New Missouri Congressional maps can cause problems in some counties
Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis - no problems for Jasper County
The new district maps for Missouri won’t cause any problems for Jasper County, but it could cause problems for other counties.
Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis tells Newstalk KZRG:
“I think when you look at it, the vast majority of the people in the state of Missouri are in support of the change in the congressional maps. Now, it’s just about timeliness. I’m sure that there’s going to be a court challenge, and it could potentially go to the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court drags it out for a long period of time, then it may be next to impossible to redraw the congressional district in a timely fashion.”
The new congressional maps can cause some problems in counties that have more than one district now.
Charlie Davis shares some concerns:
“But there are counties in the state of Missouri that will now have three congressional seats in that county, and they have to move all of the registered voters to the appropriate district. And the issue with that is some of those districts, some of those counties have February elections and March elections and April elections. And the way that the mcvr, the database that we use works is you cannot change people in the middle of elections. There’s a concern about if they are going to be able to get everybody moved to their appropriate new congressional districts on time.”
Davis went on to say:
“I know Jasper county can get it done because we don’t have to do anything since, like I said, we are staying in the 7th Congressional District. But those other counties are. It’s going to be a little bit more difficult because they’re going to have to be making changes while elections are going on. And we know that it’s a little bit difficult to try to move people around during an election, if not impossible. It’s very difficult. There are some new software packages that the state is looking at that will allow the vendor to upload what’s called the shapefiles, the maps, and automatically move people, but we do not have that capability currently.”