Bob Egelko for the SF Chronicle.
Category Archives: redistricting
California: “Gavin Newsom floats November special election for his anti-Trump redistricting push”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he will likely call a November special election to have voters approve new House maps that boost Democrats.
By embracing a public vote, Newsom teed up a nationalized contest that opens a prominent front in national Democrats’ efforts to thwart President Donald Trump’s agenda. Newsom has vigorously embraced the party’s push to counter a GOP-friendly Texas gerrymander by buoying Democrats in blue states like California, arguing Trump has left the party no choice….
The governor’s remarks were his most detailed yet since he first vowed to counter Texas’ GOP-buoying gerrymander by having California redraw its boundaries. Newsom had formerly said he was also considering having the Democratic-dominated Legislature simply draw new maps, circumventing the voters who enshrined an independent commission in 2010.
But Newsom backed away from that option Thursday, signaling he would prefer to put the issue to voters. He said the new maps would remain in place for the next three election cycles, after which the commission would draw new lines as scheduled.
“We’re not here to eliminate the [independent redistricting] commission,” Newsom said. “We’re here to provide a pathway in ’26, ’28, and in 2030 for congressional maps on the basis of a response to the rigging of the system of the president of the United States.”…
Wice: “Congressional bills threaten equal representation, census accuracy”
Jeff Wice Newsday oped:
Fair representation in Congress is under attack. Several bills aim to limit the population used for allotting the 435 congressional districts among the states. …These current efforts threaten equal representation, and census accuracy, for Long Island, New York, and the nation….
The Downballot on Why the Texas Gerrymander is Likely to be Effective and Not a “Dummymander”
Texas Republicans unveiled a congressional redistricting proposal on Wednesday that would, as Donald Trump asked, further gerrymander the state’s map by making five Democratic-held seats more likely to flip in next year’s elections.
The plan, which could change prior to passage, seeks to undermine Democrats by diluting the voting strength of Black and Latino voters, potentially in violation of the Voting Rights Act. It makes radical changes to do so, moving more than a third of Texans into new constituencies. Of the state’s 38 districts, only one, the Lubbock-area 19th, would remain untouched.
Below, we outline the most important changes to the five districts Republicans are targeting. In each case, we’ve also included data showing how each current district voted in the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections, as calculated by The Downballot, and how each proposed district would have voted in that same election, according to Dave’s Redistricting App and the Redistricting Data Hub (for 2024) and VEST (for 2020).
Notably, the proposal in no way resembles a “dummymander“—an overly aggressive map that winds up backfiring on the party it was meant to favor, which was a possibility some had forecast (or wished for). Republicans may not pick up all five of the seats they have their sights on should they adopt these new boundaries, but they’ve been careful not to weaken any of the districts they currently hold….
Michael Li Answers Reader Questions about Texas Gerrymandering at Bolts
As redistricting eyes turn again to California
Justin here. I find much of the work of the UCLA Voting Rights Project to be really valuable — but I have to say, I agree with Rick’s take on their read of the California Constitution‘s provisions on redistricting. The California Constitution can be amended (as Rick says, it takes approval by the voters), but I don’t think current law permits the legislature to just draw maps on their own. And I think following the Project’s memo would end up putting the legislature in a worst-case bind.
Rick says that the memo uses a sort of “wooden textualism” — the same sort of methodology, giving overly short shrift to what drafters clearly intended, that has produced the 8th Circuit’s dead-wrong decisions on private rights to enforce the VRA. But I think it’s even less persuasive than that. The memo describes portions of the California Constitution that “retain for [the] Legislature the power to adopt ‘a statute establishing or changing boundaries of any legislative, congressional, or other election district.’” That’s not what I read those sections to be doing.
The memo cites two sections of Article IV of the California Constitution – section 8(c) and section 10(b) – as giving the legislature power to draw redistricting statutes (and override the state’s independent commission) whenever it wants. Article IV, section 8, subsection (c) is about effective dates for legislation. It has a default, a special exception (I think) for bills passed at the end of the first year of a two-year session, and an exception to the exception for redistricting statutes. Article IV, section 10, subsection (b) is about bills becoming laws without the governor’s signature if he sits on them long enough. It too has a default, and an exception for redistricting statutes.
