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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Protestors rally outside the Supreme Court during the gerrymandering cases Lamone v. Benisek and Rucho v. Common Cause on March 26, Activists have long hoped the Supreme Court would restrict partisan gerrymandering Since the s , the Supreme Court has established a great deal of precedent around what, exactly, states can and cannot do when it comes to drawing both congressional and state legislative district boundaries.
He continued: We have never struck down a partisan gerrymander as unconstitutional — despite various requests over the past 45 years. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email required. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy.
For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page. The Latest. States like Utah are also trying this approach, creating independent commissions that would limit legislatures' involvement in redistricting. The Utah law, which was narrowly passed by voters in the state last November, created a seven-person commission to draw up new maps and send them to the legislature for approval. California, the largest state with an independent redistricting commission, has a member panel consisting of 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 4 independents to draw new maps.
But given the Republican electoral success at the state level during the Obama years, Democrats still have their work cut out for them. Democrats have scored major victories at the state level in recent elections, and according to The Washington Post , they would now have the ability to draw the boundaries of 76 House seats nationwide should redistricting happen tomorrow. But buoyed by its strength in southern states, the GOP would still be able to redraw seats. Another seats would be drawn by independent commissions, while 60 would be redrawn in states where Republicans and Democrats share control of the state government.
Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, the elections remain Democrats' best hope of undoing Republican gerrymanders and instituting new maps. And that means Democrats will have to expend major resources on capturing state legislatures and governorships while still looking to retake the Senate and the White House. It's also something of an open question whether Democrats would restrain themselves from partisan gerrymandering in any states they take control of in and put in place independent commissions.
It's easy to talk a big game about reform and fair maps in the minority. But as history has shown again and again, both parties tend to indulge in gerrymandering when given the chance. When Illinois redrew its districts, the state legislators deferred to incumbent members of Congress, including the incumbent whom Obama challenged.
Obama would have been forced to sell his home and move in order to live in the district where he had run 2 years before. North Carolina is a deeply divided purple state: in , the Presidential race split ; in , it split ; in , it split In Maryland in , Democrats aimed in the opposite direction.
After Democrats controlled Texas redistricting in the s, Republicans took charge in The redistricting battles were so fierce that Democratic legislators actually fled to Oklahoma and New Mexico in an attempt to prevent the legislature from meeting to draw lines.
The Democrats hid out in Oklahoma in a Holiday Inn, under assumed names. Until now, redistricting has not been one of them. When the lines were ultimately drawn, they moved about , Latino voters out of one district in order to protect an incumbent who was beginning to lose the support of the Latino population.
Latinos had recently become the majority of the eligible population in the district, when they were replaced by voters more likely to support the incumbent. In , Texas had another opportunity to redraw district lines. The legislature effectively did the same thing, in the same place, to the same Latino voters.
There was a big shake-up in North Carolina politics this week. The judges ruled that the new map drawn by the Republican-dominated general assembly was an illegal case of gerrymandering that violates the First Amendment, Equal Protection Clause, and Article I of the Constitution.
Now, the General Assembly has about three weeks to redraw its map of congressional districts, according to CNN. Gerrymandering is the drawing of district maps in order to favor one political party, usually the party that currently has the most power; this is called political or partisan gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering can also refer to district maps that have been drawn to disadvantage the vote of racial minorities; this is called racial gerrymandering. Gerrymandering can be accomplished using a few different tactics: cracking, packing, hijacking, and kidnapping. The most common are cracking and packing:. This can sometimes lead to districts being drawn in really strange ways. Gerrymandering is considered controversial to many and totally unfair by critics because it allows the party in power to maintain their power unfairly.
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