Missouri Proposition A, Explained: The Congressional Map Referendum
Proposition A
Proposition A is a citizen referendum on the November 3, 2026 ballot. It asks whether you approve the right-wing map the legislature passed in a 2025 special session, the one that politically attacks Black Kansas City by splitting us at Troost Avenue to break up our political power. The ballot describes the map as keeping “more counties intact.” The Defender urges a NO vote.
- What is a congressional district?
- Missouri sends eight people to the U.S. House of Representatives. The state is split into eight districts, and each one elects one representative. Where the lines go decides which neighborhoods vote together, and whose votes add up to a win.
- What is a gerrymander?
- Drawing voting lines on purpose so one party wins more seats than its voters earned. The practice is older than the Civil War, but after Reconstruction, racist, white supremacist Confederate politicians made it a core strategy for stripping Black voters of power. They do it two ways: cram the other side’s voters into as few districts as possible, or split them up so they are outnumbered everywhere.
- What does the 2025 map do?
- It cuts Kansas City in half at Troost Avenue (the historic and present apartheid line) and attaches the Black east side to rural counties stretching almost to Jefferson City, dramatically weakening our voting power. Black Kansas City would be outnumbered in its own district, and the map is built to give Republicans seven of Missouri’s eight seats.
- What does “keep the 2022 map” mean?
- Missouri has used the same districts since 2022. They keep Kansas City’s core, on both sides of Troost, in one district, the 5th, where Kansas City voters choose their own representative. Voting NO on Prop A keeps those districts.
- Why does it matter so long?
- Congressional maps are normally redrawn once a decade, after the census. Whichever map wins this vote decides who represents Kansas City in Congress for the rest of the 2020s: on health care, on policing, on every federal dollar that comes home.
This puts a congressional map before Missouri voters for the first time since 1922. Whatever you decide governs every Missouri congressional election until the next census. Because the referendum was certified, November is being voted on the 2022 lines, which keep Kansas City’s core in one district this fall. Prop A decides whether that continues.
🗺️ The Map TrapIn 2025, after President Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their maps, Missouri’s Republican supermajority redrew the state’s districts in a special session. The map draws the 5th District’s western border at Troost Avenue, the oldest racial boundary in Kansas City, built by redlining, and stretches the district east nearly to Jefferson City. It is drawn to produce seven Republican seats out of eight by splitting Black Kansas City and joining it to rural counties.
🔍 Peep GameMissouri voters have overturned a legislature’s congressional map exactly once before, in 1922, by 61.7 to 38.3. Troost has been a line for a century: banks drew it in red, developers wrote it into deeds, school districts enforced it.
🧢 Facts vs. Cap“Keeps more counties intact” is the ballot’s pitch. It keeps counties whole by cutting a city in half, along a color line. The question is not about counties. It is about whether Black Kansas City gets one voice in Congress or none.
🗝️ Defender Major KeyThey drew the line at Troost. Now the line is on your ballot. A NO vote keeps the current districts.
Vote NO, and teach the instruction, not just the position: on Prop A, a NO vote keeps the current districts. Say it to everyone you bring. A voter who agrees with you and fills in the wrong bubble is the outcome this ballot title was written for.
