Redistricting and Reapportionment

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      Alabama Redistricting Decision Reasserts Voting Rights Act

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      Three federal judges in Alabama ruled that a new congressional map drawn by G.O.P. state lawmakers violated the Voting Rights Act.After years of court decisions battering the Voting Rights Act, a ruling in an Alabama redistricting case is reasserting the power of the 56-year-old law — and giving Democrats and civil rights groups hope for beating back gerrymandered maps.The decision from three federal judges ordered state lawmakers to rework their newly drawn congressional maps. The Republican-led legislature violated the Voting Rights Act, the judges ruled, by failing to draw more than one congressional district where Black voters might elect a representative of their choice.Alabama’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, quickly appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Tuesday, and asked for a motion to stay the ruling.Still, the unanimous ruling — signed by two judges appointed by former President Donald J. Trump and one by former President Bill Clinton — was a sign that a key weapon against racial discrimination in redistricting could still be potent, even as other elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act have been hollowed out by Supreme Court decisions. The case hinged on Section 2 of the act, which bars racial discrimination in election procedures.A similar case already is pending in Texas, and the success of the challenge in Alabama could open the door to lawsuits in other states such as South Carolina, Louisiana or Georgia. It could also serve as a warning for states such as Florida that have yet to finish drawing their maps.“The Supreme Court has cut back on the tools that we in the voting rights community have to use to deal with misconduct by government authorities and bodies,” said Eric Holder, a former U.S. Attorney General who is now the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “Section 2 to now has remained pretty much intact.”The court’s ruling in Alabama — where the Black residents make up 27 percent of population yet Black voters are a majority in just one of seven House districts — comes amid a polarized redistricting cycle, in which both Republicans and Democrats have sought to entrench their political power through district lines for congressional and legislative maps. In much of the country, that has created districts that bisect neighborhoods or curl around counties to wring the best possible advantage.Civil rights leaders and some Democrats argue that process too often comes at the expense of growing minority communities. Black and Hispanic voters have a history of being “packed” into single congressional districts or divided up across several so as to dilute their votes.In 2013, the Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act a significant blow in Shelby v. Holder, hollowing out a core provision in Section 5. The “preclearance” provision required that states with a history of discrimination at the polls get approval from the Justice Department before making changes to voting procedures or redrawing maps. Last year, the court ruled that Section 2 would not protect against most new voting restrictions passed since the 2020 election.Mr. Marshall, the Alabama attorney general, argued the only way to create two majority-Black congressional districts is to make race the primary factor in map-drawing and called the court’s ruling “an unconstitutional application of the Voting Rights Act.”“The order will require race to be used at all times, in all places, and for all districts,” Mr. Marshall wrote in his appeal Tuesday. “Based on the political geography of Alabama and the broad dispersion of Black Alabamians, it is essentially impossible to draw a map like those presented by plaintiffs unless traditional districting principles give way to race.”The case is very likely to advance to the Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas has already indicated he does not believe that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prevents racial gerrymandering, a question the court did not address when it struck down other elements of the law.The Alabama decision is the second this month in which a court has invalidated a Republican-drawn congressional map. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled state legislative and congressional maps drawn by Republicans violated a state constitutional prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. The North Carolina Supreme Court delayed the state’s primaries while a challenge to Republican-drawn maps there is heard.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Court Throws Out Alabama’s New Congressional Map

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      A federal panel of judges ordered state lawmakers to redraw the lines, saying Black voters “have less opportunity than other Alabamians” to elect candidates of their choice.WASHINGTON — A panel of three federal judges threw out Alabama’s congressional map on Monday and ordered state lawmakers to draw a new one with two, rather than just one, districts that are likely to elect Black representatives.The map that Alabama’s Republican-majority State Legislature adopted last fall drew one of the state’s seven congressional districts with a majority of Black voters. The court ruled that with Alabama’s Black population of 27 percent, the state must allot two districts with either Black majorities or “in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”“Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel of judges wrote.The case is certain to be appealed and could lead to the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the question of whether lawmakers can draw political maps to achieve a specific racial composition, a practice known as racial gerrymandering. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic gerrymandering.If Alabama legislators do not produce and pass a new map with a second majority-Black district within 14 days, the court will appoint a special master to do so, the judges wrote. That second district would be a significant legal and political victory for Democrats, who would be overwhelming favorites to carry it.“This decision is a win for Alabama’s Black voters, who have been denied equal representation for far too long,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “The map’s dilution of the voting power of Alabama’s Black community — through the creation of just one majority-Black district while splitting other Black voters apart — was as evident as it was reprehensible.”The Alabama Republican Party chairman, John Wahl, said he was disappointed in the court’s ruling and expected it to be appealed. “The basic outlines of Alabama’s congressional districts have remained the same for several decades and have been upheld numerous times,” he said. “What has changed between now and those past decisions to cause the court to act in this manner?”The Alabama congressional map is the second drawn by Republicans to be struck down by courts this month. Two weeks ago, the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated a map drawn by Republicans which would have given the G.O.P. a likely 12-to-3 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. North Carolina’s new congressional map is also enmeshed in a legal battle, and several other states are likely to be sued over their political cartography.The three-judge panel is made up of two Federal District Court judges appointed by former President Donald J. Trump and one by former President Bill Clinton. All three signed the opinion. The panel pushed back Alabama’s ballot qualification deadline from Jan. 28 to Feb. 11 for the state’s May primaries.Alabama’s secretary of state, John H. Merrill, declined to comment on the ruling.Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s main mapmaking organization, said the map was based on one that was cleared in 2011 by President Obama’s Justice Department, then led by Mr. Holder, and comports with the Voting Rights Act.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Republican Gerrymander of Map

