By Kurt Erickson

Copyright stltoday

Kurt Erickson | Post-Dispatch

JEFFERSON CITY — Gov. Mike Kehoe is downplaying a feature of Missouri’s new congressional map that appears to illegally put voters in a Kansas City precinct into two districts.

In a rare public response to concerns raised in a lawsuit seeking to toss the map, Kehoe’s office said the “confusion” stems from what amounts to a coding error in U.S. Census Bureau records and should be ignored.

“Any suggestion that someone could vote in two congressional districts is false,” Kehoe’s office said late Wednesday. “There is no error with the map.”

The statement comes as the American Civil Liberties Union is citing the precinct in a lawsuit filed last week as one of multiple problems with the new map, which were drawn at the request of President Donald Trump to help secure one additional safe Republican seat in the 2026 congressional mid-term elections.

Acting in a tightly choreographed special session, the Republican-controlled General Assembly followed the lead of Texas and other Republican states in approving a gerrymandered map designed to eliminate the Kansas City-focused 5th Congressional District held for more than two decades by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.

The St. Louis-based 1st District would remain the state’s only safe Democratic seat, making Missouri a 7-1 Republican heavy delegation in Washington, D.C.

Despite claiming his office drew the map, Kehoe has not yet signed the measure into law and is not expected to take action this week, leading to speculation that the problems run deeper than the Republican chief executive is letting on.

Kehoe aides dismissed those concerns Wednesday and noted he has 45 days to sign legislation into law.

“All legislation sent to the governor’s desk receives a thorough review by Governor Kehoe and his team before it is signed. The Governor looks forward to signing HB 1 into law,” the statement said.

The new boundaries split up the 5th and extend it across the state to take in Sedalia and Jefferson City and a swath of rural red Missouri.

In its lawsuit, the ACLU says the wayward precinct putting more than 800 voters in both the 4th and 5th districts is one of multiple examples of why a judge should reject the adoption of the new districts.

“The map was pushed through in such a slapdash and rushed manner that the bill text double assigns one Kansas City precinct to two different congressional districts, creating a map that is malapportioned and/or noncontiguous,” the lawsuit notes.

Democrats in the Missouri Senate mocked the discrepancy in a social media post Monday.

“GOP members were ordered to pass the map ‘as is.’ Senators were told to get in line and not ask questions,” the minority party said.

The lawsuit also calls for a judge to determine whether it was legal for the Legislature to undertake a redistricting effort in the middle of a decade instead of the traditional once-per-decade time period following a U.S. census.

In addition, the ACLU says the new map fails to keep all of the districts compact and contiguous.

“The Kansas City metropolitan area, which was once whole in a compact CD 5, is now splintered apart into meandering, misshapen districts that combine rural, suburban, and urban areas with little shared interests and vastly different representational needs,” the lawsuit notes.

The ACLU also is fighting the map in a lawsuit filed in Cole County. The NAACP also has filed litigation seeking to deem the special session and its product illegal.

Cleaver earlier said he would challenge the map in court.

Separately, a voter rights organization, People Not Politicians, has begun collecting signatures to place a question on the ballot next year to ask voters to reject the new map.