“It’s Time to Stop Gerrymandering Latinos out of Political Power”

Gabriella Limón for the Brennan Center:

The American population is becoming more Latino, and fast. Yet Latino communities across the country remain shut out of real political power, sidelined from representation by rigged districts expressly designed to suppress their vote.

The result of this discriminatory gerrymandering is the near complete exclusion of Latinos from public office. In 2020, Latinos made up just 1 percent of all local and federal elected officials, despite being 18 percent of the population.

In fact, the 2020 census results show that Latinos made up over half of the country’s population growth from 2010 to 2020, adding 11.6 million people to their total numbers — more by far than any other ethnic group in absolute terms. Latinos are already the largest minority group in 21 states, and in California and New Mexico they have already surpassed non-Latino whites as the largest single ethnic group in the state. In Texas, they are poised to do the same.

The booming Latino population is a dominant force in the economy, responsible for almost three-quarters of all labor force expansion since the Great Recession. Latinos are increasingly getting college degreesbecoming homeowners, and running for elected office. And Latino growth is having an impact on politics — as a growing portion of the electorate, Latinos were decisive in President Biden’s victory in 13 states, and they showed up in record numbers in the 2020 election across the country.

But with this size and emerging electoral power has come a backlash. In states where growth among Latinos and other people of color threaten the political status quo, lawmakers are already beginning to gerrymander Latino communities out of their political voice, packing them into fewer districts to circumscribe their electoral power or dispersing Latino communities across multiple districts to dilute their voting strength. In Texas, for example, lawmakers recently passed a new congressional map that reduced the number of Latino-majority districts — despite the fact that the state has actually added 2 million Latinos since 2010.

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