North Carolina’s redistricting fight heads to Supreme Court
North Carolina’s legal fight over its election map rapidly escalated Tuesday with the state asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case in hopes of protecting next month’s primary election.
Lawyers for Gov. Pat McCrory and other state officials filed the emergency request no more than an hour after a three-judge federal panel refused to delay its order from last week that found two congressional districts, including one that runs through parts of Charlotte, unconstitutional. The judges have ordered the state to redraw the boundary for the 12th and 1st Districts by the end of next week.
That’s about a month from the March 15 primary. State lawyers have argued that putting a new voting map in place at this late date will throw the election into disarray.
That same argument, written partially in italics to convey the state’s sense of urgency, became the centerpiece of a 183-page motion to Chief Justice John Roberts late Tuesday.
“This Court should stay enforcement of the judgment immediately,” the state argued.
“North Carolina’s election process started months ago. Thousands of absentee ballots have been distributed to voters who are filling them out and returning them. Hundreds of those ballots have already been voted and returned. The primary election day for hundreds of offices and thousands of candidates is less than 40 days away and, if the judgment is not stayed, it may have to be disrupted or delayed.”
U.S. District Judges William Osteen of Greensboro and Max Cogburn of Asheville along with U.S. Circuit Judge Roger Gregory of Virginia ruled Friday that the GOP-led legislature relied too heavily on race to draw the boundaries for the 12th and 1st Congressional Districts.
Tuesday, the judges refused to delay their ruling, which blocks the state from holding any more elections under the current voting lines and requires the state to submit a new election map by the end of next week.
In a four-page answer released by Osteen late Tuesday afternoon, the judges said that the real victim in the case is not the state’s election plans but the voters who have been irreparably harmed by living within improperly drawn districts.
“The court finds that the public interest aligns with the plaintiff’s interests and thus mitigates against (delaying) the case,” the judges wrote. “The harms to North Carolina are public harms. The public has an interest in having congressional representatives elected in accordance with the Constitution.”
The 12th District, the most heavily litigated congressional district in the country during the 1990s, snakes along Interstate 85 through heavily African-American areas of Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. The 1st District, which includes parts of 24 counties, rolls east out of Durham to Elizabeth City. Both are represented by Democrats.
GOP legislators, including state Sen. Bob Rucho of Matthews, say they were motivated by partisan politics, not race, when they drew the 2011 voting map. Political motivations are allowed by the court; race, as a predominant factor, is not.
In response Tuesday, the plaintiffs in the original 2013 lawsuit – including two from Mecklenburg County – said the lines must be replaced immediately so black voters can have their lawful say.
“Plaintiffs – and every other voter in North Carolina – have already been subject to two elections under the unconstitutional enacted plan,” Raleigh attorney Edwin Speas wrote. “The General Assembly’s improper use of race to sort voters by the color of their skin has violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of millions of North Carolinian(s).”
That harm “vastly outweighs the administrative inconvenience and additional cost the state will incur if the primary is delayed.”
Court fights over district lines led to delays in North Carolina elections in 1998 and 2002. Congressional and legislative districts, along with the state’s new voting rules, are now the subject of at least five federal lawsuits moving through the courts.
The last-minute urgency in the battle over the 12th and 1st Districts results in part from a Republican push in 2013 to move the primary election from May to March to increase the state’s role in this year’s presidential election. McCrory signed the bill into law only weeks before the trial of the redistricting lawsuit began.
In the 1990s, four North Carolina court fights over voting lines found their way to the Supreme Court. If Roberts and his fellow Supreme Court justices agree to get involved this time, they will be returning to familiar ground.
Last year, the high court shot down Alabama’s congressional districts based on largely the same racial argument. The Roberts court, however, has tried to avoid rulings that could disrupt elections and confuse voters.
Legislative leaders say McCrory is poised to call a special legislative session next week to address the issue, if needed.
Minority leader Dan Blue, D-Wake, said Tuesday that the time for action is overdue.
“The voters of North Carolina have waited for five years for the right to be heard – both at the judicial level and at the polls,” Blue said. “We applaud the federal court panel’s decision as a crucial first step in ensuring that every individual’s right to vote is protected.”
