Three people associated with People Not Politicians help unload boxes of signatures from a moving truck to deliver to the Missouri Secretary of State's office in Jefferson City, Mo. on Dec. 9, 2025 (Photo provided by People Not Politicians)

After the group People Not Politicians submitted more than enough signatures for a referendum to repeal Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) says the map will still go into effect.

Hoskins told the Missouri Independent that the signature process will not stop the new congressional map from going into effect on Thursday until his office verifies the 300,000 signatures (only 107,000 are needed to put the map on a referendum for voter approval). This is despite precedent in the Attorney General’s office that laws targeted by referendums are frozen until the vote is held. Hoskins also claimed that he has the power to declare the referendum unconstitutional.

“I’m going to follow my attorney’s opinion and the attorney general’s opinion that explicitly states that the referendum does not take place until those signatures are verified by the secretary of state,” Hoskins said in an interview Tuesday with the Independent.

Hoskins’ statements will likely spawn even more lawsuits over Missouri’s new map. This week, one lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) — which sought to block the referendum process — was tossed out of court. Another upheld the ability for the Missouri General Assembly to redistrict without new Census data.