MISSOURI CLARIFIES: VOTERS MAY PICK CANDIDATES, NOT THE SHAPES THAT PICK CANDIDATES FOR THEM
State officials block referendum on new GOP-friendly map, insist democracy still applies to everything except geometry.
Missouri election officials this week reaffirmed a bedrock constitutional principle: that citizens have every right to vote, provided they don't get any funny ideas about voting on the district lines that determine what their vote actually does. A proposed referendum on the state's newly redrawn congressional map — which critics note bends toward Republicans with the confident swagger of a Rorschach test administered by someone who already knows what you're supposed to see — was blocked before it could reach voters, who proceeded instead to vote under the map they weren't allowed to vote on.
Officials stressed that the timing had nothing to do with the outcome the referendum was likely to produce, a coincidence they hope the public will admire rather than interrogate. 'Allowing a referendum on district lines would create a slippery slope toward voters having opinions about process,' said one state elections spokesperson, adding that democracy works best when citizens focus their energy on choosing among candidates and leave the more delicate architectural questions to professionals who already know the answer they're building toward.
Legal challenges to the map are now expected to wind through the courts for months, if not years, conveniently outlasting the actual elections the map was drawn to influence. Primaries under the new lines went forward without incident, delivering results that officials say prove the system is working exactly as designed — which, depending on who you ask, is either reassuring or the entire problem.