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      The congressional map would have given Republicans an advantage of 12 seats to three in elections for the House of Representatives.The Ohio Supreme Court struck down a congressional map skewed to favor Republicans on Friday, ruling that it was the equivalent of a dealer stacking the deck, and sent it back to state lawmakers to try again.The map would have given Republicans an advantage of 12 seats to three in elections for the House of Representatives, even though the G.O.P. has lately won only about 55 percent of the statewide popular vote.“This is not what Ohio voters wanted or expected,’’ the court said of the map.Mapmakers in Ohio are not allowed to unduly favor one party in redistricting, after voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the Ohio Constitution in 2018. The proposed map was drawn by Republicans in the Legislature and passed without Democratic support, and the court rejected it in a 4-to-3 decision.“When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins,” wrote Justice Michael Donnelly for the majority, adding that the Republicans’ plan was “infused with undue partisan bias.”The constitutional amendment was an effort to end partisan gerrymandering in the state, and the voting rights groups that brought the suit, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio, argued that Republican lawmakers had ignored the law. Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.The court agreed, holding that the evidence “makes clear beyond all doubt that the General Assembly did not heed the clarion call sent by Ohio voters to stop political gerrymandering.”When the case was heard last month, Republicans argued that the districts were fair and met the Constitution’s demand to not to be “unduly” favorable, and that Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat re-elected in 2018, would have carried eight of the 15 new districts. Republicans further said that they had drawn six competitive House seats.In signing the map into law in November, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican facing a primary challenge from his right this year, called the G.O.P. plan “a fair, compact and competitive map.”But the court strongly disagreed. It said the Republicans’ plan violated the law by splitting Democratic-leaning counties in order to dilute their votes, including Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati. Hamilton County was split between three newly drawn districts “for no apparent reason other than to confer an undue partisan advantage on the Republican Party,’’ the court said. A spokesman for Republican leaders in the Legislature said they were reviewing the court’s opinion.Lawmakers have 30 days to overhaul the congressional maps. If they fail, the mapmaking passes to the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which would be given another 30 days. But there is a tighter deadline looming: March 4, when candidates must file paperwork to run. The court’s decision came two days after it threw out Republican-drawn maps for new state House and Senate districts. How Maps Reshape American PoliticsWe answer your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.In both cases, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, joined three Democratic justices to overturn the maps. A congressional map acceptable to the court could give Democrats two to three more seats in Ohio, some analysts said. Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      North Carolina Court Upholds Republican Gerrymander of Maps

