Redistricting impasse spurs talk of changing primary election date

BY TEGHAN SIMONTON

Missouri News Network

JEFFERSON CITY — Disagreements over a new congressional district map could lead state legislators to try to delay the Aug. 2 primary election, said Senate Majority Leader Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia.

Senate Bill 663, which would establish new district lines for Missouri’s eight U.S. House members, needs to pass the legislature with an emergency clause to go into effect before the August primary election.

However, the clause must receive a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and House to pass. The House rejected the clause, and senators are running out of time to reach an agreement before candidates start filing for their elections Feb. 22.

The Senate could approve the map without the clause, but if that happens, the bill would not go into effect until Aug. 28, after the election. If the Senate approves the map without an emergency clause, Rowden said legislators may try to push the primary election back.

“We have a relatively early (primary),” he said. “So there’s other options out there. Again, we’re just trying to find the path to get it done.”

But moving the primary election would create enormous challenges for elections officials.

“Actually moving the election, that’s going to be a much bigger logistical issue,” said Brianna Lennon, the Boone County clerk. “That is completely new to me.”

The election calendar is a string of tight deadlines that must be followed, Lennon said. After the primary election, local and state officials have about four weeks to certify results in preparation for the November general election. Very soon after that, absentee voting starts in mid-September.

“As it is, it’s a finely tuned deadline process,” she said. “You’ve only got a narrow, two-week window if you were going to move anything, so there just is not that much wiggle room when it comes to the August and November elections.”

Legislators could still change the date if they choose, but it would bring significant complications.

“Everything has been scheduled long in advance for the current set of dates, so to change it would be massively inconvenient,” said Peverill Squire, a political science professor at MU. “It would also be an admission on the part of the Republicans that they’re having great difficulty making any decisions among themselves.”

Rowden understands why elections officials would want to avoid moving the primary, but he said it’s “clearly still a possibility.” Another alternative is that the courts intervene to make the effective date of new district lines sooner.

If a decision isn’t reached by the filing deadline, March 29, candidates will face uncertainty and elections officials will have less time to prepare.

Lennon described an arduous process by which officials must transfer information from the software containing the new maps into the voter registration system to ensure every address receives its correct ballot. Those actions can only be taken during a time when there is not an active election, Lennon said, which means they have about a month between mid-April and mid-May to make all the necessary ballot changes.

Squire said further delays in the approval process could cause “enormous dislocation.”

“Candidates don’t know exactly where they’re going to be expected to run, and it takes time for election officials to map out where precincts are going to be and what district they’ll be in,” he said. “This has enormous consequences and would have a sort of cascade effect of problems down the line.”

Much of the slowdown in the Senate stems from disagreement among Republicans. The House approved a map that would likely send six Republicans and two Democrats to Washington, D.C., but some conservative senators oppose the map.

Some want to redraw the lines in a way that would carve up the Kansas City-area’s 5th District and favor seven Republicans and one Democrat. Others want to shore up Republican strength in the 2nd District, which takes in parts of St. Louis County, St. Charles County and Jefferson County now.

“This is just a casualty of an internal battle within the Senate Republican Caucus,” Squire said, “and it’s just one of many things where they have serious disagreements and a lot of personality conflicts.”