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Redistricting for the US House and the US state legislatures

A court caught Republicans discriminating against Black voters – here’s how | Alabama | The Guardian
Under the new districts, Black people make up 25% of the Alabama’s population, but comprise a majority in just one of the state’s seven districts.

In late January, a panel of three federal judges issued a 225-page opinion explaining how the state was discriminating against Black voters.

“Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel wrote. The judges gave Alabama 14 days to come up with a new plan and said the state had to draw two districts where Black voters comprise a majority.
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Then showing how it happens. The current map has one black-majority district, in the western part of the state, but in the eastern part, the black population is divided among two districts.

Alabama’s New Electoral Lines are Racially Gerrymandered — Here’s Why

Supreme Court could act soon on Alabama racial gerrymandering dispute | TheHill
The central question is whether the mismatch between Alabama’s Black population and its disproportionately low representation in the U.S. House violates the law. Despite Black Alabamians accounting for around 27 percent of the state’s population, the voting map drawn by the GOP-held legislature following the 2020 census gives Black voters control of only 14 percent of the state’s congressional delegation, or one in seven Alabama seats in the U.S House.

Challengers to the new map brought suits in federal court alleging that the new voting districts reflected “a decades long pattern of the white-controlled Alabama Legislature” drawing maps that “discriminate against Black voters to maintain power” in violation of federal law and constitutional protections.
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Supreme Court, in 5-4 Vote, Restores Alabama’s Congressional Voting Map - The New York Times
A special three-judge court had ordered lawmakers to redraw the lines, saying Black voters “have less opportunity” than other Alabamians to elect their favored candidates.

...
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

The Supreme Court’s brief order, which included no reasoning, was provisional, staying a lower court’s decision while the case moves forward. The justices said they would hear Alabama’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling, but they did not say when.

...
If the court follows its usual practices, it will schedule arguments in the Alabama case for the fall and issue a decision months later, meaning that the 2022 election would be conducted using the challenged map.

Alabama has seven congressional districts and its voting-age population is about 27 percent Black. In the challenged map, Black voters are in the majority in one district. The lower court, relying on the Voting Rights Act, had ordered the State Legislature to create a second district in which Black voters could elect a representative of their choice.
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Brett Kavanaugh, with Samuel Alito:
... “the stay order does not make or signal any change to voting rights law.” It was necessary, he wrote, because the lower court had acted too soon before a coming election.

“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties and voters, among others.”
Click to expand...

John Roberts's dissent:
... the lower court in the Alabama case had “properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction.”

Still, he wrote, the Supreme Court’s precedents “have engendered considerable disagreement and uncertainty regarding the nature and contours of a vote dilution claim.”

The correct solution, the chief justice wrote, would have been to agree to hear the state’s appeal — but not to grant a stay in the meantime.

“The practical effect of this approach,” he wrote, “would be that the 2022 election would take place in accord with the judgment of the district court, but subsequent elections would be governed by this court’s decision on review.”
Click to expand...

Elena Kagan's dissent:
“It does a disservice to the district court, which meticulously applied this court’s longstanding voting-rights precedent,” she wrote. “And most of all, it does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished — in violation of a law this court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.”

She added that the lower court had acted well before the next primary election, in late May, and the general election, in November.

“Alabama is not entitled to keep violating Black Alabamians’ voting rights just because the court’s order came down in the first month of an election year,” she wrote.
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So unless the Supreme Court moves very quickly by its standards, the state's 6-1 map will be used in this year's election, with a revised map being used in 2024 and later.
 
Tennessee now has a map.

Memphis has a majority-Democratic district, while Nashville is split between three majority-Republican districts.

The score: 31 have new maps, 13 have proposed maps, and 6 have one district.
 
How N.Y. Democrats Are Leading a ‘Master Class’ in Gerrymandering - The New York Times - Feb 2
Many of the party’s operatives and voters were less bashful in their support of gerrymandering, arguing that Democrats could not afford to take the high road when Republicans have shown no similar inclination.

Both parties have weaponized redistricting for years in the larger battle for control of the House of Representatives, but Republicans recently have been more effective in doing so, based on their control of large states like Texas and Florida, and the decision by liberal bastions like California to adopt nonpartisan redistricting commissions to handle the process.