Rucho and Rep. David Lewis, the legislature’s redistricting chairmen, said in a joint statement Tuesday night that the state’s primary and hundreds of absentee ballots have been placed in jeopardy by the lower court order.
“We hope the U.S. Supreme Court will recognize the urgency and gravity … and issue a stay.”
North Carolina?s redistricting fight heads to Supreme Court | News & Observer
HB2 impasse has its roots in gerrymandering
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2016/12/1289.jpg
When state lawmakers couldn’t come together to repeal House Bill 2, it was just another sorry reminder of the toxic partisan divide that often renders the N.C. General Assembly dysfunctional.
Compromise, trust and honest brokering seem to be out of reach for this body of elected officials that arguably has more impact on our lives than any other level of government.
So what happened and why?
The inability to repeal HB2 is a symptom of what is a grave threat to our democracy: partisan gerrymandering.
When the majority party, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, gets to draw its own districts for its own advantage, our whole elective system becomes unfair. The proof is in the legislative maps – illogically shaped districts creating a jigsaw puzzle covering our state, making lawmakers virtually unaccountable to voters. Consider our incoming legislature that will be sworn in this January. More than 90 percent of them ran uncontested in November or won their election by a comfortable double-digit margin. Largely because of gerrymandering, citizens have no choice and no voice in our elections.
Lawmakers from these heavily gerrymandered districts are far more concerned with fending off potential primary opponents than facing a substantial general election challenge. As such, they arrive in Raleigh with no incentive to ever reach across the aisle and compromise.
That inability to conduct a civil discussion and reach an overall agreement was on full display in the special session called to repeal HB2, but failed to do just that.
We can’t go on like this. To the world, North Carolina appears to be a basket case. Ideologically driven agendas rule the day. And members of our two parties seem more interested in trading insults than working together to solve problems.
Somehow, we must stop the dysfunction. We must convince lawmakers to commit to fixing our broken redistricting system.
We need a process that remove politics and produces fair maps that keep communities of interest whole and results in districts that are more competitive. But this won’t happen unless we the people are involved. It’s time to let our legislators know enough is enough.
Common Cause founder John Gardner once said, “Everyone’s organized but the people. Now it’s our turn.” That’s never been more true than today.
With the climate we’re in, now is the time for citizens of all political stripes to come together. There are some general principals everyone can agree on, such as that redistricting needs to be transparent, free of partisan politics, abide by all federal rules including the Voting Rights Act and be independent of the legislature. Lawmakers should no longer be allowed to draw their own districts.
The political pendulum hardly stands still. No party is guaranteed to be in power forever. So it’s in everyone’s best interest for North Carolina to create a new redistricting process that provides fair representation for both parties.
If you agree, get involved. Make one of your New Year’s resolutions to help North Carolina end gerrymandering. You can find out how to get involved by visiting CommonCauseNC.org.
When we end gerrymandering, it’s likely a lot of other vital issues confronting our state can be more easily solved. Hopefully then big decisions like repealing HB2 don’t fall apart in a rancorous brawl.
[at]HB2 impasse has its roots in gerrymandering | News & Observer
Alabama found guilty of racial gerrymandering
Its happening again!!
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the state of Alabama engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in at least 12 districts in order to preserve a Republican supermajority. The ruling is a victory for the state’s Legislative Black Caucus, which has been fighting in court for years against voting maps that intentionally limit the voting power of African Americans by packing them into as few oddly-shaped districts as possible.
The decision, which came down on the day Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, calls on Alabama to re-draw 12 districts that were drawn “predominantly” based on race. These districts are all currently represented by Democrats, and 10 out of 12 by Black Democrats.
Unless Alabama appeals, the state will have to redraw its voting maps to comply with the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution before the next election in 2018. The leader of the statehouse Democrats, Craig Ford (D-Gadsden) said the state should take the opportunity to transition to an independent system that doesn’t allow the majority party to draw maps that help them hold onto power.
“Today’s ruling highlights the need to take the politics out of drawing legislative districts and instead, rely on an independent, non-partisan commission,” he said.
