Hello, and happy Thursday,
As states undertake the high-stakes, once-a-decade redistricting process, several places are testing new ways to prevent partisans from rigging the maps. The news does not sound good.
There have been heated meetings that have devolved into tears. Officials have quit and walked out of meetings in protest. A Republican governor acknowledging that his own party could be acting in an unconstitutional way.
It would be easy to conclude that reform is failing. But as I spoke to supporters of the reforms in Virginia, Ohio and Michigan over the last few months, I heard a much more nuanced story.
Yes, reformers are frustrated with the deadlock they’ve seen so far. But they also believe that despite the deadlock, things are better now than they were in previous redistricting cycles.
That’s true even in Ohio, where Republicans are brazenly ignoring reforms that are supposed to bring bipartisanship and fairness to the mapmaking process. Despite new rules that set stringent fairness requirements for maps and empower a bipartisan commission to draw the lines, Republicans have maneuvered around the process to pass state legislative maps that give them a supermajority.
And they have suggested a congressional plan that would give them as high as a 13-2 advantage. That’s staggering in a politically competitive state that Trump won with just over 53% of the vote in 2020.
But because of the reforms, the fate of the maps is likely to be decided by the Ohio supreme court, which will decide whether the plans violate a constitutional amendment prohibiting districts that “unduly favor or disfavor a party or incumbents”.
“I think it’s really easy to think, ‘We’ve had this experience. This means this doesn’t work,’” said Catherine Turcer, who works for the good government group Common Cause. But “it could be that the courts step in”. Or “it could be the reform works well in stopping bad actors who act badly”.
It’s a similar story in Virginia, where a new bipartisan commission reached a stalemate and was unable to pass any maps. Democrats say they’ll now be disadvantaged when the state supreme court, which has a majority of Republican-appointed justices, draws the maps.
But reformers argue the process now is better than if lawmakers continued to be able to draw maps behind closed doors. “Everyone in Virginia could agree that the problem they all wanted fixed was one party drawing maps, in the dark, in secret, and this was a solution to that. I mean, Virginia has moved past that problem,” said Liz White, the executive director of OneVirginia2021, which strongly supported creating the commission.
In Michigan, the state’s new independent redistricting commission faced heavy scrutiny when it initially proposed maps that eliminated districts where African Americans comprised a majority of voters. But after residents voiced concern at a series of public hearings, the commission took their input and released a new proposal that includes majority-Black districts.
“The commission, what it’s struggling with right now is to draw maps that reflect communities of interest while achieving partisan fairness,” said Nancy Wang, the executive director of Voters Not Politicians, which helped create the commission. “I don’t think they were having these discussions behind closed doors when they were gerrymandering.”
Readers’ questions
Alex writes: As a Brit, I am confused as to why voting rights legislation is mired. Presumably this was part and parcel of the Democratic mandate prior to election? The people voted the Democrats into power, therefore … the bill should pass fairly quickly with the minimum of changes? How is it that the losing side sets the pace of bill ratification and passing?
Even though Democrats have complete control of government in Washington, the main obstacle standing in their way is the filibuster, a rule in the US Senate that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. Democrats control 50 seats in the chamber, but have a majority because Kamala Harris, the vice-president, casts the tie-breaking vote.
There are calls, louder than ever now, to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. While the rule was designed to forge compromise and ensure the minority party has a say, Democrats argue that it no longer serves that purpose. Instead, Republicans are weaponizing it in bad faith to block policies they don’t like, preventing the majority party from governing. It’s unclear, however, if Democrats will be able to marshal enough votes in their own party to get rid of the filibuster, as two key Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have indicated they do not support such a move.
Please continue to write to me each week with your questions about elections and voting at sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on Twitter at @srl and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.
Also worth watching …
Two ballot measures to expand voting access failed in New York last week, stunning voting rights advocates. I reported on how that happened.
I interviewed Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, about his efforts to push back against Donald Trump.
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