...
In New York, the redistricting cycle began, perhaps naïvely, in the hopes that a bipartisan outside commission — approved by voters in 2014 — would deliver a balanced, common-sense map.

Instead, the commission stuck to party lines and was unable to reach consensus last month, kicking control of the process back to the State Legislature, where Democrats have amassed rare supermajorities in recent years. Those majorities, plus control of the governorship, gave them the power for the first time in decades to draw maps as they saw fit.

Democratic leaders swiftly released their own maps in a matter of days, forgoing any public hearings and largely keeping even their own members in the dark about the new lines until they became public.

Wednesday’s vote fell mostly along party lines, as Democrats limited defections to narrowly pass the map in the Assembly, 103 to 45, and the Senate, 43 to 20.

The Legislature planned to proceed as soon as Thursday to pass state legislative maps drawn by Democrats divvying up State Senate and Assembly districts. Most notably, they were expected to help solidify Democrats’ hold of the State Senate in an election year when Republicans are trying to reclaim a chamber they controlled for all but three years between the mid-1940s and 2019.
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Republicans plan to sue about the new maps.
Republicans were not the only group alarmed by the new maps. The process has infuriated good-governance groups that had pleaded with Democratic Party leaders to hold hearings.

And an influential coalition of groups that advocate for Black, Latino and Asian New Yorkers, known as the UNITY Map Coalition, accused mapmakers of “haphazardly” dividing Black and brown voters while ignoring the priorities of those communities.

“Many of the districts are contorted in incoherent ways that are not necessary, breaking apart communities and disenfranchising voters,” they wrote.
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Melanie D'Arrigo is running for the NY-03 House seat, and she grumbles about how gerrymandered her district now is.

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 link)" / Twitter
"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. 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.

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."
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Why was it gerrymandered like that? It's still mostly northern Long Island, but it has a strip on the east shore of the Bronx and Westchester County up to the border with Connecticut.

Also running for NY-03 is State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, another progressive candidate, and one who got into the NY State Senate in 2018 by defeating a long-time incumbent conservative Democrat, much like AOC's victory that year.

How does she fit in?

RRH Elections on Twitter: "Alessandra Biaggi (D) the granddaughter of a Democratic Congressman who pled guilty to bribery & corruption will run for the open Long Island based Biden +14 #NY03 seat she gerrymandered across 5 counties & the Long Island Sound to include her home in Westchester." / Twitter
then
RRH Elections on Twitter: "Worth noting that Alessandra Biaggi was on the NY state Senate redistricting committee. The reason the open #NY03 snakes through 5 counties & crosses the Long Island sound to lump Westchester into a LI district is because Biaggi lives in Pelham & she drew this seat for herself. (pic link)" / Twitter

So it looks like she got NY-03 that Bronx-Westchester strip so it would include her home and a bit of her State Senate district.

She might have run against Bronxites or Westchesterites AOC or Jamaal Bowman or Mondaire Jones or Ritchie Torres, but she wanted virgin territory for progressives.
 
lpetrich said:
Supreme Court, in 5-4 Vote, Restores Alabama’s Congressional Voting Map - The New York Times
A special three-judge court had ordered lawmakers to redraw the lines, saying Black voters “have less opportunity” than other Alabamians to elect their favored candidates.

...
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

The Supreme Court’s brief order, which included no reasoning, was provisional, staying a lower court’s decision while the case moves forward. The justices said they would hear Alabama’s appeal of the lower court’s ruling, but they did not say when.

...
If the court follows its usual practices, it will schedule arguments in the Alabama case for the fall and issue a decision months later, meaning that the 2022 election would be conducted using the challenged map.

Alabama has seven congressional districts and its voting-age population is about 27 percent Black. In the challenged map, Black voters are in the majority in one district. The lower court, relying on the Voting Rights Act, had ordered the State Legislature to create a second district in which Black voters could elect a representative of their choice.
Click to expand...

Brett Kavanaugh, with Samuel Alito:
... “the stay order does not make or signal any change to voting rights law.” It was necessary, he wrote, because the lower court had acted too soon before a coming election.

“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties and voters, among others.”
Click to expand...

John Roberts's dissent:
... the lower court in the Alabama case had “properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction.”