Neither of those sections purports to assign the legislature a role in drafting redistricting statutes. It just says what the effective dates and law-without-signature timing might be for legislative redistricting statutes … if such statutes existed. And the best read of the constitution, I think, is that Article XXI just means there are none of those legislative redistricting statutes now (because the redistricting commission has the power to do that work instead). That doesn’t make these procedural bits superfluous: if the commission provisions are withdrawn or modified, they kick back in.
It’s very hard to read those small procedural exceptions in 8(c) and 10(b) to imply a giant substantive power when the much much much clearer provision on substantive power gives that power instead to the independent commission. Also, it sure seems weird for Article XXI of the California Constitution to go to all the trouble to specifically take the pen away from the legislature and prescribe a bunch of criteria for the commission to use, if a different part of the constitution just lets the legislature undo that work however they want whenever they want.
I am, of course, not a court. And maybe a court would disagree with me. But I think it’s far more likely that a court would read these provisions of Article IV as vestigial procedural caveats rather than affirmative authorization. And if that’s true, then a legislature acting on this theory (and not, say, putting a measure before the public if they really want to effectuate a retaliatory gerrymander) is putting itself in a worst-case scenario.
If the legislature draws a radically gerrymandered map on this theory, it ticks off all of the reform voters who put the commission in place in the first instance, and anyone who doesn’t love the idea of a Democratic gerrymander. And if a court (as I think most likely) then strikes the map down for lack of legislative authority, it ticks off all of the Democrats gunning for pure partisanship – because now the legislature has accomplished nothing, and it’s too late for a special election that would actually change the rules before 2026. I think this is a recipe to claiming action while actually affecting nothing, and ticking _everyone_ off in the process.
UCLA Voting Rights Project Experts Argue, Wrongly in My View, that the California Legislature Could Engage in Re-Redistricting California’s Congressional Districts without Voter Approval
What a difference half a day makes.
Contrary to the earlier reporting from Politico that California Democrats might try to call a special election to get voter approval for a Democratic gerrymander of congressional districts (to counter the expected Texas Republican gerrymander), the latest from Politico suggests that Democrats may try to re-redistrict through ordinary legislation. I don’t think they have the power to do so, given the unequivocal language taking away that power from the Legislature in two voter initiatives amending the state constitution to establish a redistricting commission and to apply it to both state legislative and congressional redistricting. (In California, voter initiated ballot measures can only be amended by another vote of the people, unless the measure provides otherwise.)
Here’s the latest from Politico:
Call it the Fleetwood Mac option: California lawmakers could go their own way on a Democratic gerrymandering bid.
Redistricting experts have been briefing elections committee staff in the Legislature on a redraw strategy that would enlarge Democrats’ House margin without voter approval, Playbook has learned. That would avert an expensive and uncertain special election — saving Newsom and allies money for other ballot battles — but it would push Democratic lawmakers into uncharted legal terrain.
Voters bequeathed California its independent House redistricting commission in 2010, and because only voters can substantially amend ballot initiatives once they’ve passed, they may need to sign off on Newsom’s plan to redraw a few California House Republicans into oblivion.
Or they may not.
Newsom has argued there’s another option: simply having the Legislature craft new maps. He’s noted that California’s constitution is silent on mid-decade redistricting (as opposed to the once-a-decade commission process linked to the Census). Now UCLA Voting Rights Project experts are bolstering that argument to the Legislature.
Their legal analysis, shared exclusively with POLITICO after it was presented to legislative staffers this week, argues the Legislature “has the legal constitutional authority to draw new districts today” if it deems it “appropriate” — as Newsom and other Democrats have argued.
None of this means the Legislature will decide to circumvent voters. Attorney General Rob Bonta suggested yesterday that the cleanest route would be lawmakers putting a new map on the ballot. That would give Democrats political cover and help inoculate them from the legal challenge that would inevitably follow if the Legislature simply goes it alone — a path that could end in an embarrassing court rebuke.