Republicans now control 68 out of 99 state legislative chambers and control both chambers in 33 states, riding a wave that began in 2010. Since then, they have come under fire in several states for engaging in illegal gerrymandering.
In November, a federal court ordered the state of North Carolina to redraw its unconstitutionally and racially gerrymandered voting maps. That same month, Wisconsin’s maps were struck down for intentionally drawing Republicans into safe, non-competitive districts.
A major case on the issue is likely to come before the U.S. Supreme Court later this year, with one of the most successful lawyers in the country leading the fight against partisan gerrymandering. Another one of the most influential legal minds in the nation — former Attorney General Eric Holder —will also join the fight, seeking to pressure states to adopt non-partisan systems before the next census in 2020.
If they prevail, it will mean a national shakeup of the political landscape that could break Republican dominance of state legislatures and the House of Representatives.
https://thinkprogress.org/alabama-fo...c40#.gv5axwtsr
Pennsylvania court set to redraw voting maps after governor veto
Pennsylvania’s top court was set to lay out new congressional voting districts for the state after Democratic Governor Tom Wolf on Tuesday rejected a version drawn by Republican legislative leaders as unfairly skewed in their party’s favor.
In a 5-2 party-line vote, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Democratic majority last month invalidated the existing map as an unconstitutional gerrymander, ruling that Republican lawmakers marginalized Democratic voters to win more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A new map is expected to boost Democrats’ chances of winning several Pennsylvania seats in November’s midterm elections, when they need 24 nationwide to take control of the House from Republicans. Republicans hold 13 of 18 congressional seats in the closely contested swing state.
Legal battles are playing out in several U.S. states over partisan gerrymandering, the process by which district lines are manipulated to favor one party over another. Pennsylvania has long been seen as one of the worst offenders, with one of its more oddly shaped districts nicknamed “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”
“The analysis by my team shows that, like the 2011 map, the map submitted to my office by Republican leaders is still a gerrymander,” Wolf said in a statement. “Their map clearly seeks to benefit one political party, which is the essence of why the court found the current map to be unconstitutional.”
Absent an agreement between Wolf and the Republican-controlled legislature, the court plans to draw new lines itself by Monday, with help from an independent redistricting expert. Both sides can submit proposed maps for consideration by Thursday.
Republican state legislative leaders called Wolf’s pronouncements “absurd” in a letter to the governor.
“This entire exercise, while cloaked in ‘litigation,’ is and has been nothing more than the ultimate partisan gerrymander,” wrote House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati.
Republicans have also threatened a federal lawsuit challenging the court’s mapmaking authority. The U.S. Supreme Court last week rejected Republicans’ appeal of the state court’s ruling.
Any new map would likely result in incumbents, candidates and thousands of voters suddenly living in new districts, ahead of May’s primary elections.
Wolf’s office retained Moon Duchin, a Tufts University mathematician, to analyze the Republican proposal. In a statement, Duchin said she calculated there was a 1-in-1,000 chance that a map drafted to comply with the court’s order would result in such a large advantage for Republicans.
“The proposed Joint Submission Plan is extremely, and unnecessarily, partisan,” she said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1FX2BM
Supreme Court rejects Pennsylvania GOP plea to block new congressional maps
More good news....
Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court has denied a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to block new congressional maps that could tilt several key races in Democrats' favor from being used in the midterm elections.
The court issued one sentence to reject the request. There were no noted dissents.
GOP leaders of the state House and Senate asked the court for an emergency stay blocking the implementation of the maps, which were unveiled last month by the state Supreme Court after it ruled that the previous maps had been gerrymandered in violation of Pennsylvania's Constitution.
Lawyers for House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati argued that the state's high court overstepped its authority in setting a deadline for lawmakers to draw new maps -- and then, when the GOP-led Legislature missed that deadline, producing new maps drawn by an expert selected by the court.
National Republicans and Democrats are paying close attention to the Pennsylvania developments.
The new map drawn by the state Supreme Court would mean more historically Democratic electorates in three seats in the suburbs of Philadelphia, including one region largely represented by Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and another represented in part by GOP Rep. Ryan Costello.
