Redistricting for the US House and the US state legislatures

[lpetrich]

Brand New Congress on Twitter: "Gerrymandering is bipartisan. BNC candidate @ImaniOakleyNJ10 wrote in a blog for us last month about the efforts of Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey to break up historic Black communities to protect white incumbents. (link)" / Twitter
noting
They call it redistricting. We call it voter suppression. – Imani Oakley – Brand New Congress

From the beginning, our campaign for New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District has focused on New Jersey’s ballot design and how the political machine here uses it to stay in power.

But instead of being ashamed, the establishment has doubled down on its losing strategy of dirty tricks and moderate politics. Now they’re trying to use the redistricting process to surgically cut me out of the district by moving my historically Black neighborhood from the majority-minority 10th to the majority white 11th district.

This type of backroom political maneuvering is gross for many reasons — not least because redistricting is supposed to make our democracy more representative, not less.

Imani Oakley for Congress on Twitter: "Update: we won " / Twitter

It is evident that Democrats are plenty guilty of gerrymandering.

 

[lpetrich]

That does not make the Republicans any less guilty, of course.

Brand New Congress on Twitter: "Just last week, BNC candidate @OdessaKellyTN faced the same thing from the @TNGOP and their plan to break up the 5th district (Nashville) into 3 separate gerrymandered districts -- all to dilute the power of the increasingly diverse community of Nashville. (link)" / Twitter
noting
Welcome to the New Jim Crow – Odessa Kelly – Brand New Congress

For over 200 years, the city of Nashville, Tennessee has existed within a single congressional district with one member of Congress representing the city.

Over the years our city has grown more diverse, but our representatives have not.

That’s why I launched my campaign for Congress to represent this district, and I’m proud to have the support of Brand New Congress.

But last week we learned that Republicans in the Tennessee legislature are planning to break up Nashville into THREE districts in the new Congressional maps.

The Tennessee GOP is showing us exactly what happens when white supremacists are given the power and tools to destroy our democracy. Dividing up Nashville is an intentional attempt to dilute the voices of Black and Brown voters in Tennessee and destroy a progressive, Democratic stronghold in our state.

It’s no coincidence that when the first openly gay Black woman is mounting the most serious challenge to win this district, they want to break it up.

So we are fighting back.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Certainly, this year the Democrats are going for broke, in New Mexico, New Jersey, but not California. In general, many bluer states have limits on Gerrymandering.

But Ohio?! That map was obscene as far as gerrymandering goes. And the GOP has been having issues with the courts and gerrymandering in other states like North Carolina.

Gerrymandering is ugly and it is making Congress static. We need some sort of Constitutional Amendment to address gerrymandering, but the Dems and GOP would never bite... well, the Dems might, but only if the GOP does... and they won't.

 

[lpetrich]

Kansas now has a proposed map. In fact, five proposed maps, with named "Ad Astra", "Bluestem", "Buffalo 2", "Sunflower", and "Unity".

Kansas: June 1, 2022 - Deadline for congressional candidates to file (therefore map should be set by this date)

From least favorable to most favorable: Ad Astra, Sunflower, Unity, (Bluestem, Buffalo 2)

They differ in how much Kansas City is split up, with AA being the most split, and the BB pair being the least split.

-

In Connecticut, court-appointed master Nathaniel Persily has issued two new maps. "Now that Persily’s proposal is public, people can submit proposed changes until Jan. 24. The justices will then hold a public hearing on Jan. 27."

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the legislature's map. But the legislature has enough votes to override that veto.

Tennessee Republicans have proposed maps that split up Nashville, creating districts that contain parts of that city and the surrounding countryside, thus making them Republican. This gerrymandering has provoked a lot of protest.

Minnesota's and Wisconsin's redistricting are now in the courts, and Pennsylvania's redistricting looks like it will soon join them.

Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Washington State look ready to go.

 

[lpetrich]

Kentucky now has a map. The state legislature overrode Governor Beshears's veto of it. This map is much like the existing one, with Louisville strongly Democratic and the rest of the state strongly Republican.

With Kansas getting maps, Louisiana became the only state without a proposed map.