Still, he wrote, the Supreme Court’s precedents “have engendered considerable disagreement and uncertainty regarding the nature and contours of a vote dilution claim.”

The correct solution, the chief justice wrote, would have been to agree to hear the state’s appeal — but not to grant a stay in the meantime.

“The practical effect of this approach,” he wrote, “would be that the 2022 election would take place in accord with the judgment of the district court, but subsequent elections would be governed by this court’s decision on review.”
Click to expand...

Elena Kagan's dissent:
“It does a disservice to the district court, which meticulously applied this court’s longstanding voting-rights precedent,” she wrote. “And most of all, it does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished — in violation of a law this court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.”

She added that the lower court had acted well before the next primary election, in late May, and the general election, in November.

“Alabama is not entitled to keep violating Black Alabamians’ voting rights just because the court’s order came down in the first month of an election year,” she wrote.
Click to expand...
So unless the Supreme Court moves very quickly by its standards, the state's 6-1 map will be used in this year's election, with a revised map being used in 2024 and later.
Click to expand...
5 Far Right Conservative Justices say "Put in under the rug"
1 Strongly Right Conservative Justice says "I want to gut the Voting Rights Act more"
3 Liberal Justices say "WTF?!"
 
Let's see about the remaining states. Here are the dates of last update in 538:

CT: Jan 18 -- FL: Jan 20 -- KS: Feb 8 -- LA: Feb 4 -- MN: Dec 15 last year -- MO: Jan 20 -- NC: Feb 7 -- NH: Jan 5 -- OH: Jan 14 -- PA: Feb 8 -- RI: Jan 13 -- WA: Feb 3 -- WI: Dec 6 last year

In Kansas,
On Feb. 3, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a congressional map passed by the state legislature that would endanger the reelection prospects of Rep. Sharice Davids, Kansas’s only Democratic member of Congress. Republicans in the legislature quickly vowed to override Kelly’s veto, but their first attempt on Feb. 7 came up three votes short in the state Senate. Republicans aren’t giving up yet, however, and are still trying to whip the necessary two-thirds majority to their side. As a result, the map’s fate is genuinely unclear.
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and in Pennsylvania,
Commonwealth Court judge Patricia McCullough has recommended the congressional map approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature to the Democratic-majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is currently working to finalize the state’s congressional redistricting process. On Feb. 2, the state Supreme Court instructed the lower court, which had previously been tasked with picking a final map, to create a report recommending a new map for the state Supreme Court to rule on in the coming weeks. Parties in the case have until Feb. 14 to object before oral hearings on Feb. 18.
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But in Washington,
The Washington state House voted on Feb. 2 to approve the congressional map drawn by the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, with a few minor tweaks. The map will now move to the state Senate, which has until Feb. 8 to approve the changes.
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Connecticut and Rhode Ialsnd aren't as far along, but their new maps are not much different from their old maps, and they have had relatively little drama llama.
 
In Missouri,
Starting Monday and stretching into Tuesday morning, conservatives in the Missouri state Senate staged a filibuster to prevent the passage of a congressional map approved by the state House last month.
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For districts MO-01 (St. Louis, Cori Bush's district), MO-05 (Kansas City), and MO-02 (STL suburbs):

The old map has D+56, D+12, R+12
The House map has D+53, D+19, R+13
... However, conservatives have loudly protested such a breakdown, which they see as “giving away one to two congressional seats to Nancy Pelosi and the congressional Democrats.” As an alternative, they proposed a 7-1 Republican map that would have dismantled the Democratic-held 5th District around Kansas City, but that amendment failed in a vote on Feb. 8.

Discussion is now focusing on a compromise map that would keep Kansas City’s blue district intact but put the 2nd District comfortably out of Democrats’ reach. For their part, Democrats have also proposed their own amendment to the House’s plan.
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2nd (D) amendment: D+51, D+19, R+11
3rd (R) amendment: D+51, D+19, R+20
 
Washington State now has a map. It is somewhat different from the previous map. East of the Seattle-Portland line, district boundaries moved westward, meaning that the state's population became more concentrated in its western big cities: Seattle, Tacoma, their suburbs, and Portland's northern suburbs. WA-02 now extends eastward near the state's northern border, and WA-01 shrunk from there to a thin strip east of Seattle.
 
