On Election Day, Missourians said no to a new congressional district map proposed by Republicans last year.
According to complete, but unofficial election results, Proposition A failed with 1,273,815 “no” votes cast, or 61.8 percent, to 785,969 “yes” votes, or 38.1 percent.
Jefferson County defeated the measure. According to complete, but unofficial results from the Jefferson County Clerk’s Office, Prop A failed with 44,299 “no” votes, or 57.7 percent, to 32,474 “yes” votes, or 42.30 percent.
With the failure of the measure, the congressional map approved by the 2025 legislative session and signed into law by Gov. Mike Kehoe will not go into effect. The 2025 map, often called the “Missouri First” map, favored the Republican Party by splitting Kansas City across multiple rural congressional districts. Critics of the map said it gave the GOP an advantage in seven of the state’s eight U.S. House districts.
Richard von Glahn, executive director of the People Not Politicians group, said on social media that Tuesday’s vote was a check on the power of politicians. The group campaigned to put Proposition A, a veto referendum, on the Nov. 3 ballot to repeal HB1.
“As we have said since September 2025, people, not politicians, will have the final say,” von Glahn said. “Tonight, we spoke clearly: No DC gerrymanders on our watch.”
Because Prop A failed at the ballot booth, Missourians will continue to vote using the congressional map approved by the legislature in 2022 that was drawn using 2020 U.S. Census data. The map was first used in the 2022 midterm elections and has been used in every election since, except for the recent August primary, where Secretary of State Denny Hoskins instructed county clerk’s offices to use the Missouri First map instead.
Democrat and Democrat-leaning organizations immediately disavowed the Missouri First map. The People Not Politicians campaign collected more than 305,000 signatures by December 2025, more than meeting the minimum requirement to place a measure on the ballot.
However, Hoskins waited to verify the signatures until Aug. 4, the day of the primary, and declared the referendum to be unconstitutional. The primary was held in the boundaries created by the Missouri First map, which greatly changed who some Jefferson County voters saw on their ballot.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in the case on Sept. 3, forbidding Hoskins from using the Missouri First map in the November election, instead directing him to use the original 2022 map.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Sept. 8 rejected Missouri Republicans’ appeal to use the congressional map favoring the GOP, meaning western Jefferson County voters cast votes Nov. 3 in the District 3 race, which pitted incumbent Rep. Bob Onder, R-St. Charles, against Bethany Mann, D-St. Peters, and Jim Higgins, L-St. Louis.
“Tonight, Missourians said something simple: we pick our politicians, they don’t pick us,” People Not Politicians posted on social media. “Republicans, Democrats, and Independents came together across our state because they were tired of Missouri politicians taking orders from D.C. instead of listening to their voters. Politicians drew their rigged map for politicians in Washington, not for voters in Missouri.”