as experts and reporters addressed the practicality, constitutionality and legality of the plans.

More than 150 Kansas Citians from both sides of the state line filled the seats in the Kansas City Public Library's Plaza branch on Oct. 30 to ask questions and hear arguments related to the congressional redistricting debate.

"How will the needs of neighborhoods east of Troost ... be prioritized in a district whose dominant geography is rural, with competing priorities?" one audience member asked, referencing the new Missouri map that expands Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's 5th District hundreds of miles east into deep red, rural counties.

More than 150 people listened, dozens submitting questions, during a question and answer forum about redistricting at the Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch, on Oct. 30, 2025 — More than 150 people listened, and dozens submitted questions, during the question and answer forum at the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Public Library on Oct. 30, 2025.

Most congressional districts are supposed to represent like interests of a community, known in Congress as "communities of interest." But Dr. Samuel Wang of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project used the metaphor of barbecue to suggest the new boundaries don't serve similar populations.

"So, as I think many people in this room know, Kansas City, the largest city in Missouri for a long time, has been in one single (5th) District," Wang said. "Now, if you go 10 minutes east of here ... (you are) in the same district as Jefferson City — 150 miles (away)."

Another audience-member wondered: "Is the new Missouri congressional map constitutional?"

The question is at the heart of several pending lawsuits challenging the new map. Greim, who has defended previous Missouri redistricting maps, said it is.

"The U.S. Constitution is what actually gives the authority — not just to states, but to state legislatures — to draw the districts," Greim said, "and this is an area in which the state legislature's powers are at its apex."

"In other words, unless the constitution of the state says you can't do something, then you can. Their power does not depend on a specific phrase in the Constitution giving them that power," he said.

Experts Dr. Samuel Wang and Edward Greim are joined by KCUR's Savannah Hawley- Bates and Zane Irwin who explained particular details of the Missouri and Kansas plans. — Dr. Samuel Wang and Edward Greim are joined by KCUR's Savannah Hawley-Bates and Zane Irwin, at far right, who explained particular details of the Missouri and Kansas plans.

KCUR reporters Savannah Hawley-Bates and Zane Irwin contextualized the conversation based on their own reporting of the redistricting debate in Missouri and Kansas.

Edward Greim, partner at Graves Garrett Greim Attorneys at Law
Dr. Samuel Wang, professor of neuroscience at Princeton University and director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project
Savannah Hawley-Bates, KCUR Missouri politics and government reporter
Zane Irwin, Kansas News Service political reporter