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Last week, the Cook Political Report estimated that Democrats are currently leading their nationwide redistricting scorecard; the party is currently projected to gain two seats as a result of new state Congressional maps. Cook Political Report
“The Supreme Court put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power… Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, part of the conservative majority, said the lower court’s order for a new map came too close to the 2022 election cycle.” AP News
The right is critical of Democratic gerrymandering and praises the Supreme Court ruling.
“Preparing for potential midterm [losses] in 2022, liberals and their media allies began churning out stories about the menace posed by corrupt GOP-led legislatures engaging in extreme gerrymandering. The Washington Post’s editorial board ominously warned last year that the ‘Republicans’ war on democracy is ramping up.’ As it turns out, Democrats have been far more aggressive in their gerrymandering efforts than Republicans…
“While Republicans certainly haven’t been innocent bystanders in the gerrymandering wars, states like Texas have largely gone about strengthening existing GOP seats, while liberal states have fileted the few remaining Republican districts in their states…
“New York is set to cut the number of Republican districts in half, devising new constituencies that snake through neighborhoods for no reason other than to split communities that may pose a threat to the Democrats’ power… On the other hand, in Republican-majority states like Ohio and North Carolina, liberal courts have intervened, and are likely to overturn rejiggered maps… It’s not about the dark money or the gerrymandering, or the health of our democratic institutions. It’s about raw political power.”
David Harsanyi, New York Post
“Democratic redistricters have simply been more ruthless than Republicans, starting with Illinois and its early filing deadline on March 14. Democrats drew ‘bacon-strip’ districts heading 100 miles out from Chicago wards to the open prairie and downstate districts that stitch together small factory or university towns along highway right-of-ways. Thus they increased Democrats’ edge from 13-5 to 14-3…
“The creation of purportedly nonpartisan redistricting commissions, a favorite proposal of those few liberals who lament partisan redistricting, doesn’t end partisan gerrymanders. Democrats have succeeded in gaming supposedly neutral commissions this cycle in California (52 districts), Michigan (13), and New Jersey (12)… [So much for the lamentations] that Republican redistricting would guarantee one-party control for another decade or even, according to left-wing tweeters, forever.”
Michael Barone, Washington Examiner
Regarding Alabama, “The practical result of this week’s order to ‘stay’ the lower court’s ruling is that, for one more election, Alabama’s congressional districts will remain substantially the same as they have been for 30 years, all with repeated federal court approval as being fully in line with both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. The status quo ante will continue, with one of the seven Alabama districts featuring a population that is majority black…
“There has been no change in the Constitution or the applicable part of the Voting Rights Act in those three decades and only the slightest growth in the percentage of Alabama's population that is black. So how, pray tell, were the new districts a gross civil rights violation when the same arrangement under the same circumstances wasn’t a civil rights violation before?…
“[Redistricting law is] incoherent and virtually impenetrable. Throw darts at a list of federal judges, and each dart will hit a judge with a differing interpretation from the last one. That’s why Congress really ought to redraft the [Voting Rights Act]… Absent congressional clarity, the Supreme Court can and should use the Alabama case between now and 2024 as a chance to undo the damage it caused in the past to this area of law.”
Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
The left argues in favor of changes to prevent gerrymandering by both sides, and criticizes the Supreme Court ruling.
The left argues in favor of changes to prevent gerrymandering by both sides, and criticizes the Supreme Court ruling.
“Republicans could have had non-partisan redistricting nationwide had they supported the For the People Act, which the House passed last year and the Senate continues to ignore like a stack of unwanted electric bills. Yes, there were a lot of other things in there, but Democrats would have been happy to run a stand-alone redistricting bill through Congress if it seemed like there was one iota of interest from the other side… if this fiasco convinces Republicans that deeper reforms are needed for the party to remain competitive, this will be a win-win for Democrats and democracy.”
David Faris, The Week
“Looking at redistricting solely as a Red vs Blue horse race distorts what a partisan bloodbath this cycle has actually been… When wildly uncompetitive districts turn low-turnout party primaries into the only race that matters, gerrymandering accelerates our already toxic polarization and pushes policy to extremes…
“There were 12 competitive Congressional elections [in Texas] in 2020. Post-redistricting? Only one… At the current pace, according to a New York Times estimate, there will be fewer than 40 competitive US House seats nationwide after redistricting, down from nearly 75 following last decade's redistricting. With 435 seats in the House, that means about one in every 11 will be a contest without a predetermined winner.”
David Daley, CNN
“Politicians elected under these maps face less popular accountability than they should. The nation’s policies are determined not by median voters, who should call the shots, but by electorates that have been artificially skewed district by district. Parties that gerrymander can more easily impose radical ideologies, spurn compromise and ignore the majority’s wishes…
“The solution is as obvious as it is popular: When given the choice, voters in state after state have empowered commissions to draw the lines. As long as politicians block this simple, proven reform, the nation’s system of government will be less fair, less democratic and less responsive to the people.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
Regarding Alabama, “Not one of the nine justices denied the discriminatory effect of the Alabama Legislature’s redistricting. Nor did any of the justices claim that the district court misapplied the law in finding a violation of the Voting Rights Act. As [Justice] Roberts explained in his dissent, the district court’s ruling contained no errors for correction. In such cases, there is no reason to stay the district court’s ruling because there’s no likelihood that the ruling would be reversed…
“Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, in an opinion defending the move, speciously claimed that it was inappropriate to change the rules so soon before an election. But the Legislature’s map was created in November, taking the lawmakers less than a week to draw up the plan, and civil rights advocates filed a lawsuit challenging it within hours of its enactment. This is not a situation where the federal court was acting days or even weeks before the election. The Alabama primary is not until May and the general election is not until November…
“Kavanaugh’s argument would make challenges to discriminatory voting districts nearly impossible, at least for the first congressional election after redistricting. New districts cannot be drawn until after the decennial census. If a legislature just delays redistricting long enough, then no federal court can step in to cure the discrimination before the next election.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, Los Angeles Times
A libertarian's take
“The case against Alabama's new districts is hardly clear-cut. On the map approved by state lawmakers, there would be six likely Republican districts and one majority-black, likely Democratic district. What you think about that split probably depends on your own political leanings, but the operative question in the federal lawsuit is whether state lawmakers in Alabama (a state where about 27 percent of the population is black) should be required by federal courts to draw a second majority-minority district…
“‘The Voting Rights Act claim against Alabama was not that strong,’ Andy Craig, a staff writer who covers voting rights and election issues for the libertarian Cato Institute, tells Reason. ‘It's theoretically possible to draw a second majority-black district, but just barely and only at the extreme expense of other traditional criteria like compactness.’ These are the same tricky questions—what matters more, the race of voters or the compactness of a district—that are poorly suited to courtrooms even when there is time for a full hearing of the issues.”
Eric Boehm, Reason