Republicans would also have a more difficult time holding the seats of retiring Reps. Pat Meehan and Charlie Dent under the new maps. Other districts -- including one west of Pittsburgh -- could become newly competitive.
President Donald Trump had urged the state Republicans to appeal.
"Hope Republicans in the Great State of Pennsylvania challenge the new 'pushed' Congressional Map, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary," Trump tweeted last week. "Your Original was correct! Don't let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes & waste money!"
The Supreme Court previously refused to step into the Pennsylvania case, and election law experts believed the latest filing with the Supreme Court is a long shot.
"Because this was a case decided under the state constitution by the state supreme court, the usual path for review of this case by the US Supreme Court is limited," wrote Richard L. Hasen, an elections law expert at the University of California, Irvine.
Earlier Monday in a separate case, a three-judge panel also ruled ruled against eight state Republican lawmakers.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/19/polit...ing/index.html
Holder: 2018 vote crucial to combating gerrymandering
Former Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that the 2018 midterms are crucial to his efforts to combat gerrymandering.
During a talk at Georgetown University, Holder said his group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), is “not shy” about its goal of electing more Democrats.
“The thought is to elect people in 2018 who will serve generally four-year terms. These are the people who will be at the table, come ’20, ’21, and who will be responsible for the redistricting that’s [coming] after the 2020 census,” Holder said.
The former Obama administration official, who has not ruled out a 2020 presidential bid, says his organization does not promote gerrymandering for either party. Holder described their efforts as “a partisan attempt at good government,” but said “Republicans are not going to sit and give up power. ”As an example of that “good government,” he cited Ralph Northam’s victory in Virginia last year, and how it came with an assurance from the new Democratic governor not to sign any redistricting legislation unless it came from an independent commission.
“I’m confident,” Holder said, “You give me a fair fight, I’ll have a Democratic Congress. I’ll have Democratic legislatures.”
Gerrymandered maps, like the one recently struck down in Pennsylvania, he said, are “really inconsistent with our founding documents, inconsistent with the Constitution, inconsistent with a variety of statutes.”
Holder, 67, said the NDRC needs to “raise the consciousness” of people and show them how gerrymandered districts “have an impact on their day-to-day lives.”
He cited gun control and “these weird choice laws” as examples of how politicians in “safe districts” are made “susceptible to special interests.”
“If you’re a Republican from a gerrymandered district, then you don’t have to worry about the fact that, for instance, 97 percent of the American people [are] wanting background checks when it comes to gun sales,” he said.
“At the end of the day, this is all about the American people getting to have their voices heard, their votes count, and their representatives reflect what their desires are,” Holder said.
Holder: 2018 vote crucial to combating gerrymandering | TheHill
Gerrymandering Is A Threat To Democracy, Eric Holder Says
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Much is at stake this fall as Americans vote for Congress. But in the long term, there may be more at stake in hundreds of races that receive little national coverage. They are elections for state offices, governors and state legislators and many, many others. They will have great influence in drawing election districts, and those districts influence who can be elected to Congress and other legislatures in the future. President Obama's former attorney general, Eric Holder, notes that Republicans dominated that process after the 2010 census. He leads a group trying to give Democrats influence after 2020.
What is the problem that you're trying to address?
ERIC HOLDER: Well, we're trying to deal with the problem of partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering. We saw the Republicans in 2011 use the power that they got in the 2010 election, and the redistricting occurred the year after, to draw gerrymandered seats at the state level as well as the congressional level. And so what we want to do is have in 2021 a fair process by which people will draw lines that will include Republicans and Democrats who are truly going to represent the people.
INSKEEP: Let's be blunt. When you say a fair process, do you really mean, because you're a Democrat, one that is slanted more to Democrats than to Republicans?
HOLDER: No. I'm just looking for a fair process. I think that if we have a process that is fair, Democrats and progressives as opposed to conservatives and Republicans will do just fine.
INSKEEP: Are you in this hole at least in part because, as his critics would suggest, President Obama didn't do much to build up the Democratic Party, to build up the bench at a time when Republicans and conservative groups were spending a lot of time and focus building up their bench?
