Usually, I do strive for a semblance of accuracy, but this time, I am ignoring the trees and aiming for the forest. If I miss one or two details, it isn’t really important, because you will get the big picture. And my goal is the big picture.

The subject? Chaos. Election chaos.

The place? Missouri.

The time? Right now.

The reason to lay this out is that many of us are fearful that Mr. Trump and his party’s antics are threatening the integrity of the American election system, and might throw some of the November midterms, and perhaps the 2028 presidential election, into disarray. There are others who say that the state run election systems by which this country operates are strong enough to withstand Trump’s and Republican tampering. Missouri is the first place where real potential chaos may play out.

Missouri is a state with a lot of experience in public referenda which have the ability to overturn legislative law making. It is also a state where those who tend to vote in such referenda are more liberal than the population as a whole might be, or at least more liberal than the Republican controlled houses of the state legislature.

An example is abortion, where the strict anti-abortion legislation was overturned by a public referendum.

Some time over the past year, the state legislature redrew the Congressional districts in the Kansas City area with the goal of eliminating one Democratic/black district, by spreading that district’s voters into several red districts. Obviously, this made a lot of people unhappy, and there was a campaign to put the question of redistricting to a statewide vote.

In order to put a referendum on a ballot, you need to submit petitions with a large number of citizen signatures. There is no question but that this was accomplished.

But the state officials kept preparing for the election primary vote with the new Congressional plan and did not respond to the request for the referendum until immediately before the primary, where they said that there was not enough time for a referendum, and that redistricting was something not subject to a referendum. The opponents took to court.

While the case was working its way through the courts, the state held primary elections using the new districts, and Republican and Democratic candidates were selected for the November general election.

The case worked its way to the Missouri State Supreme Court, which ruled a few days ago that the law was clear, that there needs to be a statewide vote and, until that vote is held and the results determined, the state is not allowed to use the new Congressional districts. And the 2026 elections must be held under the old (2022, so not very old) post-census districts. The vote of the Court was 9-0. It was unanimous.

This put the state in a quandry. They have to hold elections in less than two months using districts for which there were no primaries, and no candidates. How will that happen?

So the state appealed to the United States Supreme Court, asking the Court reinstate the new Congressional districts, in effect over ruling the State Supreme Court. Perhaps surprisingly (considering everything else), the Court said that they were not going to take the case, leaving the State court’s ruling intact.

The Missouri officials weren’t going to take that sitting down, so they went to a local federal court presumably using the same arguments they made to the Supreme Court, under the theory that the refusal of the Supreme Court to get involved did not mean that lower federal courts couldn’t take the case, which then could go back up to the U.S. Supreme Court under the regular order of business. A federal judge agreed with the state and said that Missouri could conduct the November elections using the newly drawn districts, and relying on the results of this summer primaries to select candidates.

Missouri now had two conflicting rulings, one from the Missouri Supreme Court and one from a federal District Court which ruled after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take the case.

The last I heard last night was that the backers of the proposed referendum were going to appeal the decision of the District Court to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. We will see what they say.

Missouri , when I lived there, was the Show Me State. Now it seems to be the Show Me Again and Again and Again State.

This particular scenario is unique to this particular case, of course. But wait until there are other challenges to the November voting and even more after the November voting.

We ain’t see nothin’ yet.