Category Archives: redistricting

Joey Fishkin: “California’s Prop 50 passed. Now, here’s how to end partisan redistricting once and for all “

political parties, political polarization, redistricting

Joey Fishkin with an important piece in the SF Chronicle:

The nationalization of politics also provides an opening to solve this problem. Congress has the power to do what it did in 1842: Enact a statute to bring both parties back from the brink. Congress’ authority to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of choosing representatives is undisputed. Prop 50 itself, perhaps as a sweetener to help the partisan medicine go down, included an anti-gerrymandering cri de coeur: It “establishes state policy supporting use of fair, independent, and nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide.” 

We need a new federal statute of mutual disarmament — ideally before we reach the point where there are zero California Republicans and zero Texas Democrats. Prop 50’s call for nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide is a good start. So is the bill by Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin (Placer County), who may lose his seat because of Prop 50, which would ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide. 

However, there are major problems to overcome. First, it will be difficult to prevent states from stacking nonpartisan commissions with partisans. Second, the two parties are unfortunately not similarly situated: Both parties benefit from gerrymandering, but Republicans have more opportunities and benefit more. That is part of why Democrats were able to unite their caucus in 2021 behind their democratic reform package, HR1, which included a requirement that every state use a nonpartisan redistricting commission, whereas Republicans do not seem interested in even Kiley’s modest bill. 

Thus, unfortunately, the most plausible route to solving the gerrymandering problem is to elect a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and a Democrat in the White House, and then make sure they — at their moment of maximum opportunity to lock in partisan advantage through partisan hardball — instead engage in anti-hardball, building fairer rules for everyone. ….

Share this:

Proposition 50: “California voters pass anti-Trump, pro-Democrat ballot measure”

direct democracy, redistricting

LA Times:

California Democrats’ effort to block President Trump’s agenda by increasing their party’s numbers in Congress was overwhelmingly approved by voters on Tuesday.

The Associated Press called the victory moments after the polls closed Tuesday night.

The statewide ballot measure will reconfigure California’s congressional districts to favor more Democratic candidates. The Democratic-led California Legislature placed the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s behest, after Trump urged Texas and other GOP-led states to modify their congressional maps to favor their party members, a move designed to keep the U.S. House of Representatives in Republican control during his final two years in office.

Proposition 50 was the sole item on the statewide, special-election ballot Tuesday. Supporters hope the ballot measure has become a referendum about Trump, who remains extremely unpopular in California, while opponents call Prop. 50 an underhanded power grab by Democrats….

Share this:

“Indiana Republican Tries Different Approach in Debate on Voting Maps: Listening”

redistricting

NYT:

For two hours on Saturday, Greg Goode, a Republican member of the Indiana Senate, sat on a tall wooden chair, listening as constituents told him they oppose a plan to redraw the state’s political map to send more Republicans to Congress.

No one spoke in favor of the idea. Mr. Goode said later that six of the roughly 200 people who showed up for the event, which he arranged, indicated support for the redistricting plan on a sign-up sheet.

As Republicans and Democrats across the country race to draw new maps outside the usual once-a-decade cycle, often with little intraparty debate or discussion with opponents, Saturday’s exchange stood out as a counterpoint. Here was a Republican lawmaker saying he was unsure how he would vote on a map sought by President Trump, and seeking feedback from a left-leaning crowd that spoke against drawing new maps and described broader fears about the country’s direction.

“A fascist government has decided that they’re going to tell all the way down to the smallest district who’s boss,” said Thomas Baer, 68, a Terre Haute resident who urged Mr. Goode to “say no to this blatant power grab.”

Several states have moved quickly to draw new maps, with only nominal resistance from members of the party in power. But passage of a new map advantageous to Republicans is not a certainty in Indiana, where the president and his allies have struggled for months to muster enough support. Legislators like Mr. Goode will decide what happens….

Share this:

ProPublica Profile of NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby Draws Veiled Threat from Justice’s Daughter to Drop the Story or Deal with Trump Administration

chicanery, judicial elections, redistricting

ProPublica:

In early 2023, Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, gave the state and the nation a demonstration of the stunning and overlooked power of his office. 

The previous year, the court — then majority Democrat — had outlawed partisan gerrymandering in the swing state. Over Newby’s vehement dissent, it had ordered independent outsiders to redraw electoral maps that the GOP-controlled legislature had crafted to conservatives’ advantage.

The traditional ways to undo such a decision would have been for the legislature to pass a new law that made gerrymandering legal or for Republicans to file a lawsuit. But that would’ve taken months or years.

