Among the many “Laboratories of Autocracy” working hard to undermine democracy in America, a few stick out.
My home state of Ohio, sadly.
Texas, clearly.
Florida.
Tennessee. Others.
And far too often, Missouri.
Missouri is in the spotlight this week in particular, so I took a few minutes to discuss what’s happening there with my fellow democracy champion who also hails from rural Missouri, Jess Piper! (If you don’t subscribe to her Substack, change that immediately).
WATCH above for our entire conversation about what the Show Me State’s lawless legislature is doing when it comes to stealing districts and ripping away direct democracy.
And here’s a quick write-up of the one-two punch we discuss:
1) Stealing a District for Trump
First, Missouri’s lawless, anti-democratic legislators are following Trump’s marching orders to steal a Congressional district from the people of Missouri…in advance of a 2026 election Trump is deathly afraid of losing.
Just yesterday, the Missouri statehouse voted for a rigged map that will split Kansas City into three Congressional districts (all GOP), as opposed to the current and long-time Democratic district that actually reflects the Kansas City community. It’s a classic “cracking” scheme that has been used to dilute African American voters for decades, and the clear goal here is to give national Republicans one more seat to stem the tide in 2026.
Here’s a description of what they did:
“Under the proposed map, Kansas City voters would be split into the 4th, 5th and 6th Congressional Districts. [The old] 5th District would extend hundreds of miles east to central Missouri, while the 4th District would stretch from downtown Kansas City to the Ozarks region.”
To make matters worse, “The map would use Troost Avenue, a historic symbol of segregation in Kansas City, as the dividing line between the 4th and 5th Districts.”
Sick.
2) Gerrymandering Direct Democracy
And to make matters even worse than that, the same statehouse also passed a proposed constitutional amendment whose goal is to kneecap the right of Missouri citizens to go directly to the ballot to demand changes their gerrymandered politicians refuse to do.
Missouri voters have used this path quite often—initiating and approving measures to end gerrymandering, support reproductive freedom, expand Medicaid, and the like—and have done so over the opposition of the politicians.
The citizens’ ability to directly vote for the change they want remains the greatest threat to the gerrymandered Missouri politicians’ agenda, so as in other states, they are always scheming for ways to eliminate that direct democracy option.
And that’s what they did yesterday.
But to avoid what happened in Ohio, where voters decisively rejected a plan to raise the threshold for passage of ballot initiatives to 60%, these Missouri politicians are pushing something far more sneaky. Under their new proposal, “citizen-led constitutional amendments [would need] to receive both majority support statewide and a majority in each of the state’s eight congressional districts to pass.”
For a moment, that may sound reasonable. Majorities, right?
But because those congressional districts are so blatantly gerrymandered (and about to be more so), getting them each to 50% on an issue is an impossible task. The change is cynically harnessing the gerrymandering of House districts to gerrymander initiative elections—guaranteeing the results in advance (ie. they will always fail) while trying to leave the appearance of majority rule.
One analysis found that under those rules, 5% of Missouri voters ( in a single district) could defeat a measure that 95% of Missouri wanted to happen.
So yes, that’s even more extreme than the measure that we defeated in Ohio (which would’ve meant 41% could block 59% of Ohio voters).
That’s how scared these people are of the voters of their state.
One other thing: this poison pill rule would only apply to ballot changes initiated by voters. For constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by the gerrymandered legislature, the old rule of simple majority across the state remains.
Now that’s chutzpah! Peak anti-voter arrogance on full display.
It’s why I named all these places “Laboratories of Autocracy” years ago.
And it’s why Missouri’s keeps ranking as one of the worst.
3) Support Blue Missouri—Run Everywhere
OK. That’s the bad news.
But there’s something you can do
As Jess says, one reason these Missouri politicians get way with all this is they too often run unopposed:
That’s why can disrespect voters so shamelessly. That’s why they can straight up attack democracy and get away with it. Or violate the will of the people after a successful ballot initiative (which they do repeatedly).
But like Ohio, where we started Blue Ohio, there is a Blue Missouri, and Jess runs it!
And as in Ohio, Blue Missouri supports candidates running in the more challenging districts that (too) often go unopposed. If we want the people doing these terrible things to feel any measure of accountability, we must run against them…and we have to support those who step up and take on those battles.
And Jess and Blue Missouri are doing that hard work.
So check out Blue Missouri today. Sign on as a member while you’re at it.
Thank you Lillian P., Greg Rogers, A. Hofferkamp, Lana, and many others for tuning into my live video.
