In November , the same year as the last census, conservative state legislators rode the so-called tea party wave to take control of state legislatures across the country. Challenges can be brought against the way districts are apportioned at the federal, state, or local level.
For decades, the Supreme Court has recognized that if legislators draw maps with the improper goal of gaining too much partisan advantage and hobbling their political opponents, they could violate the Constitution. The problem of improper partisan gerrymandering has grown in recent decades, and while a few maps favor Democrats, most favor Republican politicians. Pennsylvania Republicans had a four-seat advantage. The federal court in the Wisconsin case recently struck down the map of state legislative districts for partisan gerrymandering under this new measure of manipulation.
The efficiency gap demonstrates that politicians in these states have stacked the deck to their partisan advantage. The new measure could be the kind of clear standard that the Supreme Court has not yet found in other cases. Lawsuits in North Carolina and Maryland also argue that manipulating maps for partisan advantage violates the First Amendment rights of voters.
This burden or penalty, moreover, is entirely intentional. Indeed, even if the largest Democratic wave in a generation occurs, the plan will still produce a Republican supermajority. In North Carolina and other Southern states, Republican politicians have tried to justify biased maps by pointing to the Voting Rights Act of , or VRA, claiming the law required them to pack black voters into majority-minority districts after the Census.
States have to balance their obligations under both VRA and the U. Alabama legislators drew one district in which more than 70 percent of the voters were black—far more than was necessary to ensure black voters a fair shot at electing their preferred candidate. The Supreme Court could continue providing clearer guidelines on unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in this term.
In McCrory v. The Supreme Court has made clear that map-drawers must start by asking how to maintain districts in which voters of color can elect their preferred candidates. Politicians cannot use the Voting Rights Act as an excuse to pack black voters into a few districts and make the surrounding districts whiter. The ongoing partisan gerrymandering lawsuits have the potential also to offer clear guidelines on how far map drawers can go in manipulating lines to benefit their political party.
The U. Supreme Court is considering two redistricting cases this term and hears oral arguments on December 5. Redistricting maps are also challenged at the local level. For example, in , a lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Georgia challenging the district maps for the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners and Gwinnett County Public Schools Board of Education.
To address the manipulation of maps by politicians, voters must look beyond the courtroom and demand reforms that take these decisions out of the hands of politicians. At the very least, the redistricting process must include proper constraints and clear guidance, as well as public transparency and input. Some states have set up processes that minimize the power of politicians to manipulate the districts, including establishing independent redistricting commissions, creating clear legal guidelines for drawing district maps, and opening the process up to the public.
Several Western states use independent commissions to draw election districts using fair, neutral criteria. States and local jurisdictions should follow the lead of California and establish bipartisan independent redistricting commissions responsible for drawing congressional and local district maps. Independent commissions offer several benefits, including eliminating the appearance of impropriety and making elections fairer. There are different ways to design independent or citizen-led redistricting commissions.
These commissions should be comprised of an equal number of members associated with each major party, ensuring that at least one member from the opposing party must vote for any plan before it is implemented. Missouri goes so far to require a supermajority to approve any final redistricting plan to ensure that all views are considered.
In addition to partisan diversity, members of any independent commission should be representative of demographic differences to ensure that the commission is representative of the populations in the districts it is responsible for drawing. In California, 99 a panel of state auditors chooses 20 potential commissioners—with an even number of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
At the local level in California, Sacramento and Berkeley residents recently approved ballot measures that establish independent redistricting commissions for drawing local city council maps beginning after the Census. Both measures are aimed at taking map-drawing power out of the hands of those who are elected through them. Arizona voters also approved a state constitutional amendment to take authority over drawing districts from politicians and put it into the hands of an independent, bipartisan commission.
Supreme Court rejected their argument. If elected officials are tasked with drawing district lines, there must be clear criteria by which they must abide.
These criteria should be established under law either through individual redistricting statutes or by including them in the state constitution, as was done in Florida. They must set out the basic principles of redistricting, namely creating fair and neutral district schemes by prohibiting manipulation to achieve partisan goals. The criteria should include barring consideration of party affiliation and voting records and maintaining communities of interest and neighborhoods when possible.
By doing so, much of the improper political maneuvering can be taken out of the process. In addition, there should be a clear standard against which voters can hold elected official accountable for the maps that they draw.