Newby cleared a way to get there sooner, well before the crucial 2024 election.

In January — once two newly elected Republican justices were sworn in, giving the party a 5-2 majority — GOP lawmakers quickly filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to rehear the gerrymandering case. Such do-overs are rare. Since 1993, the court had granted only two out of 214 petitions for rehearings, both to redress narrow errors, not differences in interpreting North Carolina’s constitution. The lawyers who’d won the gerrymandering case were incredulous. 

“We were like, they can’t possibly do this,” said Jeff Loperfido, the chief counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Can they revisit their opinions when the ink is barely dry?”

Under Newby’s leadership, they did.

Behind the closed doors of the courthouse, he set aside decades of institutional precedent by not gathering the court’s seven justices to debate the legislature’s request in person, as chief justices had historically done for important matters. 

Instead, in early February, Justice Phil Berger Jr., Newby’s right-hand man and presumed heir on the court, circulated a draft of a special order agreeing to the rehearing, sources familiar with the matter said. Berger’s accompanying message made clear there would be no debate; rather, he instructed his colleagues to vote by email, giving them just over 24 hours to respond. 

The court’s conservatives approved the order within about an hour. Its two liberal justices, consigned to irrelevance, worked through the night with their clerks to complete a dissent by the deadline. 

The pair were allowed little additional input when the justices met about a month and a half later in their elegant wood-paneled conference room to reach a decision on the case. After what a court staffer present that day called a “notably short conference,” Newby and his allies emerged victorious.

Newby then wrote a majority opinion declaring that partisan gerrymandering was legal and that the Democrat-led court had unconstitutionally infringed on the legislature’s prerogative to create electoral maps.

The decision freed GOP lawmakers to toss out electoral maps that had produced an evenly split North Carolina congressional delegation in 2022, reflecting the state’s balanced electorate. 

In 2024, the state sent 10 Republicans and four Democrats to Congress — a six-seat swing that enabled the GOP to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives and handed Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, control of every branch of the federal government. 

The gerrymandering push isn’t finished. This month, North Carolina Republican lawmakers passed a redistricting bill designed to give the party an additional congressional seat in the 2026 election….

ewby declined multiple interview requests from ProPublica and even had a reporter escorted out of a judicial conference to avoid questions. He also did not answer detailed written questions. The court system’s communications director and media team did not respond to multiple requests for comment or detailed written questions.

When ProPublica emailed questions to Newby’s daughter, the North Carolina Republican Party’s communications director, Matt Mercer, responded, writing that ProPublica was waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.” 

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” Mercer said in his email. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.” …

Share this:

“Ohio Republicans cut redistricting deal with Dems”

redistricting

Punchbowl:

Republicans on Ohio’s redistricting commission struck a deal with Democrats on a compromise congressional map after hours of late-night deliberations….

This compromise is a shocking development. Ohio’s constitution mandates a complicated redistricting process that includes the commission and the state legislature. The Buckeye State is required to redraw its map for 2026 because it passed in 2021 without bipartisan support.

Both parties expected the commission to reach a stalemate and that redistricting would revert back the state’s GOP-controlled legislature.

But Democrats were able to successfully leverage the prospect of a referendum campaign. For their part, Republicans dangled the threat of pushing through a less favorable map if Democrats rejected their offer….

Share this:

“Louisiana Republicans delay election calendar to prepare for possible redistricting effort”

redistricting, Voting Rights Act

Jane Timm for NBC News:

Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed two bills Wednesday to delay the state’s spring elections, a move designed to give them time for a possible redraw of the congressional map if the U.S. Supreme Court weakens a key provision in federal voting law.

The measures move the 2026 spring elections to May 16 and June 27, back from April 18 and May 30. The legislation passed in a special legislative session that was called the day after Louisiana argued a case before the Supreme Court over its current map, in which Republicans control four of the six districts.

“We pray that the Supreme Court brings us clarity and does so in an expedient manner. The situation we find ourselves is not typical, so it’s not unreasonable to think the Supreme Court might issue an opinion before the typical June,” state Rep. Gerald “Beau” Beaullieu, a Republican, said.

“We do not know when they will respond, nor the decision they will render, but we do know we have a little bit more time left on the calendar,” he continued.

The case concerns Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a critical component of the landmark voting rights law. The provision bars the government from denying or limiting voting rights based on race, color or language minority. It’s been used to force Louisiana lawmakers to draw two majority-Black districts in a state where Black Americans make up about one-third of the population….

