KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On Sept. 11, I spoke with U.S. Rep. Mark Alford, a Republican, about redistricting in Missouri before state lawmakers approved the redrawing of congressional districts.
The redistricting effort by Missouri Republicans targeted Democrat U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's seat in Kansas City.
"St. Louis is a protected seat from the Voting Rights Act, Kansas City is not," Alford said in our interview.
That made me curious. What does that mean?
"Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act makes it illegal for district lines to be gerrymandered in a way that dilutes minority voting strength," said Denise Lieberman, director of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.
Lieberman says there are two ways to dilute minority voting strength through redistricting: cracking and packing.
First, there is cracking.
"Where Kansas City is getting split into multiple pieces to make that minority voting strength much weaker than it was before," Lieberman said.
Missouri lawmakers approved redistricting map on Friday that splits Kansas City into three congressional districts.
RELATED | Missouri Senate approves new congressional map; Trump praises lawmakers' work
On Monday, Cleaver said he was disappointed by Missouri's new Fifth Congressional District lines that partially run along Troost Avenue.
"Anybody who doesn't know about Troost has only been in Kansas City a couple of days," Cleaver said.
He pointed to Troost Avenue's history of being a racial dividing line in Kansas City.
There's also packing.
That's where a minority community is drawn into a district to concentrate their strength into a smaller number of districts.
"That's what you see in the First Congressional District," Lieberman said.
I asked Cleaver, why he thinks his seat was targeted and Democrat U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell's seat in Missouri's First Congressional District was not.
"Right down the road, in St. Louis, the Voting Rights Act is a reason that the district operated by Congressman Bell was not involved in this new redistricting," Cleaver said.
Black voters tend to vote for Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center.
In Bell's district — which encompasses St. Louis City and parts of St. Louis County — just over 43% of voters are Black and just under 43% of voters are white, according to U.S. Census data.
In Cleaver's district, 21% of voters are Black and about 61% are white.
"When you start trying to dilute the Black vote, it's going to be really, really difficult to do that in St. Louis without people noticing," Cleaver said.
On Sept. 11, Alford told us why he thinks redistricting efforts targeted Cleaver's seat.
"I think the reason that President Trump is intent on drawing this, and Gov. Kehoe, is to pick up a seat in Missouri," Alford said. "There is no hiding the fact that we need to increase our majority in the U.S. House."
—