The legal analysis engages in a kind of wooden textualism which I think is not in line with either the plain text of these ballot measures as a whole nor the clear purpose of both statutes to take the matter away of redistricting away from the state legislature. And I don’t think California courts will buy it if the Legislature takes this gambit.
There is an argument that fairness in congressional redistricting needs to be considered on a national basis, and that Democratic tit-for-tat gerrymanders to counter Republican gerrymanders are otherwise justified. I’m not endorsing that argument nor rejecting it. I’m saying that as far as California goes, there is a clean way to do it, as AG Bonta suggested, is taking the matter back to the voters. And I think that’s the right way to do it. Let the voters decide.
(Note: Although I am at UCLA, I have no role with the UCLA Voting Rights Project and had no hand in this memo.)
“Texas House Republicans unveil new congressional map that looks to pick up five GOP seats”
Texas GOP lawmakers released their first draft of the state’s new congressional map Wednesday, proposing revamped district lines that attempt to flip five Democratic seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The new map targets Democratic members of Congress in the Austin, Dallas and Houston metro areas and in South Texas. The draft, unveiled by Corpus Christi Republican Rep. Todd Hunter, will likely change before the final map is approved by both chambers and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Democrats have said they might try to thwart the process by fleeing the state.
This unusual mid-decade redistricting comes after a pressure campaign waged by President Donald Trump’s political team in the hopes of padding Republicans’ narrow majority in the U.S. House.
Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. Trump carried 27 of those districts in 2024, including those won by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen.
Under the proposed new lines, 30 districts would have gone to Trump last year, each by at least 10 percentage points.
The districts represented by Cuellar and Gonzalez — both of which are overwhelmingly Hispanic and anchored in South Texas — would become slightly more favorable to Republicans. Trump received 53% and 52% in those districts, respectively, in 2024; under the new proposed lines, he would have gotten almost 55% in both districts….
“How Newsom could redraw career ambitions”
MAPPING IT OUT: The potential contours of a snap California redistrict are coming into focus (more on the politics of that exercise below).
Attorney General Rob Bonta suggested yesterday that lawmakers could put a new, fully realized map before voters for up-or-down approval. ”I think that’s what’s being contemplated here and I think that’s what the legal pathway is,” Bonta told reporters, noting he’d been in touch with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. Remember, Bonta’s office would write an initiative’s official title and summary.
Newsom has said he’s reviewing three or four options to proceed, including simply having the Legislature draw lines on the theory it retains the authority to do so despite California’s independent commission. But Bonta’s remarks suggest a special election could be the smoothest path — though it would still be a bumpy one. Speaking of which …
MAPMAKING MELEE — Newsom’s push for a Democrat-boosting California gerrymander would have to run through the Legislature — where it could collide with lawmakers’ career plans.
Few prizes tantalize term-limited state lawmakers quite like a safe House seat that’s effectively a lifetime gig. But returning to a bygone era of redistricting hardball could complicate life for ambitious incumbents redrawing the seats they hope to one day represent. California voters chose in 2010 to sideline self-interested politicians from the map-making process; restoring their role, as the governor wants to do, reopens some of those old incentives.
“I’ve seen the negotiations. I’ve seen all the arm-twisting that Willie (Brown) and Phil Burton had to do,” said Bruce Cain, who helped craft maps for the former Democratic leaders. Burton, he added, “had to browbeat people into things they wouldn’t want to do.”
For now, California Democrats are publicly rallying behind a national push to counter Texas’ planned GOP gerrymander. Even frontline House members are saying Democrats have to be armed with every option.
But it’s one thing to proclaim your support for a plan embraced by party grandees like Newsom and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Getting 54 Assembly votes and 27 Senate votes for new maps is a different matter. Some of the Democrats who will be asked to vote for the gambit will have to balance personal plans and party priorities.
Rarely does a vote in the state Legislature so directly tie into national politics or draw in national figures….
“In Fight for House, New York May Follow Texas in Redrawing Maps”
If Texas lawmakers follow through on President Trump’s call to redraw state congressional maps to help the Republican Party, New York leaders say they want to be ready to respond in kind.
Democrats in the State Assembly and Senate will introduce a bill on Tuesday that would allow New York to redraw its own congressional lines mid-decade — instead of every 10 years, linked to the U.S. census — if another state does so first.