HOLDER: No. I don't think I would criticize the president on that. But I would say the Democrats I don't think really have focused enough at the state and local level to the degree that Republicans did. And we have to reverse that. We have to make sure that we are focusing on every race in every state every time.
INSKEEP: So if your goal is a different map for legislative districts in 2021, what is at stake in 2018?
HOLDER: Well, we have at stake - a little less than half of the people who will be at the table in 2021 will be selected in 2018. The governors who are elected in 2018 who will be serving four-year terms will be intimately involved in the redistricting process in 2021. State legislators who are serving four-year terms and who are elected in 2018 will be at the table in 2021. So the impact that we want to have on 2021 has to begin now in 2018. And obviously, we have to have a good electoral effort as well in 2020, in addition to the lawsuits that we will be bringing and the Independent Commission efforts that we will be supporting between now and 2021.
INSKEEP: What kind of money is your organization raising, and how are you distributing it?
HOLDER: We've raised, I guess, about - I guess a little over $30 million, and we are distributing the money. We look at everything through a redistricting lens. So governors always matter; state legislators matter. But in certain states - if you look at Ohio, the state auditor, the state secretary of state, they matter. In certain places, Supreme Court justices will matter. So in North Carolina, we are supporting Anita Earls, who is running for the state Supreme Court. It's one of the reasons why we campaigned so hard for Rebecca Dallet, who won a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat.
INSKEEP: Are you campaigning for judges who are elected in many states with the explicit idea that these are judges who might someday rule the way you would like on a redistricting case?
HOLDER: No. All I'm looking for are judges who will look at the facts, look at the law and rule in a fair way. We're not trying to pick judges who will rule our way. I'm confident that, again, if you put people on the bench who will look at the laws as they have been written, look at our Constitution as it has been written, look at the state constitutions as they have been written, that we will get rulings that will be acceptable to the people generally and I think ensure a fair process.
INSKEEP: One other thing, Attorney General; you received a lot of attention particularly in conservative media for a speech you made in which you riffed off a famous remark by Michelle Obama.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HOLDER: You know, when they go low, we go high. No. No. When they go low, we kick...
INSKEEP: What did you mean?
HOLDER: Well, what I meant in that remark was that I am going to stand up very forcefully against anybody who would try to undermine our democracy, that Democrats have to be tough when it comes to confronting people like that or parties like that.
INSKEEP: As you know, there's a broad debate about how properly to be forceful. Is that something to be expressed through votes, through protests, through yelling at lawmakers at restaurants, something else? What's appropriate?
HOLDER: Well, I certainly think through votes, through protests. I say that just personally I would not be yelling at lawmakers in restaurants going to their homes. You know, I'd be going at them at the ballot box. I think it was extremely powerful when women came out the day after the Trump inauguration. I think it was very powerful when young people marched here in Washington to ask for more sane gun safety measures. Those are the kinds of ways I think in which the people should express themselves.
INSKEEP: Attorney General Holder, thanks so much.
HOLDER: Thank you.
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/65974...ic-holder-says
These midterm victories will expand voting rights, curb gerrymandering
Voters in some key states across the U.S. overwhelmingly approved a slew of ballot initiatives during the midterm elections that will expand access to voting and curtail excessive partisan gerrymandering.
Why it matters: The measures will make elections more accessible and competitive, and they have the potential to shift the states’ electorates, which will greatly impact the outcome of local and federal elections — including the presidency. Meanwhile, the success of these initiatives could give grassroots organizations a blueprint on how to circumvent GOP-controlled legislatures that have largely opposed attempts to end gerrymandering and expand voting rights.
The state of play:
- Last night, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment that automatically re-enfranchised 1.5 million ex-felons. The move is one of the most significant expansions of voting rights in decades, and it will shift the makeup of the country’s largest battleground state, which plays a deciding role in presidential elections.
- Maryland will allow eligible residents to register to vote as late as Election Day.
- Nevada enacted automatic voter registration when drivers contact the Department of Motor Vehicles.
- Michigan voters approved sweeping election law changes that will be enshrined into the state’s constitution, including same-day voter registration, no-reason absentee ballots and straight-party voting.
