Brianna Lennon’s county in the middle of Missouri was divided between the Third and Fifth Congressional Districts when she arrived at work on Thursday.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in, blocking a congressional map redrawn to benefit Republicans. And by midafternoon, Ms. Lennon, the Boone County clerk, found herself preparing to run an election in a county split between the Third and Fourth Districts.
So it has gone lately in Missouri, where a year of partisan combat over the congressional map has devolved into a deadline-busting game of judicial telephone, with herky-jerky rulings changing the state’s political geography and leaving voters, candidates and election officials utterly bewildered about what comes next.
At this point in the election cycle, Ms. Lennon would normally be proofreading a stack of ballots, but instead, she spent Thursday toggling between the online dockets of the Missouri Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts, checking repeatedly to see if another legal shoe had dropped.
“I have these on my personal device, I have them on my computer at home, and I have just refreshed them throughout the day,” Ms. Lennon, a Democrat, said on Thursday at her office in downtown Columbia, Mo.
At least at that moment, it looked like the U.S. Supreme Court decision’s on which map to use would hold. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who had resisted using the older boundaries amid contradictory court rulings, backed down on Thursday and told county officials to drop the redrawn map.
Mr. Hoskins, a Republican, said in an interview that it was “very unfortunate that the court decided to use a different map in the general election than the primary” and that there would be “hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised voters” as a result.
Court fights seemed inevitable a year ago when Missouri Republicans pushed through the new congressional map at President Trump’s behest, becoming one of the first states to join the redistricting arms race. The lines were redrawn to secure an additional Republican seat, and potentially end the long congressional career of Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a former Kansas City mayor who is one of two Democrats in Missouri’s eight-member delegation.
But few predicted it would wreak the waves of chaos that reached new peaks this week. On Tuesday, the state deadline to finalize the ballot, contradictory court orders left election officials unsure which map was in effect. Ms. Lennon said she received an email from the state with one set of instructions at 4:44 p.m., citing a Missouri Supreme Court order, and then another message with the opposite information at 6:20, citing a Federal District Court decision.
Mr. Hoskins, who flew to Dallas on Tuesday for the Republican convention, described sorting through the contradictory court rulings from his hotel, seeking guidance from lawyers back in Missouri.
His directives to county officials changed again on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the older district lines to be used in November. Later that day, the Missouri Supreme Court found that Mr. Hoskins had been in contempt for not complying earlier with its order to use the older map.
It all left local election officials scrambling to catch up.
Even in counties where congressional districts did not change, clerks found themselves reluctant to move forward with parts of their pre-election process as the drama played out in court. Rachel Lightfoot, the Republican clerk in Polk County, in southwest Missouri, described it all as “just a lot of whiplash” and said “everybody is at least three weeks behind now.”
Just last month, Missouri held its primary election using the redrawn boundaries. Then, early this month, the Missouri Supreme Court ordered a return to the older map, saying the new map could not take effect unless approved by voters in a referendum that will appear on the November ballot.
That ruling and the Supreme Court orders frustrated Republicans who had spent months campaigning under the new lines, and the change meant some voters will not have had a say in nominating the candidates who appear on their general election ballot.
Under the older map, Democrats will be favored to retain two of the House seats, while Republicans will be favored in the other six. If Democrats have an extraordinarily strong year, they could challenge Representative Ann Wagner, a Republican, in a St. Louis-area district that she carried by 12 percentage points in 2024.
Representative Bob Onder, a Republican, said he spent primary season attending county fairs and cattle auctions across a vastly reshaped district that stretches west of St. Louis. Now he finds himself running for re-election in counties where he said he had not distributed a single yard sign. Both districts are safely Republican.
Mr. Onder, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking a return to the redrawn map, said the post-primary shift had been disruptive, confusing and “disrespectful of voters.”
“I’ve had countless texts and emails from supporters who say, ‘Hey, what is the court saying — that I voted for you on Aug. 4 but I can’t vote for you in November? That makes no sense,’” Mr. Onder said. “I agree with those voters. It makes no sense.”
The legal fight might not be over. On Thursday, a federal appellate court scheduled oral arguments for next week in the case that Mr. Onder and others filed. Any further ruling in that case would not take effect without additional action from the U.S. Supreme Court. Some officials, both Republican and Democratic, have raised the possibility that losing candidates might sue over the results after the election.
Mr. Cleaver, who is running for a 12th term in Congress, said he learned of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday when Missouri’s other Democratic congressman, Wesley Bell, called to congratulate him.
Mr. Cleaver said that he expected his political opponents to continue pressing the mapping issue in the courts, but that he was confident he would be seated in Congress next year if he wins in November.
“People want to follow the law,” said Mr. Cleaver, who until Thursday had been campaigning in both his old district and in the rural territory of the redrawn one. “And I think the law has been settled by the United States Supreme Court.”
At a coffee shop along Troost Avenue in Kansas City — which is now back squarely in Mr. Cleaver’s district, but would have been along a district boundary under the redrawn map — Chloe Robbins, a barista, said it felt like there was no reason to redraw the map other than “explicitly messing with the vote.”
Geoff Gerling, the Democratic Party chairman in Jackson County, Mo., which includes much of Kansas City, said there had been widespread confusion among voters. Even after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday, things felt tenuous, he said.
“Any time anyone has called me,” Mr. Gerling said, “I have said, ‘I am hour to hour on this.’”
Kurt Bahr, a Republican who is the director of elections in St. Charles County, near St. Louis, said he would normally be posting sample ballots online in mid-September. Instead, he and other county officials waited for the guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.
St. Charles County is split between two congressional districts under the older map but was in a single district in the redrawn one. Mr. Bahr is preparing for late nights of work ahead — and maybe more pivots.
“Now every county in the state can begin the process of building their elections under that map — with the little asterisk that is over our heads that it’s still subject to change,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Leanne Abraham, Sejal Govindarao, Ann E. Marimow and Neil Vigdor.
The post Chaos, Confusion and Court Dockets: The Fight for Missouri’s House Map appeared first on New York Times.
