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Daily Brew: September 19, 2025
Welcome to the Friday, Sept. 19, Brew.
By: Briana Ryan
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Missouri could become the second state to redraw its congressional map before the 2026 elections
- Why Ballotpedia is dedicated to covering every election, everywhere, by Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia Founder and CEO
- The number of certified statewide ballot measures for 2025 is trending below the odd-year average, while 2026 is trending above the even-year average
Missouri could become the second state to redraw its congressional map before the 2026 elections
Missouri is expected to become the second state to officially redraw its congressional district boundaries before the 2026 elections. On Sept. 12, the Missouri General Assembly approved a bill that aims to net an additional Republican-leaning district in the U.S. House of Representatives after Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) called a special legislative session on Aug. 29. The bill now awaits Kehoe's signature.
Republicans currently represent six of the state's congressional districts, and Democrats represent two. The new map would draw the state's 5th Congressional District—which Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D) represents in the Kansas City area—into the surrounding Republican-held rural districts. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the new map would create seven Republican-leaning districts and one Democratic-leaning district in the St. Louis area.
Once the bill is enacted, Missouri voters may also be able to weigh in on the state's new congressional districts. The group People Not Politicians announced on Sept. 12 it was starting a veto referendum effort against the redistricting plan. The map will be subject to voters' approval if the group gathers enough signatures within 90 days following the adjournment of the legislative session at which the bill was passed.
A veto referendum asks voters whether to uphold or repeal an enacted law. Missouri is one of 23 states that allow citizens to initiate veto referendums. In Missouri, the signatures required to place a veto referendum on the ballot are based on the number of votes cast in the state's most recent gubernatorial election. Proponents must collect signatures in at least two-thirds of Missouri’s congressional districts equal to at least 5% of the most recent gubernatorial vote in that district. For Missouri, that equals a minimum of 106,384 valid signatures.
Between 2010 and 2024, voters decided on 44 veto referendums nationwide. No veto referendums are on the ballot in 2025, and two are on the ballot in 2026.
Missouri joins at least four other states that could have new congressional maps before the 2026 elections.
Texas approved redrawn congressional districts in August. California voters will decide in a Nov. 4, 2025, special election whether to approve a constitutional amendment that would allow the Legislature's proposed redraw of the state's congressional districts to take effect through at least 2030.
Ohio is legally required to conduct redistricting. Because the map that was finalized in 2022 did not have minority party support in the Legislature or the redistricting commission, it was effective for only four years. A Utah district court struck down the state's congressional map on Aug. 25, and the state must draw a new map by Nov. 10 this year. In the ruling, Third District Court Judge Dianna Gibson wrote, “Plaintiffs have proven, as a matter of law, that the Legislature unconstitutionally repealed Proposition 4, and enacted SB 200, in violation of the people’s fundamental right to reform redistricting in Utah and to prohibit partisan gerrymandering.”
Additional redistricting plans could also develop in Florida, Indiana, and Maryland. Litigation is pending against maps in Georgia and Louisiana. Lawmakers in New York are considering a constitutional amendment that would permit redrawing the congressional map, though the process would not be completed until the 2028 elections.
Here's what the overall balance of congressional districts nationally might look like, given the five states that have so far pursued redistricting or been required to redraw maps ahead of the 2026 elections.
How many districts could change?
Media coverage of redistricting plans in each state suggests Republicans could gain two districts nationwide.
The Missouri and Texas plans could net Republicans six districts—one from Missouri's pending redraw of the Democratic Kansas City district into surrounding rural districts and five from the approved Texas map.
Ohio’s new map could create two new Republican districts. According to the Columbus Dispatch, "Republicans are likely to target two competitive congressional districts held by Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur, of Toledo, and Emilia Sykes, of Akron. They could try to rearrange the 1st congressional district in Cincinnati, currently held by Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman. That would be more of a stretch because the city of Cincinnati must be kept whole under anti-gerrymandering rules approved by voters in 2018."
Utah's new map may contain a Democratic Salt Lake City district, resembling the redistricting commission's proposals after the 2020 census.
Five new Democratic districts are also possible in California if voters approve a constitutional amendment allowing redistricting and implement the legislature's proposed map in a special election this November.
Click here to read more about redistricting before the 2026 midterm elections.
Why Ballotpedia is dedicated to covering every election, everywhere
For this week’s column, I want to build on an idea I shared with Education Week’s Evie Blad in her story about our Virtual School Board Listening Tour. Here’s the part I want to focus on today:
The decisions school boards make can have great consequences for their communities…and there’s surprisingly little information about candidates’ positions and backgrounds available to the public, [Graves] said.
Anyone with a smartphone can easily use apps like Yelp to find out if a restaurant two hours away will allow dogs on its patio, Graves said.