Nearly 70 districts are protected by Section 2 across the country, according to Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an election law expert and professor at Harvard Law School.

Stephanopoulos said he expected that Southern states with Republican trifecta control would try to eliminate those protected districts, which tend to elect Democrats.

“This would sort of introduce a structural, pro-Republican bias into the House that hasn’t been there for at least the last few years,” he said. “It would decimate minority representation in the House.”

Stephanopoulos added that it could lead to the first substantial drop in minority representation in Congress since the 1880s….

Share this:

“Another lawsuit challenges NC redistricting, this time using new legal theory of ‘retaliation'”

redistricting

WRAL:

Opponents of North Carolina’s new congressional districts filed a new legal challenge Monday — one that leans on a new interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in hopes of blocking the map from being used in future elections.

The new districts already face a racial gerrymandering challenge, filed a day after the map passed into law last week.

The newest challenge focuses on a new legal theory: An allegation that state lawmakers, in drawing the new map, violated the First Amendment rights of eastern North Carolina voters. The new complaint, made as part of an ongoin lawsuit over racial gerrymandering in the state, alleges that lawmakers in this newest version of the map retaliated against eastern North Carolina voters for supporting a Black Democrat in the 2024 elections.

And unless courts strike down the new map, the lawsuit argues, then this could become just the first step in what could be decades of retaliatory redistricting to follow, no matter which party is in charge, with maps redrawn potentially before every single election from here on out.

“It foreshadows a relentless game of whack-a-mole against voters, in which even a hint of dissent will cause the hammer to come down through targeted line-drawing against communities whose voters dare differ from the views of those in power,” the lawsuit says….

Share this:

5th Circuit permits mid-decade redistricting in Tarrant County, rejects partisan, racial gerrymandering claims

court decisions, redistricting

Judge Willett, joined by Judges Barksdale and Duncan, in Jackson v. Tarrant County:

Here, Tarrant County chose to redraw the precinct lines used to elect its County Commissioners—and to do so mid-cycle. The Challengers, a group of voters reassigned from one district to another, contend that the County Commissioners Court redrew the lines to harm racial minorities. They further argue that, even if partisanship rather than race drove the decision, the County’s staggered elections justify our intervention despite the general rule against policing partisan maps. We hold that the facts do not support the Challengers’ first argument, and the law does not support their second.

Share this:

“Newsom to Redistricting Donors: Stop Giving Me Money”

redistricting

NYT:

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed onto his regular Zoom call with his political brain trust last Friday as they ticked through the latest developments in the high-stakes redistricting measure headed for a vote next week.

They were far ahead in the polls. The opposition was mostly off the airwaves. And there was plenty of money in the bank.

Then, according to two participants in the call who shared details of the private discussion on condition of anonymity, his senior advisers presented the California governor with an intriguing idea: Stop fund-raising from small donors altogether in the final stretch.

“I love it,” Mr. Newsom declared.

So Mr. Newsom’s political operation did just that on Monday, telling millions of supporters in an email, “You can stop donating now.”…

Share this:

“Lawsuit Plunges New York Into the National Gerrymandering Fight”

redistricting

NYT:

A lawsuit filed on Monday on behalf of four New Yorkers charges that the state’s congressional map unconstitutionally dilutes Black and Latino votes in a district that covers Staten Island and part of southern Brooklyn, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The New York Times.

The case marked New York’s official entrance into the national gerrymandering arms race. Rewriting the state’s existing congressional districts represents one of Democrats’ best hopes of improving their chances in the 2026 midterm elections.

Filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the lawsuit argues that the lines for the 11th Congressional District unfairly disenfranchise Black and Latino residents under the state’s newly passed Voting Rights Act. The district is represented by Representative Nicole Malliotakis, the only Republican member of Congress in New York City.

The combined Black and Latino population on Staten Island has grown from 11 percent to 30 percent over the past 40 years, the suit notes, arguing that the current boundaries “confine Staten Island’s growing Black and Latino communities in a district where they are routinely and systematically unable to influence elections.”

A representative for Ms. Malliotakis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This lawsuit was filed by Elias Law Group, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that has handled much of the party’s redistricting litigation.

Filing a lawsuit is a far less certain path to redistricting than having a partisan legislature simply draw new maps and pass them into law, which is what Texas did earlier this year. But New York placed its redistricting process in the hands of an independent commission years ago, in hopes of insulating it from partisan politics….

Share this: