Missouri’s Republican attorney general is investigating an organization gathering signatures in opposition to her party’s racist gerrymandering efforts in the Show Me State.
On Tuesday, state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced her office has opened a criminal investigation into Advanced Micro Targeting, an organization that has been assisting grassroots groups in gathering signatures for a referendum to overturn a mid-decade gerrymander that the state GOP implemented ahead of the midterms at Donald Trump’s urging.
Hanaway has defended the gerrymander on grounds that Missouri shouldn’t have been allowed to draw a majority-Black district in its previous congressional map. The map that Missouri Republicans passed last month dilutes Black voter power by carving up communities with large Black populations and placing them into districts with more conservative, rural communities.
“When outside organizations bring in illegal immigrants to collect signatures and advance their views on Missouri, we will investigate,” Hanaway said, without providing any evidence to support the allegation. “Missourians, not unregulated labor hired by out-of-state interests, should determine our elections.”
Hanaway made similar unsubstantiated claims on social media last week against Advanced Micro Targeting, saying the group’s use of undocumented immigrants to gather signatures has created “an environment for exploitation and human trafficking to thrive.” She said at the time she’d “referred the matter” to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
AMT’s president, Billy Rogers, denied the allegations to the Kansas City Star, which reported that the company “uses the national company E-Verify for its employees and conducts a ‘pretty extensive’ background check.”
Across the country, Republicans who have aligned themselves with a deeply popular president and his political agenda are increasingly concerned about the prospect of losing their party’s majority in the House of Representatives next year, according to reports and public comments. And Missouri Republicans have launched a multipronged effort to derail the referendum on the new map, as Democracy Docket reported.
Hanaway’s investigation, in the absence of any evidence, appears to be an effort to prevent voters from blocking her party’s antidemocratic scheme to maintain control in Washington, D.C.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.