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      The ruling set up a final battle over the maps in the state Supreme Court, where Democrats hold a slim edge.WASHINGTON — A North Carolina state court on Tuesday rejected claims by voting rights advocates that Republican gerrymanders of the state’s political maps were unconstitutional.The unanimous ruling, by a panel of two Republican judges and one Democrat, set up a final battle over the maps in the seven-member state Supreme Court, where Democratic justices hold a slim edge. Voting rights groups said they would file an appeal immediately. One, Common Cause North Carolina, said the plaintiffs had presented “overwhelming evidence” that the maps were stacked to favor Republicans.“The evidence clearly showed that Republican legislative leaders brazenly ignored legal requirements designed to protect voting rights for Black North Carolinians,” the group’s executive director, Bob Phillips, said in a statement. “If allowed to stand, these extreme gerrymanders would cause profound and lasting harm to the people of our state.”The Republican chairman of the redistricting committee in the State Senate, Warren Daniel, called the decision a sign that “the people of our state should be able to move on with the 2022 electoral process.” The state’s primary elections were pushed back from March to May to make time for legal challenges to the maps.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Mr. Daniel charged that any Supreme Court reversal would be suspect because one of the Democratic justices, Anita Earls, was elected with the help of a donation from a Democratic Party redistricting group. An affiliate of that group, the National Redistricting Foundation, is funding legal action by one of the plaintiffs in the gerrymander case.In their ruling, in Wake County Superior Court in Raleigh, N.C., the three judges agreed that both the legislative and congressional maps were “a result of intentional, pro-Republican partisan redistricting.” They also alluded to the political harm that caused, citing their “disdain for having to deal with issues that potentially lead to results incompatible with democratic principles and subject our state to ridicule.”But the judges dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that the maps violated the state Constitution, that they were deliberately created to disenfranchise Black voters and that they broke longstanding rules for drawing political districts.The case involves new political districts approved in December by the Republican-dominated State Legislature that would give Republicans an overwhelming political advantage in a state balanced almost evenly between Republican and Democratic voters.The new congressional map would give Republicans control of as many as 11 of the state’s 14 House seats, compared to the party’s current eight-to-five edge. (North Carolina gained a fourteenth district as a result of population gains in the 2020 census.) The maps would also re-establish much of the lopsided advantage that Republicans enjoyed in the House and State Senate as a result of gerrymanders approved when those maps were redrawn in 2011.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Clay Aiken, Former ‘American Idol’ Star, Announces Run for Congress

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      Mr. Aiken said he was running as a “loud and proud Democrat” for an open House seat in his native North Carolina this year.Clay Aiken, the former “American Idol” contestant, said on Monday that he was running for Congress in North Carolina, in his second attempt to represent the state where he grew up.On his new website, Mr. Aiken, 43, referred to himself as a “loud and proud Democrat” and said he would be running in a newly drawn district that includes Durham and Chapel Hill. Representative David E. Price, a Democrat who currently represents much of that area, announced his retirement in October.“I intend to use my voice to deliver real results for North Carolina families, just like David Price has done for decades,” Mr. Aiken, a native of Raleigh, wrote. “I’ll always stand up for my principles and fight for inclusion, income equality, free access to quality health care, and combating climate change.”Mr. Aiken, who placed second behind Ruben Studdard in the second season of “American Idol” in 2003, previously ran for Congress in a Republican-leaning part of the state in 2014. He won the Democratic primary but was defeated in the general election by the Republican incumbent.Last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered that the state’s 2022 primary election, originally scheduled for March 8, be postponed until May 17, citing a “need for urgency” in giving critics of the state legislature’s gerrymandered political maps additional time to pursue a legal battle to redraw them. New boundaries for state legislative districts and North Carolina’s 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives face three lawsuits filed by Democrats and voting-rights advocates in state court in Raleigh.Mr. Aiken is joining a crowded Democratic primary field that includes two state senators and a Durham County commissioner, The News & Observer reported.Mr. Aiken said his first experience with politics came when he was in the eighth grade and asked Mr. Price to speak to his class. Mr. Price agreed.“In Congress, I’ll use my voice to advocate for common-sense policies that encourage continued job growth and healthy communities,” Mr. Aiken wrote. “Many of these political battles divide us as people, threaten our democracy, and weaken America. North Carolinians are worried about affordable health care and rapid inflation.”Mr. Aiken studied at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and taught special education in Wake County. He is a co-founder of the National Inclusion Project, which advocates for disabled children, and he worked with UNICEF as a national goodwill ambassador, according to his website. More

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      5 Big Questions for the Political Year Ahead

