Redistricting for the Next Decade

[LFC]

TPM kicked this topic off a few weeks ago. We should start following it since it will obviously be important.

The 2020 Census data dropped on Thursday, the starting gun of the redistricting process.

Of all the impending threats that Democrats hope to address with a set of democracy reform bills, the 2020 redistricting cycle is approaching the quickest. Congress is in recess, with the Senate not planning to come back to Washington D.C. until September 15.

By then, the process of drawing the next decade’s political maps will be well underway.

“Some states will pass maps in September — some may even before September,” Michael Li, senior counsel at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, told TPM. “It depends on how fast they can get the data, but there are rumors that some states might try to move really, really fast.”

[LFC]

A few more details.

The Census Bureau will release its redistricting data today, kicking off the inevitable fight over partisan gerrymandering ahead of the 2022 elections.

• States will draw and formally set their district maps at different paces (and you better believe that there’ll be legal battles galore), so we won’t know the new overall partisan makeup of the country’s districts for a while.

• What we do know is that most of the states that gained House seats in this decade’s reapportionment process were in the south and west. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one new seat while Texas won two.

• We also know that California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each lost a seat.

[LFC]

I don't have access to NY Times article they refer to but it looks like the Dems are going to fight fire with fire.

Dems Play Hardball In NY Redistricting

Even though New York will lose a House seat, New York Democrats, who enjoy supermajorities in both chambers of their state’s legislature, have an opportunity to wipe out five Republican House seats as they draw the new congressional district map.

• House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) could potentially be affected if Democrats target the more red areas in upstate New York, where her district lies.

[jackd]

As well they should! In Illinois, the war cry is "We'll do it when Texas does.".

[LFC]

Politico notes that judges are going to play an enormous role in redistricting. This is one thing Republicans have understood for a long time. If you pack the courts with political hacks you can disenfranchise those who would vote against you. Just read John Roberts's very clear "justification" for upholding blatant gerrymandering. I was impressed that he was that open and honest with his corruption rather than twisting it into legalese.

Between reforms aimed at reducing politics in redistricting, dysfunction in states where both parties have some control and the reduced role of the federal judiciary in policing gerrymandering, state supreme courts are playing a greater role than ever as mapmakers or traffic cops that could swing the fortunes of some 120 congressional seats in next year's midterms.

“That's why it's so important that we have good courts. And that's why people ought to pay attention,” said first-term Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning, who had no chance of being reelected after Republican mapmakers in North Carolina initially shredded her Greensboro-based district — until the justices intervened.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 13, 2021 16:03:34 GMT LFC said:

Politico notes that judges are going to play an enormous role in redistricting. This is one thing Republicans have understood for a long time. If you pack the courts with political hacks you can disenfranchise those who would vote against you. Just read John Roberts's very clear "justification" for upholding blatant gerrymandering. I was impressed that he was that open and honest with his corruption rather than twisting it into legalese.

Between reforms aimed at reducing politics in redistricting, dysfunction in states where both parties have some control and the reduced role of the federal judiciary in policing gerrymandering, state supreme courts are playing a greater role than ever as mapmakers or traffic cops that could swing the fortunes of some 120 congressional seats in next year's midterms.

“That's why it's so important that we have good courts. And that's why people ought to pay attention,” said first-term Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning, who had no chance of being reelected after Republican mapmakers in North Carolina initially shredded her Greensboro-based district — until the justices intervened.

Stacking the lower courts is unnecessary. With the Supreme Court saying gerrymandering for political purposes is not a reason for review or overturning many of the cases will be over by the time they are started unless the petitioners can claim that what's left of the Voting Rights Act is violated by these districts or if there is something in the state law or constitutions that prohibit it.  

[LFC]

Dec 13, 2021 18:23:36 GMT goldenvalley said:

Dec 13, 2021 16:03:34 GMT LFC said:

Politico notes that judges are going to play an enormous role in redistricting. This is one thing Republicans have understood for a long time. If you pack the courts with political hacks you can disenfranchise those who would vote against you. Just read John Roberts's very clear "justification" for upholding blatant gerrymandering. I was impressed that he was that open and honest with his corruption rather than twisting it into legalese.

Stacking the lower courts is unnecessary.

Remember that there are state constitutions as well. That's how roughly evenly divided Pennsylvania (actually leans Dem) struck down the districting that awarded 70% of the House seats to Republicans. Once Republicans realized that we were actually going to end up with (GASP!) 50-50 proportional representation in a roughly 50-50 state they very seriously discussed impeaching all of the justices on the state supreme court who ruled for it.

[jackd]

Lower courts are also important; many cases never get appealed at all or sometimes only to the next level and not the Supreme Court. True of both federal and state systems.

