Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is asking a Cole County judge to close off court records that would show how his office reviewed signatures for a high-stakes referendum aimed at overturning the state’s new congressional map. The request, filed Tuesday in Jefferson City, drops into the middle of a months-long fight over whether petition verification is being used to stall a statewide vote. Backers of the referendum say the move looks like an attempt to hide the process, while state lawyers insist the materials are packed with sensitive personal data that should not be open to prying eyes.
According to the St. Louis Business Journal, Hoskins’ filing asks the court to seal or sharply restrict access to petition pages and internal review notes that would reveal which signatures were kicked back to county clerks for verification. State attorneys argue those pages contain raw signature images, circulator affidavits and personal identifying information that could be misused if they land in the public domain.
People Not Politicians, the political committee that gathered the signatures, says it turned in more than 300,000 names on Dec. 9, comfortably above the roughly 111,071 required. Court exhibits indicate that local election authorities have already validated enough pages in some districts to clear the constitutional bar, according to Democracy Docket. Those same filings lay out a running dispute over which signature pages the Secretary will count and whether sheets collected before the final petition form was approved should be allowed in the tally.
Ballots, Primaries And A Ticking Clock
The calendar is doing its own kind of damage. Under state election law, Hoskins has until Aug. 4 to issue a certificate declaring whether the referendum petition is sufficient. County clerks say they cannot lock in voter rolls or mail absentee ballots for the August primary until they know which congressional map actually governs the districts. Local officials have warned that the limbo is creating serious logistical headaches for overseas and military ballots and for clerks trying to assign voters to the right precincts, as reported by KBIA and other outlets.
The Fight Over Who Gets To See The Pages
The lawsuit has turned into a grinding discovery brawl. Plaintiffs and intervenors have gone back and forth over whether signed petition pages and circulator affidavits should be turned over, leaning on Missouri discovery rules and prior court orders as they argue for various protective measures. The public court docket in Cole County includes motions trying to block broad disclosure of signature pages and responses demanding access to those records for verification; see Democracy Docket for some of the filings.
Richard von Glahn, director of People Not Politicians, told the Missouri Independent he sees the latest move as an effort to keep the Secretary’s verification process out of view. “They were going to try to play games with the ballot summary, and they're admitting as much, and now they don't want to have to answer what games they were playing,” von Glahn said.
Transparency, Privacy And The Next Move
Legally, the case sits right where ballot access, privacy interests and the public’s right to monitor government all collide. Courts are being asked to balance transparency in how signatures are handled against potential risks to circulators and signers if detailed petition data gets wide release. Earlier rulings in this same litigation have already ordered the parties to preserve petition pages while questions about how those pages are treated get sorted out, as local reporting and court records note.
Next up is a series of procedural calls. The Cole County court will decide whether to seal parts of the record and whether county clerks can share details of how they validated signatures. With the Aug. 4 certification deadline approaching fast, both sides are signaling they will keep pressing for rulings that support their version of how the referendum should proceed and what happens to the new congressional map if the measure makes the ballot.
