Secretary of State Denny Hoskins admitted Friday that he wrote a ballot summary “likely to create prejudice” against a possible referendum on Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional district map.
Hoskins’ lawyer, Kathleen Hunker of the attorney general’s office, made the admission during a hearing in a court case challenging the ballot summary and said it would be revised in negotiations with sponsors of the referendum.
“On a further reflection of the ballot title, the secretary has come to believe that the language, though defensible, does come close enough to the line of being inherently argumentative and likely to create prejudice,” Hunker told Cole County Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe. “That means we can do better, and so we are going to withdraw our opposition to the plaintiff’s claim about how the language is inherently argumentative.”
A political action committee called People Not Politicians on Dec. 9 turned in more than 300,000 signatures to force a statewide vote on the redistricting plan Republicans muscled through a September special session. The PAC objected to the ballot summary as soon as it became public and filed a lawsuit on Nov. 20.
Chuck Hatfield, attorney for People Not Politicians, told Stumpe that Hoskins will have to admit more — that the language he wrote is insufficient and unfair — to meet the standards for revising the summary.
“Your honor can’t enter an order just because it’s close to the line,” Hatfield said. “We’re going to have to have a finding that it’s insufficient and unfair. And I’m asking them to agree to that, and if they don’t, then we need a trial.”
The case before Stumpe was scheduled for a trial next Friday. He set a new date, Feb. 9, in case there is no agreement on what the revised summary should say.
The ballot summary written by Hoskins asks if voters approve the law, “which repeals Missouri’s existing gerrymandered congressional plan that protects incumbent politicians, and replaces it with new congressional boundaries that keep more cities and counties intact, are more compact, and better reflects statewide voting patterns?”
People Not Politicians objects to the characterization of the reapportionment made in 2022 as a “gerrymandered congressional plan that protects incumbents” and the factual basis for saying it keeps more cities and counties intact. The bill itself is just a list of voting districts and counties assigned to each district and the summary Hoskins wrote cannot be found in its contents, the PACs court filings state.
The summary’s statement about statewide voting patterns also brought objections. Recent elections gave Republicans about 60% of the vote and Democrats about 40%. The new map would give Democrats 12.5% of the state delegation instead of one-quarter.
Republicans want the new congressional map to please President Donald Trump, who demanded the changes as a means to protect the GOP’s slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Using the new map, Republicans hope to win seven of the state’s eight congressional seats by adding enough GOP votes to flip the 5th District, currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City. Republicans currently hold six of the eight seats.
If People Not Politicians and Hoskins’ office can agree on the factual basis for changing the summary, it would end the case but not litigation over the special session and the congressional map.
There are at least eight other lawsuits, six in state court and two in federal court, directly or indirectly related to the actions of the legislature or People Not Politicians.
The most recently filed case challenges assertions by Hoskins and Attorney General Catherine Hanaway that the map passed in September took effect on Dec. 11, 90 days after the end of the special session.
In that case, filed by the ACLU of Missouri, the state is accusing People Not Politicians and Hatfield of encouraging a lawsuit the PAC could not bring on its own. It has subpoenaed Hatfield, People Not Politicians Director Richard von Glahn and the PAC for records the state believes will show the connection.
“The state believes that PNP, Von Glahn or their agents recruited (the ACLU plaintiffs) as proxies to bring this lawsuit,” Solicitor General Louis Capozzi wrote in one filing in the case.
And the state is seeking sanctions against Hatfield in a federal case dismissed in early December that sought to block the petition drive entirely. In the federal filing, Capozzi argued that Hatfield admitted in federal court that the map would take effect even if signatures were submitted to force a vote.
“Yet during the following days, defendants and Mr. Hatfield personally have aggressively and repeatedly communicated the opposite position to the media, stating unambiguously that their mere act of submitting referendum signatures immediately froze (the redistricting law) and prevented it from going into effect,” Capozzi wrote.
In the Friday hearing before Stumpe, Hatfield noted that Capozzi is seeking sanctions and making accusations that he or People Not Politicians is sponsoring the case over when the map takes effect. The order from Stumpe directing Hoskins to revise the ballot summary needs to settle all legal issues in the case, he said.
“Mr. Capozzi sought sanctions against me in federal court, and he’s either confused about what happened in federal court, or he’s intentionally misrepresenting what happened in federal court,” Hatfield said. “I’m assuming he’s confused about what happened, and I don’t want any confusion here.”
There is also confusion over which of the more than 300,000 signatures will be checked to see if the referendum petition meets the threshold of approximately 110,000 signatures spread over six congressional districts.
In court, and in media statements, Hoskins and his attorneys have said only signature pages with at least one signature dated Oct. 14 or later will be checked. Hoskins approved the form of the petition on Oct. 13.
Of the 49,773 pages with signatures, 33,068 have been sent to local election authorities to verify whether the signatures are from registered voters. The rest, Hoskins’ office said Friday in a statement to The Independent, “having invalid dates were scanned, retained, and organized separately.”
Speaking on KMOX radio on Wednesday morning, Hoskins repeated the statement that signatures aren’t being checked.
“We’re not counting those,” Hoskins said. “And, you know, unless a judge issues a court order and says, hey, yes, you must count these. But otherwise, we’ve set those aside. They should not count toward that referendum.“
But in statements to People Not Politicians, Chrissy Peters, Hoskins’ director of elections, said the pages retained in the secretary of state’s office are being checked for signature verification.
In a statement intended to clarify the confusion, Rachael Dunn, spokeswoman for Hoskins, said Friday that no signature checks are being made in Hoskins to determine if the petition has sufficient signatures to be placed on the ballot.
She said only signatures on pages sent to local election authorities will be counted.
“The secretary of state’s Office is not,” Dunn wrote, “utilizing any lines reviewed on pages dated Oct. 13 and earlier for determination towards sufficiency.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
