Supreme Court Lets Missouri Voters Meddle In Democracy
The Supreme Court continued its campaign against orderly government Thursday by allowing Missouri voters to participate in democracy. The justices declined to revive the state’s Trump-backed congressional map, leaving intact a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruling that the Republican-drawn boundaries cannot govern November’s election unless voters approve them by referendum. Missouri must therefore use its 2022 map, an unstable arrangement under which candidates may be forced to appeal to actual constituencies instead of carefully assembled inventories of dependable supporters.
Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins directed local election officials to use the older districts, temporarily accepting the radical judicial doctrine that court orders carry legal force. The blocked map would have improved Missouri’s current 6-2 Republican congressional advantage into a more democratically efficient 7-1 split by dismantling Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-based district. Critics described the plan as gerrymandering, the inflammatory term commonly applied when lawmakers determine election results before voters can complicate them.
President Donald Trump defended the mapmaking process as the purest known form of representative government. “Nobody understands fair maps better than I do, and the fairest election is when Republicans choose the districts, choose the voters and generously let everyone participate afterward,” Trump said. Election experts noted that this system preserves the sacred right of every citizen to cast a ballot whose practical value has already been calculated by professionals. A referendum, by contrast, could permit residents with no legislative mapmaking experience to overrule elected officials who have spent years studying exactly where Democrats live.
The continued use of legally valid districts also injects needless uncertainty into November. Under the 2022 boundaries, Republicans might win only six seats, or fewer if voters disregard the outcome preferred by the people currently in power. Missouri Republicans have pledged to keep fighting this voter interference until elections once again perform their proper civic function: confirming decisions that officeholders have already made. Democracy is safest when the public is permitted to witness it without affecting the result.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.