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      Inflation and the pandemic are hurting President Biden’s popularity, but the midterms are still months away.Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to political news. We’re your hosts, Leah and Blake.We know it feels early, but it really isn’t, politically speaking. It’s 2022, and the midterm elections have started, whether we’re emotionally prepared or not. With control of Congress and key states at stake, we’re watching about a dozen competitive Senate races, 30 or so governor’s races and a few dozen competitive House races, along with a host of primaries and lower-tier contests.Here are five questions that could shape the outcome.1. Does inflation cool off?The reasons behind the surge in inflation are complex. But for months, Republicans have banged home a simple attack: It’s President Biden’s fault. And that’s been devastatingly effective.The Consumer Price Index had risen 6.8 percent last year through November — the fastest in four decades. Most troubling for the White House: Gasoline and groceries have led the way. Research shows that public approval ratings of presidents track closely with gas prices.Taming inflation by November won’t be easy, economists say.“There’s little that can be done to affect the overall inflation rate over the next six to nine months,” Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, told us.Summers is urging the Biden administration to show a “united front” against inflation through rhetoric and key Federal Reserve Board appointments, and to resist populist calls to attack corporations for raising prices. “I think they flirt with the idea that it’s greedy meatpackers causing inflation,” he said, “which is modestly counterproductive.”Inflation isn’t the only reason Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in 70 years, with an average approval rating of just under 43 percent. He is also struggling on crime, government spending, immigration and taxes in recent polls.Although Biden isn’t on the ballot in 2022, he’s the leader of the Democratic Party. In midterm elections, presidents with job approval ratings below 50 percent have seen their parties lose an average of 37 House seats.The only president who rebounded significantly in his second year? Donald J. Trump.2. Does the Covid-19 pandemic finally recede?Biden got elected in part by promising to “beat the virus.” More than 62 percent of Americans are now fully vaccinated, according to C.D.C data. There are no more follies in the White House briefing room. New medicines are coming.But two years on, the coronavirus is still with us. More than 1,000 Americans on average are dying of Covid-19 each day. Public health officials keep issuing confusing messages. The new Omicron variant is exposing flaws in the U.S. testing regimen. Life is not back to normal.The murky results make us wonder whether Biden can reap a political windfall if and when conditions improve.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.“We just have to continue to keep our heads down, focus on solving the problems, focus on what we can do to deal with Covid, continuing to try to get vaccination rates up, continuing to try to work through this challenge,” said Representative Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat running for re-election.And though many Republicans have resisted vaccines, masks and other measures to combat the pandemic, there are no signs that voters intend to punish them for it.“If you’re Biden, I don’t think you want to go into the midterms having the discussion we’re having with Covid,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “That discussion has gotten very stale with people.”3. How does redistricting shake out?About 30 states have finalized new congressional maps based on 2020 census data. For some incumbents, new maps mean facing primaries against other sitting members of Congress. For others, new maps might offer a convenient excuse to retire rather than taking on a colleague in a primary or testing their political strength in newly competitive seats.So far, it’s safe to say the House battleground has shrunk. A handful of districts that were competitive in 2018 and 2020 won’t be in 2022. In Texas, for example, Democrats and Republicans will be fighting for control of just a few districts, down from about 10 in 2020.But even after every state passes its final lines, courts can intervene. Kelly Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called the maps passed in North Carolina and Ohio the “worst-case scenario for Democrats,” but expects those to change as a result of lawsuits.“I think there will be a sufficient number of competitive seats for Democrats to hold the House in 2022 even in a tough cycle,” Burton said. “I feel cautiously optimistic.”Even if things could have gone worse for Democrats in the redistricting process, they’re still at a disadvantage in the race for the House. Democrats oversee redistricting in about half as many House districts as Republicans, and history is working against the president’s party, which has lost House seats in all but two midterm elections since the 1940s.4. Can Democrats pass their agenda in Congress?Senator Joe Manchin III seemed to answer that question with a knife-twisting “no” in a Fox News interview before the holidays, announcing he could not support the Democrats’ $1.75 trillion social policy bill, the Build Back Better Act.But there’s too much at stake for Democrats to just give up. So Senate leaders are quietly trying to revive Build Back Better, along with federal voting rights legislation that would need to somehow overcome a Republican filibuster. Even Oprah is getting involved.Some Democrats argue for breaking Build Back Better into chunks: “For example, if we can move on prescription drug pricing, if we can move forward on child care, things that literally end up being part of that kitchen table conversation,” Kildee, the Michigan Democrat, told us.It could be months before those efforts succeed, if ever, and, in the meantime, Democrats in vulnerable seats are venting their frustration over the impasse. The longer the bickering in Washington drags on, the longer they’ll be stuck in limbo.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Odds of Gerrymandering Grow in New York as Redistricting Panel Falters

