KANSAS CITY, MO — The districts that represent Missouri residents in the state legislature will change once the 2020 U.S. census numbers are final next year.
The Clean Missouri amendment passed in 2018 defined the rules for drawing those new boundaries. But now, voters will decide whether to keep those changes in place or restore the old way of redistricting with the Amendment 3 question on the Missouri ballot.
The question before voters is who will decide how the state's redistricting lines are drawn. That's important because the pool of voters in those redrawn districts will decide who will represent them in the Missouri legislature.
Amendment 3 supporters have a laundry list of reasons they want to replace the Clean Missouri amendment with Amendment 3.
Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, said in a virtual news conference Monday that "Amendment 3 will keep communities together. It will maintain the redistricting plan that we've had since the 1940s, a plan that has led to supermajorities of Democrats and supermajorities of Republicans, clearly a plan that is fair."
Missouri State Sen. Dan Hegeman said he had concerns about the Clean Missouri amendment that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2018.
"It's my great concern that our communities will find their voice diminished in Jefferson City because of the liberal think-tank ideas contained in the criteria of Amendment 1 passed in 2018," Hegeman said.
Clean Missouri is the group opposing Amendment 3. The group's nonpartisan coalition launched a $7 million campaign to keep the 2018 Clean Missouri amendment on the books. It was approved in 2018 with a two-thirds majority of Missouri voters.
"We've got everyone from former Missouri U.S. Sen. Jack Danforth to the AARP of Missouri to the League of Women Voters to the NAACP all saying, look at what's going on in the fine print," Clean Missouri campaign manager Sean Nicholson said. "This is all about politicians trying to protect themselves. We need to vote no on Amendment 3."
Under the Clean Missouri provisions, the state auditor would choose from a list of bipartisan panelists who will decide where the new district lines are drawn. But Clean Missouri advocates insist it's a fair process.
"The very first rule in the criteria of order says you've got to protect the voting power of communities of color," Nicholson said. "The second rule says that overall outcome for the whole map , not individual districts, need to be fair and there needs to be as much competition as practical and then all that has to happen with compact contiguous districts that respect political boundaries."
If Amendment 3 passes, the governor would decide who serves on the panel to draw new district boundaries.
Supporters of Amendment 3 say the new method is not about protecting political turf.
"We have term limits, so the idea of building a district to protect a certain representative doesn't pass the smell test," said Jean Evans, executive director of the Missouri Republican Party. "It just doesn't make sense."
Now, both sides in the Amendment 3 debate will wait to see what voters decide on Tuesday.
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