[LFC]

For those interested in checking out district maps and the upcoming Republican gerrymandered maps here are two resources that TPM mentioned.

Princeton Gerrymandering Project

Dave's Redistricting

My wife likes to kid that she thinks she's the only black person around here. Turns out our district is less than 2% black. We definitely live in at least the fringes of Trump country.

[goldenvalley]

California's second ever independent citizens redistricting commission released final maps late Tuesday night. Some call the maps a win for Democrats and the Latino voters.  Critics say the Citizens Redistricting Commission sold out to Democrats and the organized Latino groups.  The critics fail to notice several things: the number of voters that designate themselves as Democrats exceeds the number that marked Republicans by a lot, the number of voters that specifically do not specify a party almost equals the number of Republicans, the Latino population is now about 40% of California, the laws governing the commission specifically prohibit it from considering incumbents and political affiliations of the voters in the districts.  The 14 member Commission voted unanimously to pass the maps...5 Republicans, 5 Democrats, 4 no party preference.  The commission did all its work online starting with the interview process for picking the members, ending with final map markup during the middle two weeks of December.

[LFC]

Republicans are building on their redistricting success of 2010 to further protect their minority rule in multiple states.

While anti-partisan gerrymandering legislation languishes in a Senate gridlocked by Republicans and the filibuster, both parties on the state level are actively mapping out how best to craft congressional districts to give them easy wins.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Republicans control many more of the states’ redistricting processes, a byproduct of years of laser-like focus on sub-national races and successful gerrymanders of decades past.

Redistricting experts have warned for months that, barring intervention to block maps that swoop and curl and dive to give Republicans the edge, the GOP can almost certainly retake the House of Representatives through gerrymandering alone. Democrats currently have a slim five-seat majority in the chamber.

It’s not as bad as it could be: in some surprisingly good news for Democrats, as maps have been finished and approved, the landscape is less bleak, by some measurements, than analysts expected. Some seats with a mild blue tilt may be fairly easy for Republicans to retake if the national atmosphere remains grim, and Democrats’ embrace of nonpartisan redistricting reform stripped them of some weapons. But still — it’s no longer clear that Republicans will be able to accrue a massive majority in the House by gerrymandering alone.

Republicans, though, still retain the clear gerrymandering edge. Here’s where they’re using it to its fullest advantage.

[LFC]

Gerrymandering gone wild as predicted.

The turn of the decade brings a uniquely American tradition, one that’s transformed over the years from tragedy to farce: redistricting.

The spectacle of elected officials choosing their own voters has always been absurd. But recently — with the help of specialized consultants, advanced mapping technology and a deep bench of shameless politicians — the process has become a grotesque spectator sport.

After careful study, we’ve collected some of our favorite examples of this year’s redistricting nonsense.

Ohio has really twisted reality to justify minority rule. Be sure to read that last sentence. As always, Republicans fall in line.

Ohio Republicans Use The Worst Metric Of All Time
Republicans constitute a majority of Ohio’s redistricting commission, so the question this year wasn’t whether they would get their way or not — it was how they would justify the lopsided map. And it was quite lopsided, with 66 percent of state assembly districts favoring Republicans despite Trump winning the state with just 53 percent of the vote in 2020.

Get a load of this: The commission’s GOP members said that the districts could be so justified because Republicans won 13 out of 16 statewide elections over the past decade — 81 percent. They only won those races with a cumulative 55 percent of the vote. But redistricting commission Republicans split the difference. “Thus, the statewide portion of voters favoring statewide Democratic candidates is between 55 percent and 81 percent” they wrote.

It’s hard to capture the funkiness of this math, particularly given Ohio’s recent history. Voters have passed two constitutional amendments in recent years, one each in 2015 and 2018, to fight back against partisan gerrymandering. The Washington Post called the math “brazen.”

But it was Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, who put it best in an unguarded text message to an aide: “This rationale is asinine. I should vote no.” (He ultimately voted yes.)

I blame John Roberts. The others are (as they unconvincingly denied) partisan hacks but Roberts at least sometimes exhibits judicial knowledge, skills, and respect for law and precedent. His written opinion on his decision to let gerrymandering run loose was conveniently written in clear language and it was brazenly stupid. I would have thought he could have covered his tracks better than that but maybe he just doesn't care.

[AnBr]

Ohio is a typical purple state with deep blue cities and bleeding red sticks. When I get outside of the city I feel creeped out by all of the knuckle draggers.

[Bact PhD]

Dec 29, 2021 3:05:31 GMT AnBr said:

Ohio is a typical purple state with deep blue cities and bleeding red sticks. When I get outside of the city I feel creeped out by all of the knuckle draggers.