- Anti-gerrymandering initiatives in Colorado, Michigan and Utah have now shifted the duty of drawing state legislative and congressional districts into the hands of independent redistricting commissions rather than lawmakers. The goal is to make election maps more fair and competitive, and this comes ahead of the next reapportionment process that begins after the 2020 Census count.
Yes, but: Voting rights advocates received brutal blows in Arkansas and North Carolina, where Republican-sponsored constitutional amendments requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls were approved.
- North Carolina Republicans, who lost their supermajority in the state legislature, will now decide what forms of ID will be accepted.
Reality check: WithRepublicans successfully securing control of the Senate, President Trump, with the aide of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), will continue to rapidly transform the federal bench with conservative judges who are more likely to uphold restrictive voting laws challenged by advocacy groups.
https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-e...b0c1c90b1.html
Republicans Have a New Plan to Thwart the Will of the People
When Karl Rove laid out the Republican plan to win back power by weaponizing redistricting in a March 2010 op-ed, Democrats failed to pay proper attention.
The vision set forth — called Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project — proved simple yet revolutionary: In most states, legislatures control the decennial redistricting that follows the census. So in November 2010, Republicans invested tens of millions of dollars in these ordinarily sleepy local races and swept elections.
Through gerrymandering, they drew themselves huge advantages in Congress and state capitals, firewalls that have allowed Republicans in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan and elsewhere to survive wave elections in which Democratic state legislative candidates won hundreds of thousands more votes.
It’s a census-year election again, and this time both sides understand the stakes. Democrats know down-ballot elections this fall are the last opportunity to close the redistricting gap before next decade’s maps are drawn.
Republicans appear to have a different strategy for 2020 — subtler, more technical and instructed by successful legal challenges that overturned Republican-drawn maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders.
Last week, Republicans in Missouri presented a dress rehearsal of this plan. If left unchallenged, it could once again dye many states red for a decade or more.
In 2018, nonpartisan movements in five states, including Missouri, won redistricting reform via ballot initiative. (Oregon, Oklahoma and Arkansas are attempting to follow suit.)
So last week, Missouri lawmakers looked to dismantle the initiative — called Clean Missouri and supported by 62 percent of the state’s voters — that would have taken mapmaking authority away from politicians and handed it to a nonpartisan state demographer. If Republicans have their way, that demographer won’t draw a single line and control over maps will be returned to a commission of party insiders.
That’s not all they want to do, and it’s entirely likely that the fine print tucked inside this proposal will make its way into redistricting bills in Republican-controlled state capitals nationwide.
First, the new bill would add language to the state constitution that makes it harder for Missouri citizens to gain legal standing to challenge a gerrymandered map in court. Voters living in districts intentionally “packed” with members of one political party — which allows a mapmaker to hand the surrounding seats to their own side — would not be eligible to argue that their rights have been harmed by a statewide plan, because they were still able to elect a member of their choosing within their own specific district.
Second, under the new plan, if a legal challenge did make it into the courts, the state constitution would limit the remedies available to judges. A judge would not be able to throw out the entire map as unconstitutional but merely to order smaller changes to individual districts — essentially retaining most of the advantages embedded into the map by partisans.
The Clean Missouri proposal required the state demographer to draw a map that reflected Missouri’s overall political balance. The legislature’s new plan would have insiders drawing a map that prioritized compactness. In a state like Missouri, where Democratic voters are concentrated in two cities at opposite ends of the state, weighting the criteria in favor of compactness would artificially benefit the party whose voters are spread more efficiently across the state.
While the Clean Missouri plan required a map that achieved “partisan fairness” as closely as practical, the Republican plan allows for a much looser calculation of partisan fairness — which would allow for a map that is more gerrymandered than some of the nation’s most one-sided maps in Wisconsin and North Carolina.
Perhaps most dramatically, the Republican plan would open the door to drawing state legislative districts in a way that could shift the essence of representation itself. The longtime standard has been to count everyone — the total population — when drawing up equally populated legislative districts.
