The Missouri U.S. House redistricting bill, which was passed by the legislature earlier this month, appears to have a drafting flaw. Precinct KC 811 is in both the Fourth District and the Fifth District. Governor Mike Kehoe says there are two different precincts with the designation KC 811. But even still, there is no way to know which precinct with that name is in each district. See this story.
This may be why Governor Kehoe still hasn’t signed the bill, HB 1, even though it was sent to him on September 12.
ANY BIG NAME PERSON IN THE PRECINCT ???
This would likely be considered a scrivener’s error.
The Census Bureau permits states to define Voting Tabulation Districts (VTD), which typically correspond to election precincts. The Census Bureau determines the population of the VTD’s. When drawing districts (congressional, legislative, commissioner, city council districts, etc.) VTD’s can be aggregated into districts. It is usually a requirement that election precincts conform to district boundaries so that unique ballots can be prepared for each district. If the VTD’s correspond to existing precincts, then voters do not need to be (re)assigned to a new election precinct and polling place.
The Census Bureau carefully delineates VTD’s and assigns a unique identifier. They also permit the state to assign a name to the VTD. While the ID is unique, the name does not have to be. It is analogous to the case of a Social Security Number and a personal name. Each person has a unique SSNO (theoretically) but they don’t have a unique name.
But VTD’s may not perfectly conform to election precincts, and districts might not match VTD’s. Kansas City redrew wards after the 2020 Census, and apparently modified election precincts to match the new wards. The current precincts don’t match the 2020 VTD’s and the 2020 VTD’s might not match the pre-2020 precincts.
But the legislature in drawing new congressional districts pretended (warble, warble) to care about election precincts so used the 2020 VTD’s, except when they didn’t (warble, warble). Whoever drew the districts used the census ID’s for VTD’s, but then that was translated into the statutory text using the non-unique names. Two different VTD’s had the same (or similar) name:
KC 811 (000484), Jackson County, Missouri
KC 811 (K16811), Jackson County, Missouri
Both VTD’s were rendered as “KC 811” in the legislative text.