So. Much. This. I guess it didn’t change much since the ‘80s. IIRC, there were back then a few knuckle draggers with the semi-urbane veneer: A couple of members of that subset were shocked and dismayed that I wanted to do something as radical as pursuing a Ph.D. in the biologically sciences. I needed to be “supporting my husband”, dontcha know; I’m not supporting to have any career ambition (beyond schoolteacher, nurse, or secretary) whatsoever.

Flori-DUH is similar. South Florida, however, has its own peculiarities. My county is a bluish-purple island in an ocean of deep and deeper reds; The Villages is roughly an hour to the south. To my north, east (of the city), and west it’s even redder than THAT. Yikes!

[LFC]

Dec 29, 2021 3:05:31 GMT AnBr said:

Ohio is a typical purple state with deep blue cities and bleeding red sticks. When I get outside of the city I feel creeped out by all of the knuckle draggers.

Welcome to Pennsylvania: Philly on the right, Pittsburgh on the left, and Pennsyltucky in the middle.

[LFC]

Interesting take on redistricting. The Republicans may be playing quite a bit of defense against demographics.

“There was a lot of ‘the sky is falling’ narrative building that dominated the left a couple months ago, in large part because Republicans have much more control over the process than Democrats,” Dave Wasserman, senior editor of U.S. House coverage at the Cook Political Report, told TPM. “A lot of people translated that into ‘Republicans are going to zoom into the majority because they can gerrymander the maps.’”

So far — and some states have not finished drawing yet, while others are wrapped up in litigation — that hasn’t happened. Republicans are not poised to scoop up dozens of new seats, to win the 2022 election by a landslide before a single vote is cast. That doesn’t mean that there’s any less voter disenfranchisement going on.

For one, as Wasserman pointed out, Republicans had a vice-like grip on many states’ redistricting processes during the last cycle in 2010 and 2011 too, so they’ve already had a fairly recent chance to hack the states into congressional districts that serve them best.

But there’s another factor at play here: the explosive growth of new political powerhouses that the maps of 10 years ago couldn’t have accounted for.

“The reality is, if you’re a Republican map drawer, you’re scared both of people of color — especially as they become a bigger part of the electorate in the suburbs — and suburban white voters,” Michael Li, senior counsel at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, told TPM. “Your best play is a defensive gerrymander.”

Instead of going after Democratic seats to flip, Republicans in many states focused on shoring up their districts to neutralize the burgeoning power of these voters. That doesn’t necessarily manifest as a dozen-plus new Republican seats. It manifests as a Trump + 3 seat becoming a Trump + 20.

That strategy, in addition to Democratic gerrymanders in states like Illinois, has eradicated competitive races across the board.

“Are the final maps likely to be less biased in Republicans’ favor than the current maps? Yes,” Wasserman said. “Are the final maps less competitive and less responsive to changes in public opinion? Also yes.”

[LFC]

Ohio's Supreme Court just rejected the Republicans' map.

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down GOP-drawn state House and Senate district maps as unconstitutional gerrymandering in a 4-3 decision Wednesday, sending the maps back to the drawing board.

Advocates of redistricting reform hailed the decision as a resounding victory for Ohio voters who overwhelmingly approved changes to the state constitution to limit partisan line-drawing in 2015.

“This ruling sends a clear message to lawmakers in Ohio: they may not put politics over people," said attorney Freda Levenson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, who argued for opponents of the maps.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio Redistricting Commission – which is tasked with drawing legislative maps and dominated by Republicans – could not ignore parts of the Ohio Constitution that required them to attempt to match the statewide voting preferences of voters, according to the court's majority opinion, written by Justice Melody Stewart.

[LFC]

A few notes on redistricting from TPM.

First up, Alabama Republicans had their Jim Crow maps shot down. FYI the state is over 26% black but apparently they aren't a majority in any potential congressional district. Why do I doubt that?

Alabama GOP-Drawn District Map Gets Struck Down

A federal court threw out Alabama’s new congressional district map on Monday because it allows only one district to have a majority of Black voters.

• The district lines needs to be redrawn to include two of those districts, the court ordered. If the court’s decision prevails on appeal, Democrats are likely to gain a second seat in Alabama.

• The Republican-controlled state legislature has 14 days to draw a new map that has “two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it,” the court said.

• This is the second time a state’s newly drawn district map has been quashed by the courts due to gerrymandering. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected the map from the state’s GOP-dominated redistricting commission less than two weeks ago.

In New York the attempt at a bipartisan commission fell apart and Democrats are taking over. It will be interesting to see if they create fair maps or decide what's good for the goose...