Republicans, however, have urged states to redistrict based on voting-age population instead — and so count only American citizens over the age of 18. What impact would this switch have? Before his death in 2018, the Republican redistricting mastermind Thomas Hofeller completed a study to assess the impact of drawing political maps that were based not on a state’s total population — the current practice virtually everywhere in the nation — but on citizens of voting age. Looking at Texas, he concluded that the switch would pull power away from cities and toward older, rural populations. It would also, he said, “be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
Last summer, at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s gathering of conservative lawmakers, a panel of Republican election experts urged state legislators to redistrict based on voting-age population as well.
The redistricting wars of 2021 will not be the same as 2011. The effort in Missouri should ring alarm bells that failed to go off after what amounted to a warning from Mr. Rove 10 years ago.
Republicans are looking ahead and planning carefully. If Democrats look to win last decade’s battle and fail to fight this one, they’ll be staring at another decade in the wilderness — and America’s creep toward anti-majoritarianism will accelerate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/o...rrymander.html
Democracy in the Balance: Gerrymandering and Voter Nullification
In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry led a backroom redistricting plan. One rigged district was so contorted that it looked like a salamander. Since then, the practice of manipulating electoral maps for political advantage has been called gerrymandering. When Gerry carved up Massachusetts district, it was an art not a science. Politicians sitting around some smoke-filled room would draw district maps by imprecise political instincts, and handwritten street lists.
Today, sophisticated computer models using massive amounts of personal data from commercial sources, including social media like Facebook, drive gerrymandering. Big data and advanced mapping technology have been available to Republicans paid for by the Koch Brothers. Politicians can now use advanced mapping technology to carve districts with surgical precision. They can track their voters using this sophisticated data base. Politicians pick who they want in or out of a voting district and are now able to choose voters as never before.
Modern high-tech gerrymandering has happened in several states, including Pennsylvania. Based on simple statistical tests, Pennsylvania is one of eight severely gerrymandered states, including Florida, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. A large number of seats are uncontested because rigged districts are so uncompetitive. Yet, the partisan U.S. Supreme Court has washed its hands and the hands of Federal Courts to address the blatantly undemocratic threats.
Republican Governor, Senate, and House gerrymandered Pennsylvania’s Congressional districts, and House drew the legislative boundaries. A Republican-controlled State Supreme Court ratified it. The original map ensured that Republicans would win control even though there were 4,172,826 Democrats, and 3,280,202 Republicans voting in Pennsylvania. This gerrymandered electoral map produced 6 Democrats and 12 Republicans despite the 892,624 democratic voter lead. Through precise gerrymandering, Pennsylvania GOP dominates both the House and Senate.
Pennsylvania is known for its gerrymandered districts—in fact, in 2016, researchers at the independent Electoral Integrity Project gave our redistricting practices an 11 out of 100—the third-worst rating in the Nation. More recently, the State Supreme Court redrew the Congressional boundaries more fairly but not the State House or Senate districts. After a lengthy court battle, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was eventually forced to redraw congressional districts. This is a temporary fix in Pennsylvania, as we must establish a non-partisan “fair districts” mechanism to curb future gerrymandering.
The Koch Brother’s gerrymander plan worked spectacularly around the country and it’s why in 2012, Democratic statehouse candidates won 51 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, which voted for Barack Obama in the presidential election, yet democrats ended up with only 28 percent of the seats in the legislature.
Shelby County v. Holder, and the Erosion of the Voter Rights Act
In an unbelievable decision on June 25, 2013, the right-wing United States Supreme Court decided that racism is no longer a political factor in America when they ruled in a partisan 5-to-4 vote in Shelby County v. Holder. The U.S. Supreme Court is either dangerously cloistered or deliberately bent on undercutting the minority vote when they decided to undermine voter rights in southern states.
The high court overturned a vital provision of the hard-fought Voting Rights Act of 1965, declaring it unconstitutional. Founded on a false assumption that forty years have healed past discriminatory practices, they ruled Section 4(b), the provision that spells out the formula identifying the jurisdictions subjected to pre-clearances based on their histories of discrimination, unconstitutional and no longer needed. This also nullified Section 5 that required certain states and local governments with long histories of voter discrimination to obtain federal pre-clearance before implementing changes to their voting laws or practices.
