“How to Avoid a Gerrymandering War”

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Ron Brownstein in Bloomberg (paywalled).

“The current House is unusual in the modern era in being very close to perfectly neutral according to various measures of partisan bias,” Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at Harvard Law School and expert in redistricting, told me. Under the current lines, Stephanopoulos and his colleagues have argued, the party that wins the most votes in House elections nationwide is also very likely to win the majority — a big improvement from 2012 when severe gerrymandering allowed Republicans to amass a 33-seat House majority even as Democrats won the national popular vote. . . .

If Texas succeeds in launching a new redistricting war, it could disrupt the best (if inadvertent) feature of the current maps: their rough partisan balance. In an all-out mobilization, Republicans probably can squeeze out about half a dozen more House seats than Democrats before 2026. That would not shift the maps back all the way to their lopsided pro-GOP tilt after 2010, says Sam Wang, president of the Electoral Innovation Lab at Princeton University. But, he says, it would erase the roughly neutral playing field, and likely force Democrats to win the total House popular vote by 2 to 3 percentage points to claim the majority. . . .

The best solution would be legislation establishing comprehensive, national rules for redistricting. In 2021, the Democratic-controlled House passed the sweeping election reform bill known as HR 1 that would have required states to use independent commissions to draw Congressional district lines and applied national standards to that process. Those included avoiding partisan bias, ensuring geographic continuity in the districts, and barring mid-decade redistricting. . . .

There might be other ways to address the gerrymandering problem. Though the US Supreme Court ruled in the 2019 Rucho case that federal courts can’t overturn partisan gerrymanders, state legal action may still offer some opportunities to curb excesses: Stephanopoulos and his colleagues at the Harvard Election Law Clinic recently helped craft a novel lawsuit in Wisconsin that argues the extreme lack of competition in the state’s Congressional map “makes a mockery of” the state constitution’s promise of equal protection and the right to vote. In the long run, some election reformers believe that returning to the early 19th-century model of electing multiple members from a single district offers the best chance to ensure both greater fairness and competition.

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“Poll: California voters back independent congressional maps, complicating Gavin Newsom’s redistricting push”

redistricting

Politico:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a major hurdle in his quest to revamp his state’s congressional lines, according to a new poll: Californians’ deep support for its current independent redistricting commission.

By nearly a two-to-one margin, voters prefer keeping an independent line-drawing panel to determine the state’s House seats, the latest POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey found. Just 36 percent of respondents back returning congressional redistricting authority to state lawmakers.

“It’s not surprising, in the sense that California has voted twice for this independent review commission not all that long ago,” said Jack Citrin, a veteran political science professor at UC Berkeley and partner on the poll. “And there’s a lot of mistrust and cynicism about politicians and the Legislature. That’s reflected here as well.”

California Democrats are plowing ahead with a high-stakes gambit to redraw the state’s lines to counter a proposed gerrymander by Texas Republicans spurred by President Donald Trump. California officials are expected to unveil newly redrawn maps at the end of this week that would position Democrats to nab five extra seats, neutralizing the Texas redraw….

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“A strange GOP divide is forming over Trump’s gerrymandering plans”

redistricting

Politico:

President Donald Trump’s aggressive redistricting push is sparking public concern from an unusual mix of Republicans.

Resistance to mid-decade redraws is running the ideological gamut and cutting across levels of government. While many are backing Trump’s gambit to protect the GOP’s House majority in the midterms, a growing number of Republican lawmakers are airing concerns — a list that spans lawmakers from swing districts in blue states to safe territory in ruby-red Florida.

Trump and his team have convinced once-wary Texas Republicans to draw a new House map and lobbied the GOP governors of Missouri and Indiana to at least “seriously” consider following suit, but the Republican governor of New Hampshire has ruled out pursuing any changes because “the timing is off.” And GOP state lawmakers across the country — who hold the power to redraw lines in several of the states at the forefront of what’s becoming a nationwide redistricting arms race — are finding themselves similarly split.

These strange divisions underscore the complex political dynamics of the president’s latest power play. It’s become a loyalty test that could boost Republicans’ chances of keeping their trifecta in Washington, but one that also carries significant electoral risk for several of their own members in Congress and potential for broader voter backlash.

Trump’s team is barreling forward, bullish about having more opportunities to redraw maps across the states than Democrats and brushing off concerns as primarily coming from members whose seats are at risk. Administration officials and allies are working to fire up his base by noting that Democrats have already gerrymandered several states in their favor and have limited moves left to play. And MAGA online influencers like Steven Bannon and Charlie Kirk are encouraging their fans to jam Greg Abbott’s phone lines so the Texas governor ratchets up pressure on quorum-breaking Democrats to return and let Republicans pass a new congressional map. But even that is showing some limits.