Some state constitutions also outline the criteria that legislators must follow when drawing election districts. The Legislature itself proclaimed that it would conduct the most open and transparent redistricting process in the history of the state, and then made important decisions, affecting numerous districts in the enacted map, outside the purview of public scrutiny.
The U. Supreme Court ruled in that federal judges have no jurisdiction over partisan gerrymandering, though the decision does not prevent state courts from weighing in.
Both the Pennsylvania and North Carolina state Supreme Courts have found extreme partisan gerrymandering violates their state constitutions. That has allowed Republicans in Wisconsin, for example, to maintain an iron grip on the legislature, even as Democrats have won statewide races. After Democrats failed to make major gains in November at the statehouse level, Republicans will have sole power to draw the lines for seats in the seat U. Some experts say Republicans could use redistricting alone to flip the half-dozen House seats needed to regain control of the chamber from Democrats in the congressional elections.
The biggest immediate concern is a months-long delay in the release of census data due to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, officials said states would not receive detailed figures until September.
As a result, the two states that hold legislative elections in , Virginia and New Jersey, will use their old maps. An analysis of congressional districts drawn during the last redistricting cycle in found that the maps were consistently biased in favor of Republicans as a result of gerrymandering. Similar distortions have been built into maps at the state and local level. Sometimes Republicans are to blame. In other cases, Democrats were the gerrymanderers.
When district lines are drawn to favor or disadvantage a political party, meaningful representation is compromised and community interests are sacrificed to the partisan goals of political parties. The next redistricting will be after the census. You can hold the line drawers accountable by paying attention and speaking up. Call your state legislators and tell them you want a fair redistricting process.
Participate in community mapping exercises where citizens get together and jointly work on proposed solutions. Help change the process. Lawmakers and advocacy and grassroots organizations will propose redistricting reform measures in the next few years. Explore Our Work. Who draws the lines? In the , the U. Supreme Court made two landmark rulings, Wesberry v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims , requiring congressional and state legislative districts to be redrawn in a timely manner following the census so that their populations would be roughly equal.
Some states had failed to draw new districts for as many as sixty years, which had provided slow growing rural areas with more representation than fast growing urban areas. At the time of the so-called reapportionment revolution, balancing district populations was predicted to shift government policies towards those favored by urban interests and even to limit gerrymandering.
These rulings and many others effectively nullified state practices of apportioning their state legislative seats among their counties or towns; for example, providing every county one seat and apportioning the remainder among the larger population counties ironically, a process similar to the apportionment of congressional seats to the states.
Many states amended their constitutions to revise their redistricting processes, so that the federal courts would not nullify this section of their state constitution. How Often Can a State Redistrict? In , the nation was captivated by a group of Democratic Texas state legislators who fled the state to prevent Republicans from gerrymandering the state's congressional districts. At stake was Democratic-favored redistricting plan adopted by a court for the congressional elections, adopted after the state legislature failed to enact a redistricting plan.
Eventually, Democrats relented and returned to Texas and Republicans were able to put their map in place. Democrats later challenged the legality of drawing districts mid-decade, without a new census prompting the necessity of drawing new districts. Some states have prohibitions on mid-decade redistricting written into their constitutions, statutes, or their state courts have ruled the practice is illegal.
Texas is not one of these states, so the U. Supreme Court let the Texas districts stand, at least on these grounds a Voting Rights challenge to the Texas congressional plan was successful. Presumably, this means a state without a mid-decade prohibition can redistrict before each election if they so desired.
How Do We Do Redistricting? Article 1, Section 4 of the U. Constitution states, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.
However, Congress is the ultimate authority, and may supersede state laws. Congress has exercised this authority, for example, to require single-member districts and to enhance racial and ethnic minority groups' representation. The federal courts have interpreted the federal constitution to require equal population districts. Congress has not mandated a congressional redistricting procedure, despite many bills that have been introduced.
States thus retain their authority to draw districts -- congressional, state legislative, and others -- within these federal guidelines. States decide how they will redistrict. The state constitution and statutory requirements may be found here.
State Redistricting Procedures The procedures vary among the states, and can even vary within the same state for congressional and state legislative redistricting. States generally use one of two methods. States that use the regular legislative process, the same for any bill. States that use a commission somewhere in the process.
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