BY: RUDI KELLER
Missouri Independent
A portion of the signatures submitted last week to force a referendum on Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional district map won’t be reviewed before a Cole County judge rules on whether all should be checked.
People Not Politicians is challenging a decision by Secretary of State Denny Hoskins that no signatures collected before Oct. 14 — the day he certified the form of the referendum petition — are valid.
In an order issued Friday, Circuit Judge Christopher Limmbaugh wrote that he will wait to issue his ruling while local election officials determine if the portion being checked is sufficient to place the issue on a statewide ballot.
Last week, People Not Politicians delivered 691 boxes of petition sheets bearing more than 305,000 signatures to Hoskins’ office. There are signatures from every county in the state, organizers said, and they have little doubt they will reach the threshold of about 110,000 signatures to make the 2026 ballot.
In a filing in the case, People Not Politicians stated that about 103,000 of the signatures were collected before the cutoff date.
The other 202,000 signatures should be checked before he makes a decision, Limbaugh ruled.
“Conceivably, this could be enough signatures to place the referendum on the ballot thereby mooting the issues presented in the case at bar,” he wrote.
The case, he wrote, will be “in abeyance until the requisite number of signatures have been certified or up until enough signatures have been rejected so as to prevent plaintiffs’ referendum from appearing on the ballot.”
Limbaugh presided over a three-hour trial in the case last Monday.
Limbaugh ordered Hoskins to hold on to the signatures not sent to local election authorities for verification while the case is on hold. When the signatures were submitted, Hoskins said he was already acting to preserve the early signatures.
County clerks and election boards have until July 28 to finish checking the signatures.
Limbaugh has already ruled twice against opponents of the map forced through by the Republican majority during a September special session.
Limbaugh ruled last week lawmakers had the constitutional authority to enact the revised map.
And in October, he declined to issue a temporary order blocking any of the actions during the special session in a case brought by the Missouri NAACP. That case is set for a trial Monday afternoon.
The NAACP wants Limbaugh to declare that Gov. Mike Kehoe had no authority under the Missouri Constitution to call lawmakers into session for congressional redistricting and altering the majority needed to pass constitutional amendments proposed by initiative.
The fight over redistricting began in July, when President Donald Trump began pressuring Missouri Republicans to change the map to give the GOP an edge in seven of the state’s eight districts instead of the six they currently hold.
Trump kept up the pressure during the special session and state Senate Republicans used rule changes to undercut Democratic opposition and muscle the map to passage.
Last week, Democratic attorney Brad Ketcher filed a complaint with the Missouri Ethics Commission alleging any White House employee calling lawmakers about the redistricting plan should have been registered as a lobbyist.
The intended result from the new map is to flip the 5th District to the GOP. The district, based in Kansas City, has been represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver since 2005.
The district is carved up under the new map with portions attached to the 4th and 6th Districts. Heavily Republican areas stretching along the Missouri River to Boone County would be added to the remaining Kansas City portions.
If the referendum has sufficient signatures, the map would be on the November 2026 ballot unless lawmakers set an earlier date.