“Redistricting is not really an ideological exercise as much as a self-interest exercise,” California-based GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said. “The safer you are and enjoy being in the majority, the more your self interest is ‘lets see Texas get scrambled and if we sacrifice some colleagues from blue states, in California and New York, so be it.’”

But for those more vulnerable Republicans, “this poses a substantial risk to your career,” Stutzman said. And that’s why some are reflecting at least a “growing private sentiment of ‘is this really worth it?’”…

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“Trump Isn’t the Only One to Blame for the Gerrymander Mess”

redistricting, Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

David Daley NYT oped:

President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Texas Republicans have reignited the gerrymandering wars. The brazen power grab in Texas pushed Democrats to start their own efforts to unravel independent commissions established by voters, and now it’s threatening to tilt the whole country into chaos.

Mr. Trump and his G.O.P. allies are surely the instigators, but the true architect of this mess, the person who bears as much or more responsibility for it, is Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court. Over several years of rulings, this court has effectively rolled back laws that had for generations protected the right to vote.

The current frenzy is just the latest example of the most antidemocratic feature of American politics in 2025. It’s the toxic combination of the conservative Supreme Court majority and a political party that believes longstanding norms are for suckers and that lacks any commitment to fair play and majority rule.

Since he joined Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department in 1981 as a young foot soldier in the nascent conservative legal movement, Chief Justice Roberts has pursued the patient, steady bleeding of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, he wrote the 5-to-4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that effectively ended preclearance, the Voting Rights Act’s most effective enforcement mechanism, and liberated states, many clustered in the South, from federal oversight of legislative maps…

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“Hispanic Democratic Officials in Texas Plead Not Guilty to Voter Fraud”

chicanery

NYT:

Nine Latino Democratic officials and political operatives pleaded not guilty on Wednesday in South Texas to charges of criminal voter fraud, accusations that their defenders called blatant voter suppression and political intimidation by the state’s Republican attorney general.

Gerry Goldstein, a lawyer for the most prominent defendant, told the presiding judge that he had filed a motion Wednesday morning to dismiss the charges and challenge the constitutionality of the state law used to prosecute his client, Juan Manuel Medina, a former chairman of the Democratic Party of Bexar County, the fourth largest in the state.

Gabriel Rosales, the director of the Texas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, called the charges “a complete attack on democracy.”

“This is voter suppression 101,” Mr. Rosales said.

The nine defendants, including Mr. Medina, were indicted last month by a South Texas district attorney working with the state’s famously conservative attorney general, Ken Paxton. Six of the defendants appeared in person in a courtroom in Pearsall, Texas, while three others, including Mr. Medina, appeared via Zoom. A state judge is expected to consider the motion to dismiss the case in early October.

It was the second time in less than four months that Mr. Paxton has charged prominent Latino Democratic officials with criminal “ballot harvesting,” the usually routine act of collecting absentee ballots and bringing them to drop boxes or polling sites to be counted. A half-dozen people, including a county judge, two City Council members and a former county election administrator, were charged with voter fraud in May.
…

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“The Downballot’s live guide to redistricting in every state”

redistricting

The Downballot:

At Donald Trump’s instigation, Republican lawmakers across the country are moving forward with plans to redraw their congressional maps outside of the normal once-a-decade redistricting process—purely for partisan political gain.

In response, Democrats nationwide are preparing to counter these gerrymanders with new maps of their own. And in some cases, the courts, rather than legislators, could soon step in to impose changes.

In this continually updated guide, The Downballot is keeping track of the latest redistricting developments in each state—28 in all. Next to each state’s name, you’ll find a breakdown of how many members of each party it elected to the House in 2024.

States not on this list include those whose congressional delegations are effectively maxed out for one side or the other (such as Massachusetts and Oklahoma); those where political considerations make any mid-decade remap very unlikely (such as Arizona and Michigan); or those that have just a single district (like Alaska and Delaware).

You can also check out our special report explaining how every blue state (and several purple ones) can respond to these new Republican efforts to further gerrymander the maps in red states….

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Good Government Group Common Cause Will Bless Time-Limited Mid-Decade Re-redistricting, with Conditions

redistricting
Announcement via email: Common Cause today reaffirmed its commitment to fair, people-powered democracy, making clear that independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering. However, as political leaders in states like Texas are imposing mid-decade partisan maps to distort the… Continue reading