In Missouri, the State House has approved a map that's not much different from the existing map.

 

[lpetrich]

Mississippi now has a map. It's not much different from the old map.

Kansas continues its tradition of creative names for its maps. It has set aside maps "Ad Astra", "United", "Meadowlark 5", "Meadowlark 6", and it still considers "Bluestem", "Buffalo 2", "Sunflower", "Ad Astra 2", "Mushroom Rock 2", "Prairie Dog".

 

[lpetrich]

South Carolina now has a map. It's not much different from the old map, though SC-01 is a bit more Republican. It contains Charleston and some nearby coastline.

Alabama's proposed map is being litigated over, because it has only one pro-Democratic district instead of two. Several other states' maps are being litigated over, and some other states may join them from their governor and legislature being at loggerheads: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and maybe Kansas.

 

[lpetrich]

Hawaii now has a map. It is almost identical to the state's earlier map, with HI-01 being the Honolulu area and HI-02 being the rest of the state.

Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) / Twitter

Has some recent tweets on the redistricting of New York State. The national party wants to gerrymander the state's 26 Congressional districts into D-R 23-3. The legislature wants a 22-4 map, setting aside the redistricting commission's efforts. That commission's Democratic and Republican members were at loggerheads, releasing competing maps.

From 538, the previously proposed maps were D-C-R 17-3-6 (18-8), 15-3-8 (17-9), 18-3-5 (18-8), 17-3-6 (18-8)
C = competitive (R+5 to D+5). The most recent one is 20-2-4 (22-4).

New York’s Proposed Congressional Map Is Heavily Biased Toward Democrats. Will It Pass? | FiveThirtyEight

I had previously calculated that redistricting alone would hand Republicans two new House seats (give or take) in the 2022 midterms, while Democrats would roughly stand pat. (This is before accounting for the likely Republican-leaning national political environment.) Add this map to the mix, though, and Democrats would be poised to gain about three seats nationally and Republicans would be poised to lose around two

Then noting how two Republicans are now vulnerable in NY-01 and NY-11, and how an upstate Republican-leaning district has been eliminated, forcing Claudia Tenney and Tom Reed together in the new NY-23.

In general, though, New York Democrats were ruthlessly efficient at drawing this map. The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman found only a few places where the map could be tweaked to shore up Democrats, and even then, the potential gains were minimal. The map was also cleverly designed to minimize the risk that any light-blue districts could fall to Republicans in a red-wave election. The two Democrats who represent the two most vulnerable districts under this map (the two highly-competitive-but-Democratic-tilting seats) are Reps. Antonio Delgado and Sean Patrick Maloney. Delgado was one of House Democrats’ strongest incumbents in 2020, running 10 percentage points ahead of Biden, while Maloney is the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and therefore will have access to googobs (a technical term) of money. The next-most competitive districts, the 1st and 11th, are probably too blue for Republicans to win under normal conditions, though it would be possible in a very pro-Republican year.

Even so, this map may not survive the state legislature, and the Republicans may sue about it, claiming in court that the map is gerrymandered.

 

[lpetrich]

Louisiana now has some proposed maps. They are split between one and two Democratic districts out of a total of six.

That state is the last state to get proposed maps, so the counts are 29 states with new maps, 15 states with proposed maps, and 6 one-district states.

 

[lpetrich]

What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State | FiveThirtyEight

New York lawmakers approve new congressional districts favoring Democrats - syracuse.com

The New York Assembly voted 103-45 to approve new congressional district maps that favor Democrats on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. Republicans plan to challenge the redistricting plan in court. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, Pool)AP
By Mark Weiner | mweiner@syracuse.com

New York lawmakers voted Wednesday to approve new congressional district maps that would give Democrats an advantage in 22 of the state’s 26 House districts for the next decade.

The Assembly passed the redistricting bill 103-45 Wednesday afternoon. The state Senate followed later in the day, approving the new congressional districts 43-20 in a vote along party lines.

The bill now heads to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul for her signature.

