How Redistricting is Shaping the Battle for Congress
Image: Ziniu Chen/UVA
A New York judge adopted a new US House district map late Friday, replacing the one previously drawn by Democratic state lawmakers after a months-long legal challenge from GOP voters.
đź—˝ A deeper dive... Every decade, states redraw district lines for the House and local offices after receiving population data from the latest census.
New York currently has 27 House districts, which will shrink to 26 after the upcoming midterms.
- NY Democrats initially proposed maps that would likely have halved the number of GOP districts from eight to four, but an appeals court ruled that they violated an anti-gerrymandering provision in New York’s Constitution.
- The new court-drawn maps released Friday give Republicans a chance to win up to 11 House seats, according to the court-appointed "special master" who drew them.
🇺🇸 The big picture: On a national level, Democrats had hoped the likelihood of more NY seats would help outweigh Republican gains in states where the party controls the drawing of district lines, like Florida (+4 GOP | -3 Dem) and Georgia (+1 GOP | -1 Dem).
- Republicans need to flip five seats in November to win a majority in the House, where all 435 members are up for reelection every two years.
- In the Senate – which elects ~⅓ of its members every two years – the GOP only needs to flip one seat for a simple majority.
+In the know: The number of competitive House districts – categorized by races won with less than 55% of the vote – is on pace to fall below 40 out of 435 seats, the lowest level in at least three decades, per the NY Times.
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From the Left
- Some commentators on the Left argue that gerrymandering is currently happening asymmetrically in the US, with some Democrat-led states establishing bipartisan redistricting commissions while no GOP-led states are doing so.
- Others applaud decisions taken by state courts against what they frame as redistricting maps gerrymandered in the GOP’s favor, like in North Carolina and Ohio.
“For years Democrats have demanded that the courts take a more active role in redistricting. In New York they got their wish but don’t like the result…
From a partisan standpoint, the new plan could potentially tilt more Democratic than today’s map, depending on the year. Republicans hold 30% of New York’s House seats, within the area code of President Trump’s share of the 2020 vote (38%). The special master’s plan has 19% of seats firmly Republican, and another 19% competitive. In a good year for the GOP, it might prove roughly fair. In a bad year, it might be nearly a Republican wipeout.
Democrats are upset anyway, and one reason is that they were counting on permanently conquering more seats via Albany’s gerrymander, which was aggressive about packing Republican voters into a few red districts…
The GOP can be forgiven some schadenfreude after watching Democrats get hit by a gerrymandering boomerang. If Albany had been less obvious in trying to squeeze redistricting for every drop of partisan gain, maybe the judiciary would have been reluctant to take over the cartography. Instead they went for broke.
The larger point is that redistricting is inherently political. Democrats cheer when a court in a state like North Carolina inserts itself into the drawing of congressional lines. They appear to think judges will produce a map that’s more “fair.” Now they’re frantically trying to protest the New York plan before Friday, which a state judge has set as a deadline for its approval.
Do you think Democrats will learn anything from this episode? We don’t either.”
“Wednesday’s decision by the New York State Court of Appeals to overturn the state’s congressional and state Senate maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders is great news for Republicans. It should also spur members of both parties to finally outlaw this scourge upon democracy…
The victory for democracy in New York is tempered by the fact that other courts — usually dominated by Republican appointees — are rarely so brave…
The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate elections for federal office. Congress already mandates that all representatives be elected from single-member districts; it can and should change that law to ban partisan gerrymandering forever more.
There are three ways it can do that. First, it can follow the example of other democracies such as Canada and Australia and require states to employ a specific type of expert commission to redraw the lines, subject to clear boundaries that limit the ability to split cities, counties or communities of interest and that protect minority voting rights…
Congress could also mandate the system used last year to redraw Virginia’s districts. After that state’s redistricting commission deadlocked on partisan grounds, the state’s Supreme Court appointed two special masters — one appointed by each party — to jointly draw the lines. The two… did brilliantly, producing a set of maps that keeps regions and political jurisdictions intact…
The final approach would be radical, but still constitutional: requiring states to elect House members by proportional representation. Districts are not constitutionally mandated, so Congress has the authority to abolish them completely…
Democracy is too important to be left to politicians’ devices. Citizens are slowly winning the fight for fair districts. We should carry that fight now to Congress and push for national reform so this blight is forever banished from our shores.”
From the Right
- Some commentators on the Right call out what they say is hypocrisy on the Left among lawmakers who are upset with the ruling in New York’s recent redistricting case, but applaud other cases of judges stepping in to prevent GOP gains while drawing maps.
- Others argue that Congress should outlaw the practice of partisan bodies being in charge of their own redistricting process, which will inevitably lead to gerrymandered results.
“New York Democrats’ hyperpartisan gerrymandering violated the state Constitution, which voters amended eight years ago to establish a bipartisan redistricting commission — specifically prohibiting line-drawing that discourages competition or gives one party an advantage.
But correct as last week’s state high court ruling striking down those lines is, it doesn’t solve a growing national problem. In fact, it exacerbates it, since extreme gerrymandering is now happening asymmetrically across the U.S., with Republican-controlled legislatures and governors going to town to maximize their leverage by creating as many safe congressional districts for their fellow partisans as possible, while Democrat-controlled states are increasingly tying their hands to prohibit the nefarious practice…
There are only two ways forward. One, Congress can and should strike a nationwide blow against gerrymandering. The For the People Act would’ve required the creation of state commissions that “unduly favor or disfavor any political party.” Par for the course in Washington, that vital provision was part of a giant bill that would’ve done a few dozen other things, some of which were seriously problematic. It went nowhere.
Two, and admittedly less likely given the composition of the Supreme Court, the country’s highest bench must revisit its calamitous 2019 decision in Rucho vs. Common Cause, which barred federal courts from reviewing even the most extreme partisan gerrymanders.
As Justice Elena Kagan put it in her rousing and dead-on dissent, “Gerrymandering...helps create the polarized political system so many Americans loathe,” adding: “The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government. Part of the Court’s role in that system is to defend its foundations. None is more important than free and fair elections.””
“Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio are once some of the most closely contested battleground states. But for more than a decade, extreme gerrymandering in these three states tipped the scales in favor of the Republican Party.
As a result, district maps sent a disproportionate number of Republicans to Washington and often protected lawmakers against significant blue waves.
Our democracy is in dire straits. Earlier this year, a GOP filibuster stalled crucial voting rights laws in Congress while in 2019 a US Supreme Court decision shuttered federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims, giving state legislatures the green light to take redistricting to extremes.
But state supreme courts have stepped in to curb gerrymandering, becoming a crucial stopgap in championing free and fair elections. And while this redistricting cycle has been a partisan bloodbath, some congressional maps better reflect the nation's politics, thanks to the work of state courts.
We've seen this in battleground states including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia, where state courts -- often, though not always, in bipartisan fashion -- have struck down aggressive partisan gerrymanders, making the case that they violate the rights of voters under the state constitution…
Without state courts to step in, many legislatures could continue to warp congressional maps -- or pursue election subversion methods -- for years to come.”
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