3 Cases of Redistricting Reform: 2018 vs. Today
by Dylan Hasmer-Quint
[P]artisan gerrymanders . . . deprive[] citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives.
- Justice Elena Kagan
Partisan gerrymandering, i.e., designing electoral maps to benefit a particular political party during the redistricting process, goes against the core value of our democracy: that the people should choose their representatives, not the other way around. While the federal courts have decided they will ignore partisan gerrymandering, advocates across the country, joined by local Leagues, have taken up the fight for fair maps.
In November of 2018, voters passed ballot initiatives in three states to curb gerrymandering by reforming the redistricting process. Four years later, as redistricting battles once again sweep the nation, it’s time to look back at what those initiatives accomplished, and what still needs to be done.
Missouri: The Clean Missouri Initiative and Amendment 3
In 2018, voters in Missouri passed the Clean Missouri initiative, a ballot measure that included transparency guidelines, greater limits to lobbying and campaign contributions, and a revamp of the redistricting process.
Clean Missouri attempted to take politics out of the districting process. It removed the power to draw legislative districts from the state legislature and gave it to a non-partisan state demographer. This was meant to prevent politicians from choosing their voters.
Missouri voters passed the Clean Missouri initiative, known as Amendment 1, with 62% of the vote. But almost immediately, the legislature started working to undo the hard-fought victory.
In 2020, another initiative, Amendment 3, made it on the ballot. Amendment 3 repealed Clean Missouri, eliminating the demographer position and giving the power to draw maps to a commission appointed by the governor. It also made it more difficult to challenge the final maps in court.
The League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri came out against Amendment 3. As co-presidents Marjorie Bramer and Julie Steiger wrote in a 2020 editorial,
“The amendment seeks to overturn what Missourians approved just two years ago as Clean Missouri. But it goes way beyond a simple reversal. If approved, Amendment 3 would put in its place a redistricting process unlike anything Missouri has ever seen — and more extreme than any other in America.”