“Republicans have made it clear that they will stop at nothing to use this process to advance their political agenda,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader sponsoring the bill in the Senate. “If other states are going to do this, we shouldn’t stand by and watch the Congress be lost.”
“Democrats Plan $20 Million Fund to Target Texas Republicans for Redistricting”
The largest super PAC backing House Democrats is creating a new fund with upward of $20 million to target congressional Republicans in Texas if legislators there follow through on plans to redraw district lines to eliminate Democratic seats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
At the direction of President Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, has called a special session of the State Legislature to remake the lines in the state in order to squeeze as many as five Democrats out of office in an effort to pad the current slim Republican majority in the House.
National Democrats have decried the redistricting effort — lines are typically drawn once a decade after the census — as an effort to rig a Republican majority.
“Republicans are trying to steal five seats in Texas,” said Mike Smith, the president of the House Majority PAC, which is creating the new account, called the Lone Star Fund.
The new account, he said, is partly a bid to tell congressional Republicans from Texas that their own jobs could be put in jeopardy by the remapping as Republican voters are shifted into formerly Democratic seats. But he said it was also a bid to recruit some unlikely Republican allies to oppose the new maps because they fear for their own careers.
“They should be scared and they should be vocal about being scared because they’re about to get a bunch of money dropped on their head,” Mr. Smith said.
The advertising assault on those Republicans will actually begin on Monday, when Unrig Our Economy, a liberal-leaning outside group, is starting an ad campaign worth more than $2 million focusing on four current Republican congressional districts in Houston, Dallas and near the Mexican border, the group said….
The Prospect of Bailing-in Alabama
Tomorrow, the three-judge district court in the Alabama congressional redistricting litigation will hold a hearing on whether to bail-in Alabama to the VRA’s preclearance regime. If bailed-in, Alabama would have to seek preapproval for any redistricting changes from either DOJ or that court through the 2030 redistricting cycle.
Readers may remember this case as the Supreme Court’s surprising 5-4 ruling in Allen v. Milligan back in 2023. More recently, this past May, the district court found that Alabama’s proposed remedial map—which flagrantly disobeyed Milligan by failing to create a second Black-opportunity district—was enacted with discriminatory intent. I’ve previously argued on this blog (see here and here) why Alabama’s defiance necessitates bail-in as a remedy. Right now, I want to make some global comments and flag some points from the briefs that readers might find interesting.
1. We are twelve years out from Shelby County, and this is the fifth time that a State has been under a credible bail-in threat. Unfortunately, no State has been bailed-in during this time. In the 2010s, Texas twice escaped being bailed-in for its voter ID law and its redistricting plan after passing animus laundering laws that took off the roughest edges of the prior statutes. Around the same time, North Carolina was not bailed-in by the Fourth Circuit notwithstanding a finding that its voter-suppression law had been enacted with invidious intent. That strategic move helped evade Supreme Court review. And in 2022, Florida was bailed-in by a district court for its third-party voter registration law, but the Eleventh Circuit overturned the predicate finding of intentional discrimination thereby avoiding the Section 3(c) question.
The Alabama fact pattern is far worse than these unsuccessful bail-ins. Unlike Texas—which ameliorated its problematic laws—Alabama doubled down and defied a court order by failing to draw a second Black-opportunity district. Indeed, the three-judge district court had very harsh words on this very point back in May, suggesting that it was open to a bail-in remedy. Given Alabama’s bluster about gamesmanship being a prerequisite for bail-in, it appears that Alabama thinks States should get one free pass in evading court orders. If one is fine, what’s the line for triggering bail-in? Two, three, or four redistricting maps that defy court orders?
2. The specter of mid-decade redistricting now haunts the political landscape. President Trump is pushing Red States like Texas and Missouri to redraw their maps, and Blue States are threatening to do so in retaliation. If the norm against mid-decade redistricting were to evaporate, Alabama may face considerable political pressure to eliminate its second Black-opportunity district. And here is where the rubber hits the road. Alabama’s purported concession that it will not engage in mid-decade redistricting is from the current leaders of the state house and state senate. But those leaders cannot bind a future legislature—nor are they guaranteed to remain as leaders if politics dictated their replacement to draw another 6-1 Republican map.