“If people can easily get information about those sorts of things, they should be able to get information about hyperlocal candidates,” she said. “They matter.”
But unlike the vast and constantly updated online platforms that review and rate restaurants, hotels, hardware, books, and so much more, no such ecosystem exists for the candidates who run for the roughly 520,000 elected offices in this country.
Yes, there is a mountain of reporting, opinion, gossip, and rumor about national officeholders. But even at this level, where media and voter attention resources are increasingly fixed, there is a vanishingly small amount of neutral, fact-based “who is this person” information that’s freely available to the voting public.
To give you an example, in my hometown, we used to have two newspapers that covered local candidates and elections. A few days ago, I got an email from one of the papers saying they are closing down. Now we have none.
That’s why Ballotpedia has set a goal of providing comprehensive coverage of every election, everywhere in the country, by 2034.
The health and success of the American experiment in self-government demand that we do it.
And we also know that the public demand for rich, nuanced, and neutral coverage of candidates and elections is very real and growing every year.
We encountered this when we first began covering ballot measures several years ago.
Our first challenge was gathering information on these issues, not just the measures’ titles, but also the campaigns for and against them, the money those groups were raising and spending, and the arguments they were making to the public.
It turned out that successfully drawing all this information together into a single, comprehensive, freely accessible resource was unique. And it was wildly popular with voters, who appreciated having a one-stop shop for all of this information.
And in case you’ve forgotten, here are data points we look for to create robust information:
- Campaign pledges signed by candidates,
- Candidate surveys completed (including our Candidate Connection Survey),
- Scorecards created by outside groups,
- Campaign themes from candidate websites or social media, and
- Endorsements received from community leaders, other officeholders, or satellite groups.
It’s relatively easy to get most or even all of those items for congressional or statewide candidates. Many candidates seeking office in the country’s biggest cities and its largest school boards will also have at least one or more of those data points we can readily identify and share.
But this is just a sliver of the candidates running for office in the country at any one time. The farther down the ballot we go, the more numerous candidates get, and the greater the difficulty in finding just one of the five data points I noted above.
This year, we will cover more than 30,000 elections — the vast majority of which are for local offices. In 2026, when the nation’s media resources and much of voters' attention will be focused on congressional elections, there will be tens of thousands of additional local races, many of which will get little to no notice at all.
Except from Ballotpedia. We’re paying attention, providing coverage, and digging up the robust information voters need to make informed choices. We’ll be there because local elections really do matter. And I think you do, too.
The number of certified statewide ballot measures for 2025 is trending below the odd-year average, while 2026 is trending above the even-year average
The number of certified statewide ballot measures for 2025 is trending below the odd-year average of 34. Meanwhile, the number of certified statewide ballot measures for 2026 is trending above the even-year average of 46.
2026 ballot measures
The Missouri General Assembly voted to put a constitutional amendment regarding the state's ballot measure process on the Nov. 3, 2026, ballot, bringing the nationwide total number of certified statewide ballot measures for 2026 to 56.
The amendment would make multiple changes to Missouri's ballot measure process, including:
- Requiring voter approval of citizen-initiated constitutional amendments in each congressional district, rather than statewide.
- Adding language prohibiting foreign nationals or adversaries of the U.S., as defined in the bill, from contributing to ballot measure campaigns.
- Adding language regarding penalties for ballot initiative signature petition fraud.
Click here to read our coverage of this amendment in the Sept. 18 Daily Brew.
Fifty-six measures have been certified for the 2026 ballot in 28 states. Between 2010 and 2024, an average of 53 initiatives and 108 referred measures were on the ballot during even-year elections.
The following heatmap shows how many statewide ballot measures were certified each month from 2012 to 2026, grouped by two-year election cycles leading up to even-numbered general elections. Each row includes certifications from both the odd- and even-numbered years in that cycle, highlighting how active each month tends to be. The bottom row displays the monthly averages across all years.
Signature deadlines for 2026
The next signature deadline is in Utah for indirect initiated state statutes on Nov. 15. A list of each state's petition requirements and deadlines can be found here.
2025 ballot measures
The 30 measures certified so far have come from California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Voters have already decided on six measures, while the other 21 are scheduled for elections on Nov. 4.
Two of the 30 measures are citizen initiatives, while state legislatures put the other 28 on the ballot. An average of five initiatives and 28 referred measures were on the ballot during odd-year elections between 2011 and 2023.
From 2011 to 2023, the average number of statewide ballot measures in an odd-numbered year was 34. The following chart shows the number of ballot measures certified each week of an odd-numbered year.
Click here for a deep dive into the measures certified for the 2026 ballot. You can also check out certifications for the 2025 ballot here.