Kansas now has a map. Though Democratic Governor Laura Kelly vetoed that map, the Republicans in the legislature overrode that veto. As a result, KS-03 includes less of Kansas City and more of the countryside to the south of that city, making its go from D+4 to R+3 and endangering the re-election prospects of the only Democrat in that state's Congressional delegation: Sharice Davids.

By last update:
WI: Dec 6 last year -- MN: Dec 15 last year -- NH: Jan 5 -- RI: Jan 13 -- CT: Jan 18 -- FL: Jan 20 -- NC: Feb 7 -- MO: Feb 8 -- OH: Feb 8 -- PA: Feb 8 -- LA: Feb 9

Ohio's mapmaking is now in the redistricting commission again, since the legislature refused to come up with a less pro-Republican map.

Louisiana's proposed maps are being proposed by its legislature, which is Republican-dominated. They have little difference from the existing one, which is R 5, D 1. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards may veto that map, wanting two black-majority districts instead of only one, as do Democrats in the state legislature.
 
Seems like the US Senate Democrats ought to do that with Senator Ben Ray Luján, who is currently in the hospital with a stroke. They ought to move him to a hospital in the DC area, then bring him in whenever it's time for a vote.


Connecticut now has a map, if one is to believe the new-map display in What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State | FiveThirtyEight I say that because the descriptive text has not been updated for either that page or the state's page.

It goes from +21, +3, +14, +22, +3 to +21, +3, +12, +23, +3 with only minor changes in district boundaries.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
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.
Click to expand...
Base your districts solely upon population i.e N voters per district +-%N variance.
Do not use skin colour, language, past voting, future voting intentions etc. as the basis.
Surely you septics could manage that?
Easier to do and less prone to challenges that your current dog's breakfast
 
Tigers! said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
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.
Click to expand...
Base your districts solely upon population i.e N voters per district +-%N variance.
Do not use skin colour, language, past voting, future voting intentions etc. as the basis.
Surely you septics could manage that?
Easier to do and less prone to challenges that your current dog's breakfast
Click to expand...
While it technically could be done, to be done everywhere would require a Constitutional Amendment (read it ain't never happening!).
 
538 has updaed its main redistricting page to mention Connecticut's map, but that stage's map has not been updated.

Florida's politicians are working out a compromise between the State Senate and Governor Ron DeSantis.

The existing map is Democratic 8 competitive 5 Republican 14, or for short D 8, C 5, R 14. Resolving the competitive ones gives D 11, R 16.

Democratic State Senator Shevrin Jones proposes a map that's D 8, C 6, R 14, resolved to D 11, E 1, R 16

The governor proposes a map that's D 8, C 3, R 17, resolved to D 9, R 19

The State House proposes a compromise map, a map that's D 8, C 5, R 15, resolved to D 9, E 1, R 18

E = even partisanship. I'm using 538's partisanship estimates.
 
Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) / Twitter "U.S. House editor of the nonpartisan @CookPolitical Report w/ @AmyEWalter. Nerd for 🗺️ maps, 📈 data, ⛷️ ski slopes & 🎻 trad tunes. Has seen enough."

Dave Wasserman on Twitter: "New: after FL Supreme Court declines DeSantis request, state House Rs unveil a map that could be either 18R-10D or 19R-9D (up from 16R-11D now). But it leaves #FL05 Rep. Al Lawson's (D) seat intact, and is short of the 20R-8D gerrymander DeSantis proposed." / Twitter


Back to 538, it updated its Connecticut page with "The Connecticut Supreme Court approved the state’s congressional map on Feb. 10 after a long and drawn-out process."
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Tigers! said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
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.
Click to expand...
Base your districts solely upon population i.e N voters per district +-%N variance.
Do not use skin colour, language, past voting, future voting intentions etc. as the basis.
Surely you septics could manage that?
Easier to do and less prone to challenges that your current dog's breakfast
Click to expand...
While it technically could be done, to be done everywhere would require a Constitutional Amendment (read it ain't never happening!).
Click to expand...
I keep reading on these threads that Democrats constantly ask for a better (more consistent, less interference etc.) system of electorate generation. So why does not one of the states that is controlled by Democrats actually try a purely numeric scheme? They could perform a competitive, controlled test against the other versions to see who is the fairest in the land.
Or is that just too hard?
 
 
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