3. The Milligan plaintiffs have alternatively requested that the three-judge district court retain jurisdiction to hear challenges to any new redistricting plans through the 2030 census. Put simply, this would not be a bail-in because Alabama would not have to preclear any changes. Rather, the same panel would hear any new challenges. This is an interesting litigation strategy, and it is obvious why the plaintiffs would want to keep this panel. However, it could raise interesting post-CASA questions about federal courts’ equitable powers, ones that dovetail with the points raised about Article III in Justice Thomas’s Alexander concurrence.
4. Alabama does not contest Section 3(c)’s constitutionality. Tellingly, Texas made the same decision back in the 2010s. Nonetheless, Alabama argues that it does not qualify for bail-in because there have not been multiple constitutional violations. On this front, Alabama’s arguments mirror Texas’s once again—and I have covered and refuted them extensively before (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). That said, I continue to believe that Shaw violations—which concern excessive use of race—are not the type of unconstitutional conduct that should count in the bail-in analysis, thereby taking the 2010s ALBC litigation off the table for the Milligan plaintiffs. In a similar vein, the 1990s DOJ objection should also not count, as it was based on the now repudiated “Black maximization” policy.
5. Alabama’s potential bail-in is happening against the backdrop of the Eighth Circuit’s twin holdings that Section 2 lacks a private cause of action and that Section 1983 cannot be used as a substitute. This matters for two reasons. First, Section 3(c) is some of the best textual evidence that the VRA is supposed to be enforced by private parties, as it authorizes bail-in relief in suits brought by the Attorney General and “aggrieved person[s].” Second, the Trump administration’s amicus brief opposing bail-in showcases the absurdity of the federal government—particularly this administration—being the sole actor empowered to bring Section 2 suits.
6. Because there’s a direct right to appeal to the Supreme Court, an Alabama bail-in is almost certain to get heard on the merits calendar. But as I wrote previously, this is an ideal case for a bail-in to go to the Supreme Court given Alabama’s defiance of the first Milligan decision. This case, therefore, could well decide if preclearance remains a viable mechanism post-Shelby County, which will set the stage for any future VRA revisions.
Unfortunately, the court is not live streaming the hearing, but I hope to post additional thoughts once a transcript becomes available.
Bruce Cain and Matt Barreto Comment on the Viability of a California Mid-Decade Redistricting
“I don’t think it’s doable. I think there are too many constitutional constraints,” said Bruce Cain, a Stanford political scientist who was deeply involved as a staffer in the partisan gerrymanders from a prior era of California politics.
It’s not just a legal obstacle. Undertaking redistricting would open up a huge “political fight” within the party by redrawing districts some politicians have run in for multiple cycles, he said. “You’d be borrowing from different kinds of Democrats and sticking them into other seats and the politics of that would be very complex,” Cain added.
But Newsom, who has his eye on running for president in 2028, has been steadily laying the groundwork anyway. …
Lawmakers and operatives who were initially caught off guard or skeptical of Newsom’s proposal are increasingly becoming convinced California has the authority and the political will to respond to Texas in kind. Sharing maps of a potential Democratic gerrymander has become a favorite pastime.“I’ve seen a map that’s legal, upholds the Voting Rights Act, and produces 49 to 50 Democratic seats,” said Matt Barreto, a pollster and director of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project who polled for the Harris campaign and advised the Biden White House. California currently has 43 Democrats and 9 Republicans in Congress. “This is something lawmakers should consider if Texas goes first.”
“Democrats desperately look for a redistricting edge in California, New York and Maryland”
Politico on the limited options available to counter Republican redistricting efforts in Texas, Ohio, and Missouri:
In conversations with more than a dozen state lawmakers and redistricting experts, Democrats’ best shot at redrawing a map lies in California, a heavily blue state with a huge number of congressional districts. They see the second-best option in New York, which saw Democratic gerrymandering efforts sputter in recent years, and Illinois, which is already a heavily pro-Democrat gerrymander. Far less likely options lie with Maryland and New Jersey, which have just four Republican-held seats between them.