A coalition of good-government groups had asked state lawmakers to hold public hearings on the proposed maps, which were first made public late Sunday. But Democrats in the Assembly and Senate said there was no time to delay because the new districts need to be in place by the beginning of March.

Republicans promised to challenge the maps in court, claiming the Democratic majorities in the state Assembly and Senate used their power to draw new district lines that give Democrats a strong partisan edge.

Welcome to the club, NY Republicans.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, Gerrymandering is crap. For Republicans to complain about it is the utter peak of hypocrisy.

For this, we actually do need a Constitutional Amendment, but how to require redistricting without Gerrymandering probably isn't the easiest to put into words.

 

[Gospel]

Yeah, Gerrymandering is crap. For Republicans to complain about it is the utter peak of hypocrisy.

For this, we actually do need a Constitutional Amendment, but how to require redistricting without Gerrymandering probably isn't the easiest to put into words.

If

A) American's spend the same amount of energy they do on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, on working directly with their urban, suburban & rural neighbors.

we can

B) Remove the need for districts altogether.


Instead, we go with the method of voting based on what amounts to news presented through Hollywood squares to unlock that "I voted button" that is as useful as an Xbox/PlayStation achievement unlocked notification. This whole let your elected officials do as they please after you've voted them in is bullshit and needs to stop. Folks should be working with their neighbors & voting on their local budgets, development (EVERYTHING). Officials should be our talking heads; not a bunch of paid employees on a TV or streaming service. There would be no need for "districts" to play a role in voting if we'd pull our heads out of our asses.

But I'm just a rambling low IQ, one check away from being a broke black dude ranting on a forum I somehow became a big fan of.

 

[lpetrich]

There is a simple solution.

Proportional representation.

Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that? I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who knows about it.

There are several ways to do it, and if anyone wants, I will explain them here.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There is a simple solution.

Proportional representation.

Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that? I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who knows about it.

There are several ways to do it, and if anyone wants, I will explain them here.

It'd require an even large Constitutional Amendment! And while there is only a snowball chance in hell of the Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment, there is only a tiny fraction of a percent chance of the snowball in hell chance for changing how we elect Representatives.

 

[lpetrich]

There is a simple solution.

Proportional representation.

Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that? I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who knows about it.

There are several ways to do it, and if anyone wants, I will explain them here.

It'd require an even large Constitutional Amendment! And while there is only a snowball chance in hell of the Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment, there is only a tiny fraction of a percent chance of the snowball in hell chance for changing how we elect Representatives.

Why is that? Please explain.

 

[ZiprHead]

Nebraska Becomes 17th State Calling for Convention to Amend U.S. Constitution

www.msn.com

The Nebraska Legislature overcame the filibuster in approving a push for a convention of states to amend the U.S. Constitution, becoming the 17th state to do so.

State lawmakers passed a legislative resolution, LR14, in a 32-11 vote Friday, according to the Unicameral Update.

A convention of states is outlined in Article V of the Constitution, according to The National Consitution Center. It is used to bypass Congress to amend the Constitution, but has never been used. A state's call for amendments can only be considered after approval by two-thirds of its Legislature. With Nebraska's call, the U.S. is halfway to getting the 34 states required for a convention, the Associated Press reported.

In the resolution, the Nebraska Legislature, like other states, proposes amendments that will "impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is a simple solution.

Proportional representation.

Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that? I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who knows about it.

There are several ways to do it, and if anyone wants, I will explain them here.

That gives even more power to political parties, I don't think that's a good thing anymore.

 

[lpetrich]

There is a simple solution.

Proportional representation.

Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that? I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who knows about it.

There are several ways to do it, and if anyone wants, I will explain them here.

That gives even more power to political parties, I don't think that's a good thing anymore.

The US Founders didn't want political parties, to the extent that they expressed opinions on that subject. But they ended up splitting up into parties in George Washington's first term.

That aside, there are nonpartisan forms of PR, forms that do not explicitly involve parties. In particular, single transferable vote, a multiseat extension of instant runoff voting. STV works like IRV with the addition that the ballots that contribute to victories are downweighted or else partially removed from the count. This is what makes STV proportional, because not doing such downweighting would make it degenerate into general ticket, voting for an entire slate of candidates in single-seat fashion. That is true in general of extending single-seat methods into multiseat elections.

