Gerrymandering is alive and well. The coming battle will be bigger than ever – By Jane C. Timm (NBC News) / Dec 28 2019
Republicans, Democrats clash over who will draw the congressional district maps that could determine control of the House.
The gerrymandering wars are heading South.
A number of Southern states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, are prime targets for partisan gerrymandering as the congressional redistricting process gets underway after next year’s statehouse elections, experts said.
“Many of the states that had the really aggressive gerrymanders the last time — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin — the processes are much fairer there” now, Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University said, referring to what took place after the 2010 census. “The real worry is these fast-growing states in the South.”
America’s decennial congressional redistricting process — when roughly even-sized House districts are drawn, usually by state politicians — has become one of the most important battles in politics, as the parties seek to gain advantage by drawing sometimes crazy looking maps.
Activists say these partisan maneuvers undermine democracy and that politicians shouldn’t be choosing their voters; politicians who gerrymander like to say that by winning elections, they’ve earned the right to draw the districts as they see fit.
The Supreme Court has declined to outlaw partisan gerrymandering — saying only states can police that — but it also removed a key safeguard against gerrymandering by gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013. That ruling means states with a history of racial discrimination, including Texas, Florida and North Carolina, no longer have to clear their redistricting maps with the Department of Justice before putting them in place.
That ruling, along with the growing populations, changing demographics and mostly single party control, sets up Southern states as the most likely territory for partisan gerrymandering, experts said.
The South is “ground zero for this fight,” said Dan Vicuña, a redistricting expert at Common Cause.
Vicuna said the Supreme Court’s decision has put in place a “new legal playing field” for partisan gerrymandering and lawmakers can be expected to try to take advantage of that when they are drawing the House maps.
Continue to article: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/gerrymandering-alive-well-coming-battle-will-be-bigger-ever-n1106951
