Tag: GOP gerrymandering

The Gerrymander Battles Loom, as G.O.P. Looks to Press Its Advantage

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With new census results coming, Republicans control redistricting in key states, while Democrats prepare for legal challenges and look to redraw some maps of their own.

WASHINGTON — With the election over and Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, officials in both parties are bracing for a bruising new battle with a different balance of power: the redrawing of congressional maps, where Republicans hold the advantage in many state legislatures across the country, including in key battlegrounds.

Republicans hold total control of redistricting in 18 states, including Florida, North Carolina and Texas, which are growing in population and expected to gain seats after the 2020 census is tabulated. Some election experts believe the G.O.P. could retake the House in 2022 based solely on gains from newly drawn districts.

Already, Republicans are discussing redrawing two suburban Atlanta districts held by Democrats to make one of them more Republican; slicing Democratic sections out of a Houston district that Republicans lost in 2018; and carving up a northeastern Ohio district held by Democrats since 1985. Continue reading.

The decade Republicans hijacked our democracy — via the gerrymander

AlterNet logoAs this decade comes to a close, 59 million Americans live in a state where one or both chambers of the state legislature is controlled by the party that got fewer votes in the 2018 election.

In Wisconsin in 2018, voters elected a Democratic U.S. senator, defeated an incumbent Republican governor, picked Democrats for every statewide office, and favored Democratic candidates for the state assembly by more than 200,000 ballots. Republicans nevertheless controlled more than 63 percent of the seats.

We end the 2020s with voter purges in Ohio, Wisconsin and Georgia, with precinct closures weaponized to lower voter participation across the South, with Texas, Tennessee and Florida making it harder to register new voters. The ball drops on the 2010s with state legislatures in Florida, Michigan and Missouri willing to undo voting reforms approved by upwards of 60 percent of the people via initiative. Continue reading

Former GOP Speakers Join To Defend Gerrymandering

The Republican State Leadership Committee says that three of the four living former Republican speakers of the House of Representatives will advise its efforts to push for GOP-friendly gerrymandered legislative maps after the 2020 elections.

Former speakers Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and Newt Gingrich will lead the committee’s Speakers Advisory Council. “In these key advisory roles,” the group said in a press release, “each of the Speakers will provide critical support to the RSLC’s recently-launched ‘Right Lines 2020’ initiative to protect Republican legislative majorities ahead of the decennial redrawing of federal and state district maps.

A Democratic group, backed by Barack Obama and Eric Holder, has been pushing to ensure fair maps in the next redistricting. But rather than follow their lead to independent redistricting commissions and maps that accurately match the partisan composition of the states, the RSLC is focused on ensuring Republicans get to draw Republican-friendly maps.

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Justices Display Divisions in New Cases on Voting Maps Warped by Politics Last year, the Supreme Court sidestepped the question of whether partisan gerrymandering ever violate the Constitution. Credit J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Image

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court returned to the subject of partisan gerrymandering on Tuesday, appearing largely divided along ideological lines as it considered for a second time in two years whether drawing election maps to help the party in power ever violates the Constitution.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the court’s newest member and the one who may possess the decisive vote, expressed uneasiness about the practice.

“Extreme partisan gerrymandering is a real problem for our democracy,” he said. “I’m not going to dispute that.”

View the complete March 26 article by Adam Liptak on The New York Times website here.

Holder redistricting effort aims to break GOP statehouse control

The following article by Ben Kamisar was posted on the Hill website February 7, 2018:

© Hill Photo Illustration/Garrett Evan

Former Attorney General Eric Holder is ramping up his efforts to reshape Republican-drawn congressional district maps.

Holder’s plan focuses on “trifectas” — states where Republicans control both the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers, giving them total control over the redistricting process. Holder laid out his strategy Wednesday to reporters at a Washington breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. Continue reading “Holder redistricting effort aims to break GOP statehouse control”

What’s At Stake In Supreme Court Gerrymander Decision

The following article by Steven Rosenfeld was posted on the National Memo website October 4, 2017:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard one of the most politically consequential cases in years, to decide whether partisan gerrymandering, or having elected politicians choose which voters do and don’t cast ballots in specific U.S. House and state legislative elections, is constitutional.

If you want to know why the GOP has not only controlled the House but has supermajorities in states that should be politically purple, such as North Carolina and Georgia, the answer is extreme partisan gerrymandering. Continue reading “What’s At Stake In Supreme Court Gerrymander Decision”