On September 21, the Eighth Circuit ruled that Missouri must use the 2025 maps, instead of the 2022 maps, for its U.S. House elections. Onder v State of Missouri and Hoskins, 26-2797. Here is the decision, which is 3-0. The decision is quite surprising, because Missouri has already been mailing out its general election ballots to overseas absentee voters.
The opinion is based on the idea that because the 2026 primary used the 2025 districts, the general election must use the same maps. Page 23 attempts to say that the primary is intrinsic to the general election. As other courts in this case have done, the decision truncates Missouri code section 115.339 to assert that all candidates in Missouri must be nominated by primary. But the law says new parties nominate by convention. Also, independent candidates are not nominated by primary either. The opinion tries to disguise this by not quoting the entire sentence of the law. The words in the law that the court does not mention are at the beginning: “Except as otherwise provided in this subchapter…”
how many seconds until scotus brings down its hammer on 8 cir e law morons ???
https://electionlawblog.org
MULTIPLE STORIES ABOUT MO GERRYMANDER MACHINATIONS
Awesome!
And not surprised at all..
I predict the Supreme Court will stay out of it this time. Keeping fingers and toes crossed.
Independent candidates in Missouri are nominated by petition of voters who reside in the district. It is simply not significant that there are other methods of nomination than primary – the key issue is that they were nominated from a different jurisdiction. There is one congressional district where over half of the voters are new to the district since the primary. They had NO opportunity to vote in the primaries that chose the nominees.
The decision is correct and will stand.