Should Kansas City be treated as a county since it has its own election board, or alternatively should it be treated as if it is entirely in Jackson County?
I don't think so. I don't know about MO, but in many states where cities can span multiple counties statute makes it clear that the portion in each county is treated separately. Aurora IL is in four counties and has its own electoral board for three of those counties. Even so, precincts cannot span county lines. It makes the most sense to treat district lines the same way.
If the city does not constitute an election jurisdiction, like a township, then the precinct lines can cross muni lines. They do in my township.
I think that the district entirely in the UCC should include all of Kansas City.
If an objective set of rules prevents this, my subjective opinion is that there is a problem with objective set of rules.
Geographically for chops to make sense there should be a clear hierarchy of units, each of which spans the entire space of the preceding unit. For example in WI we are using
UCCs (as applicable)
Counties
Cities/Villages/Townships
Wards/VTDs
There are cities and villages that cross county lines, but WI says they aggregate their votes by parts in separate counties. For electoral and redistricting purposes a city in two counties acts as two separate cities, each wholly in a county.
Before December 31 in the year ending in 0, the legislative body of each municipality that encompasses territory in more than one county may designate that for redistricting purposes, the municipality is to be treated as lying entirely in the county which contains the largest share of the population at the previous census. If the legislative body does not make such designation, the parts of the municipality that lie in different counties shall be treated as separate municipalities for redistricting purposes.
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Not that Wards/VTDs should not be used. But larger cities may/must designate neighborhoods. The use of wards in Ohio was really a mess.
For the purposes of our WI exercise on the other thread, do we know which munis passed such a resolution? Do we know to what extent the WI leg followed those resolutions? My fear is that since what you quote is a statute, if the remap is also by statute then the leg can overrule the munis.
That was a hypothetical Missouri statute. Clearly it was the intent to keep Kansas City whole, so we know the KC city council passed it.
If a state were to adopt a systematic way of redistricting, it might be inclined to continue to do so.