 

[lpetrich]

New York now has a map, its rather gerrymandered one that has D 22 - R 4.

Both Jamaal Bowman NY-16 and Mondaire Jones NY-17 have districts that extend well into upstate NY in narrow strips, and I suspect that that is to move NY-18 closer to NYC. Their 538 partisan scores are D+36, D+10, and D+3, and for the previous map, D+49, D+17, 0. In that map, NY-16 had been N Bronx and nearby upstate NY, and NY-17 had extended further northward, though not as much as NY-16 and NY-17 do now.

She's running for NY-03:
Melanie D'Arrigo for NY3 on Twitter: "By the looks of it, the next Representative for #NY3 will need a boat to serve all constituents.
Below is my statement on the alleged new congressional maps for #NY3
(pix links)" / Twitter
Northern Long Island and eastern Bronx and nearby upstate NY.

By the looks of it, the next Representative for New York's Third Congressional District will need a boat to cross the Long Island Sound to serve all constituents.

We cannot stay silent as we watch the state legislature float a map that extreme gerrymanders our district. The new proposal would take our district from currently containing three counties to soon containing five, including just slivers from the Bronx and Westchester that are separated from the rest by the Long Island Sound. iS How is this fair to the people who live in any of these counties? All of the voters at stake deserve real representation, not to be used as political pawns.

I was born and raised here on Long Island. I am raising my family here on Long Island. I have been organizing and fighting for working families on Long Island throughout my entire career.

I will bring that same determination and commitment to any configuration of the district, but I stand by the principle that voters should choose their representatives. The folks in Albany have currently got this backwards.

 

[lpetrich]

Several of the maps are being litigated over. Because of the Voting Rights Act, racial gerrymanders are illegal, but the Supreme Court decided that partisan gerrymanders aren't -- they leave it to Congress and the states to decide. So that has made it easier to strike down some maps than others.


Gerrymandering lawsuit: NC districts ruled unconstitutional | Raleigh News & Observer

The maps, drawn by Republican lawmakers late last year, would have given GOP candidates a sizable advantage in elections throughout the next decade. Republican leaders argued in favor of the maps in court, saying redistricting is an inherently political process and that courts shouldn’t get involved by banning partisan gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court, which has a Democratic majority, disagreed.

The ruling divided the court along party lines. All three Republican justices dissented and said they would have allowed the maps to stand. But all four Democratic justices joined in the majority opinion, which struck down the maps for both the N.C. General Assembly and North Carolina’s 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The justices ruled that the maps were skewed so far to the right that they violated the state constitution — specifically that they “are unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt under the free elections clause, the equal protection clause, the free speech clause and the freedom of assembly clause of North Carolina’s constitution.”

Redistricting: Ohio Supreme Court strikes down congressional map

Top Ohio court strikes down state's gerrymandered congressional map- POLITICO - "The state Supreme Court ruled Republicans in Columbus had stacked the deck against Democrats in redistricting, in violation of the state constitution."

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor was, once again, a key vote in the 4-3 decision to reject the map, which could have given Republicans as much as a 12-3 advantage in a state that voted for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, twice.

That violated language overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2018 to prevent a map that unduly favored one party or its incumbents.

"When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins," wrote Justice Michael Donnelly in the court's opinion.

Now, Ohio lawmakers will be sent back to the drawing board to craft a new map within 30 days. If they can't reach a solution, the Ohio Redistricting Commission – a panel of statewide elected officials and state lawmakers – will have 30 days to do so. Mapmakers face a tight turnaround because candidates must file paperwork to run by March 4.

Ohio Redistricting Commission asks supreme court to put new maps into place anyway | WOSU News

Groups that sued over the first set of maps – and won when the court said they were unconstitutionally gerrymandered – have challenged these latest maps.

The commission has asked the court to uphold the maps Republicans on the panel approved on January 22. If the justices can’t decide by February 11, they asked for the newly drawn maps to be put into place anyway through the November election.