Dems Take Over New York Redistricting

The Democrat-controlled New York legislature will steer the process of drawing the Empire State’s new district lines after negotiations in the bipartisan redistricting commission fell apart on Monday. New York Democrats could wipe out as many as five GOP-held seats in the state as they create the new map.

[LFC]

Democrats in New York have decided on going with the "what's good for the goose..." approach.

New York Redistricting Plan Looking Like A Boon For Dems

The new New York congressional district map unveiled by the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature on Sunday could give Democrats three more House seats while wiping out four GOP-held seats, shifting the New York delegation’s current Democrat-Republican ratio of 19-8 to 22-4 (the Empire state lost a seat in the 2020 census tally).

• The new district lines are especially brutal for Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) of the state’s 11th District, whose district will now include a big chunk of very-liberal Brooklyn. To make it work, map drawers had to do some interesting things with the neighboring 10th District, as you can see in Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman’s illustration of the map proposal:



(TPM New York readers, just imagine a Republican trying to hold a campaign rally in Park Slope.)

Republicans proved in 2010 that they were all in on using the best technology to efficiently redistrict themselves into power, particularly along racial lines. John Roberts wrote a ridiculous opinion when it was tested before SCOTUS. (I again thank Justice Roberts for writing his opinion in clear English rather than legalese so I was able to understand for myself how reality defying it really was.) The Trump administration worked to skew the National Census to help them gain seats. And of course we're now in the midst of a tidal wave of Republican lies, voter suppression, laws to overturn elections on their whim, and wildly gerrymandered maps. I loathe all of this political weaponization of voting but I also understand that the Democrats shouldn't unilaterally disarm. The Republicans set the rules of battle. Let them live with the consequences if they don't work out in their favor.

[goldenvalley]

Yeah both sides do it...that's why the Rucho case (Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina) was combined with a case from Maryland (Democratic gerrymandering).  Sadly perhaps the unintended consequence of that pairing made it easy for the US Supreme Court to decide..."eh! it's a political question, federal courts have no standard by which to analyze how much is too much gerrymandering so the case is not justiciable."

[LFC]

Jan 31, 2022 17:04:58 GMT goldenvalley said:

Yeah both sides do it...that's why the Rucho case (Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina) was combined with a case from Maryland (Democratic gerrymandering).  Sadly perhaps the unintended consequence of that pairing made it easy for the US Supreme Court to decide..."eh! it's a political question, federal courts have no standard by which to analyze how much is too much gerrymandering so the case is not justiciable."

Perhaps, but I doubt it. Roberts and Alito showed their cards before ever being nominated to SCOTUS which is why I was against both of them when first named. With Roberts as the swing judge I believe there was almost no way it wasn't going to break the way it did. "That's just my opinion, I could be wrong."

[jackd]

My state, Illinois, is an example of what golden valley is referring to. In our case, it's Democrats. When challenged, they say, "We'll change when Texas does." I agree with them. Unilateral disarmament is rarely wise.

[Traveler]

Here comes PA's turn at the apple. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday took control of a high-stakes redistricting lawsuit and will now decide how the state’s congressional districts will be drawn for the next decade.
[...]
Elected Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court, which has drawn intense criticism from Republicans since its 2018 decision to overturn Pennsylvania’s congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The court drew a new map. Since then, Republicans have continued to attack the court for decisions they see as partisan judicial overreach, including rulings in election-related cases in 2020.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 3, 2022 18:15:27 GMT Traveler said:

Here comes PA's turn at the apple. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday took control of a high-stakes redistricting lawsuit and will now decide how the state’s congressional districts will be drawn for the next decade.
[...]
Elected Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court, which has drawn intense criticism from Republicans since its 2018 decision to overturn Pennsylvania’s congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The court drew a new map. Since then, Republicans have continued to attack the court for decisions they see as partisan judicial overreach, including rulings in election-related cases in 2020.

I think I remember that the basis for the 2018 decision was the PA Constitution, not the US Constitution.  If that's the case this time around the US Supreme Court can't get involved unless the Reps argue that the PA Constitution is un-US-Constitutional.  

[LFC]

Feb 3, 2022 18:15:27 GMT Traveler said:

Here comes PA's turn at the apple. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday took control of a high-stakes redistricting lawsuit and will now decide how the state’s congressional districts will be drawn for the next decade.
[...]
Elected Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court, which has drawn intense criticism from Republicans since its 2018 decision to overturn Pennsylvania’s congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The court drew a new map. Since then, Republicans have continued to attack the court for decisions they see as partisan judicial overreach, including rulings in election-related cases in 2020.

PA Republicans are still butthurt that they weren't allowed to retain control of 70% of the state's House seats with only 50% of the state's voters backing them. They continue to retain a solid state-level advantage with only half the vote.