Eight years after the ruling, we are witnessing polling places being systematically and cynically closed across the country, and voter rolls purged of tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters. Far too many closed polling places were in predominantly African-American counties to be a coincidence. Following the Shelby County v. Holder, new voting restrictions were put in place before the 2016 Presidential election, and 868 fewer polling places were closed across the country. While these laws have disproportionately targeted Black people, at least 17 states saw voter suppression cases targeting American Indian and Alaskan Native voters in 2016.”
Through several troubling decisions, Roberts Court has done more to destroy our democracy than any other court in history. Chief Justice Roberts has dodged responsibility by blaming voters’ lack of education. He should look in a mirror and own the damage his court has done to our democracy. Unchecked now, several state departments and local governments have deployed brazen, and often illegal attempts to suppress turnout. Recent research by Stephen Pettigrew at the University of Pennsylvania, found minority voters are six times as likely as whites to wait longer than an hour to vote. In many states, this disparity is intentional. States controlled by Republicans made several changes from strict voter ID laws and polling place closures to make voting harder targeting minority communities that tend to vote Democrat. Mr. Pettigrew’s research also suggests that this discourages voters. For each hour would-be voters wait, their probability of voting in the next election drops by one percentage point.
Georgia’s current Governor Brian Kemp stole the election from Stacey Abrams. Running as Secretary of State, Kemp closed polling places, lock up hundreds of voting machines and purged 340,134 voters by falsely asserting they had moved. He carried the state by just under 55,000 votes after the purge. Georgia’s well-publicized strategy to purge black voters and close voting locations got a new dimension last week. Defective voting machines, incorrect passwords, and untrained and ill-equipped poll workers did the trick to make voting extremely difficult while black. Last week in Georgia’s primary, minority districts were targeted, forcing voters to stand in line for 3-6 hours while nearby white districts seemed to have no problems. While the voting location irregularities received little oversight, they are theoretically being investigated now. Voters must be on guard voter suppression in November. The shenanigans in Georgia will only expand. The stakes are much higher there with two U.S. Senate seats and the Presidency in the balance.
Abuses are not limited to Georgia. The Brennan Center for Justice reported that “election officials removed at least 17 million voters from the rolls between 2016 and 2018, on top of the 16 million registrations that were canceled between 2014 and 2016.” The report found “counties once covered by Section 5 purged voters at a higher rate than counties that were not required to seek pre-clearance. The counties with histories of discrimination now purge about 10 percent of voters on their roles, while counties that did not require pre-clearance canceled about 7 percent of registrations.”
William J. Barber, II, Episcopal Bishop and the head of the Poor People’s Campaign, asks, “Did you know that there are fewer voting rights in 2018 than there were 50 years ago when the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed? Since 2010, 23 states have passed racist voter suppression laws, including racist gerrymandering, reduced early voting days, and fewer hours, purging voter rolls, closing targeted voting locations, and more restrictive voter ID laws that make it harder to register. We must add to Barber’s list, the GOP’s efforts to block voting by mail as they are doing in Iowa.
America’s democracy is dysfunctional and that threatens every voter. The weaponization of gerrymandering coupled with voter suppression has distorted the outcome of elections and creates a cloud of illegitimacy. It contributed to the decline of black voters in 2016, according to a Pew Research study. The study found black voter turnout declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after a record-high 66.6% in 2012.
As we watch Pennsylvania Speaker Mike Turzai’s taillights as he departs Harrisburg, let’s not forget his attempts to suppress voter turnout. Mike Turzai became the poster child for voter suppression when he was caught on tape bragging about rigging registration requirements. Leading up to the 2012 election, Turzai bragged on tape that the state’s new ID law would “allow Mitt Romney to win the state in November. Done!” Fortunately, the State Supreme Court found Turzai’s voter suppression bill reinforced by his claims unconstitutional before the 2012 election.
The Republicans are now throwing sand in the gears for the 2020 election to keep us from voting by mail. We must demand the right to vote by mail everywhere, end gerrymandering and demand an end to voter suppression. Time is long overdue for restoring democracy to America. Our Supreme Court has failed us and it’s up to every American to protect democracy and demand vote by mail in the upcoming Presidential election.
https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/de...nullification/