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      Hopelessly gridlocked, the commission voted to send a pair of proposals to Albany, but Democratic lawmakers are increasingly likely to take over the process.The independent commission created to strip politics from New York’s redistricting process veered toward collapse on Monday, as the same partisan forces the panel was designed to circumvent threatened to undo it.With time running out, the panel’s Republican and Democratic members bitterly conceded during a virtual meeting that they could not reach consensus on a single set of maps to determine congressional and state legislative districts for the next decade. Instead, they voted to send two dueling, nonbinding proposals to Albany for consideration.Lawmakers in the Democratic-led State Legislature could still adopt one of the proposals or send them back to the commission for further revision. But with the commission deadlocked, another outcome appeared increasingly likely: Eight years after New Yorkers voted to take redistricting out of the hands of politicians, the politicians are poised to wrest it back.Indeed, Democrats in Washington and Albany have been quietly planning for just that eventuality for months, even as the commission, which held two dozen public hearings last year and was granted a $4 million budget, crowed about the possibility of finding agreement. The political stakes, and potential gains for Democrats, are staggeringly high.With Democrats battling nationally to fend off a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives this November, New York offers perhaps the single best opportunity for the party to use its unified control of a large blue state to flip a handful of congressional seats by drawing itself more favorable lines, with as many as half a dozen seats hanging in the balance.New York Democrats could also use the process to try to shore up their commanding majorities in the State Assembly and State Senate, where Republicans are optimistic about mounting an aggressive campaign to reclaim territory lost in blue waves in 2018 and 2020.State Senator Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who is one of the leaders of the legislative task force that would draw the maps if the State Assembly and State Senate reject the commission’s proposals, said on Monday that lawmakers would begin reviewing the maps and “move expeditiously given the very tight political calendar.” They could vote to approve or reject the initial plans as early as next week.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.The window is exceedingly narrow. New York trails many other states in adopting new maps as part of the once-in-a-decade redistricting process and must reach a final conclusion by mid-to-late February. More than half of states have already completed their new maps, and Republicans are on track for a modest net gain in seats nationally.If New York lawmakers fail to reach an agreement by next month, the courts could step in to take over the process, as they did during the last redistricting cycle. The courts would be likely to appoint a special master to redraw the district lines.Political analysts and party leaders in Washington expect Democrats, who control supermajorities in Albany and the governorship, to reject both initial map sets that commissioners proposed on Monday and push for more favorable lines.“If Democrats in Albany think the votes are there to pass what they want, it’s hard to see why they would take anything the commission does seriously,” said Dave Wasserman, a national elections analyst with the Cook Political Report.Mr. Wasserman said that even the Democratic commissioners’ proposal for the state’s 26 congressional districts would leave as many as nine districts in play for possible Republican victories in this fall’s midterm elections, a bad result for Democrats in a deep blue state. A more aggressive gerrymander by the Legislature could limit Republicans to just three or so seats — and none in New York City.The current congressional delegation in the state consists of 19 Democrats and eight Republicans; New York will lose one seat in the next election cycle.In a sign that New York’s maps could quickly become a national flash point, a new left-leaning federal super PAC sent out a statement on Monday urging Democrats to ignore the concerns of incumbents and adopt maps with “the greatest chance of expanding our majority and defeating radical Republicans aligned with violence, hatred and sedition.”The group, called No Surrender NY, was created last year by Tom Watson, a progressive consultant, and Shannon Powell, a former journalist and activist, but has yet to disclose any funders.Voters adopted an amendment to the state Constitution to create the redistricting commission in 2014, ostensibly to remove politicians from the mapmaking process and try to force bipartisan consensus around the lines that determine congressional, Assembly and State Senate districts.The current redistricting cycle is the first to take place since the amendment was adopted.But the commission had struggled since its inception to transcend partisanship. It was supposed to release a set of draft maps in September and gather feedback on them in hearings across the state. Instead, Republican and Democratic members put out their own competing maps.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Michigan’s New Congressional Maps Undo Years of Gerrymandering

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      A citizen ballot initiative took redistricting out of the hands of partisan legislators. The result: competitive political districts — and an example of how to push back against hyperpartisanship.One of the country’s most gerrymandered political maps has suddenly been replaced by one of the fairest.A decade after Michigan Republicans gave themselves seemingly impregnable majorities in the state Legislature by drawing districts that heavily favored their party, a newly created independent commission approved maps late Tuesday that create districts so competitive that Democrats have a fighting chance of recapturing the State Senate for the first time since 1984.The work of the new commission, which includes Democrats, Republicans and independents and was established through a citizen ballot initiative, stands in sharp contrast to the type of hyperpartisan extreme gerrymandering that has swept much of the country, exacerbating political polarization — and it may highlight a potential path to undoing such gerrymandering.With lawmakers excluded from the mapmaking process, Michigan’s new districts will much more closely reflect the overall partisan makeup of the hotly contested battleground state.“Michigan’s a jump ball, and this is a jump-ball map,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel who focuses on redistricting at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot of competition in this map, which is what you would expect in a state like Michigan.”The commission’s three new maps — for Congress, the State House and the State Senate — restore a degree of fairness, but there were some notable criticisms. All of the maps still have a slight Republican advantage, in part because Democratic voters in the state are mostly concentrated in densely populated areas. The map for the State House also splits more than half of the state’s counties into several districts, despite redistricting guidelines that call for keeping neighboring communities together.The maps may also face a legal challenge from Black voters in the Detroit area, to whom the commission tried to give more opportunities for representation by unpacking them, or spreading them among more legislative districts.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.Detroit’s State Senate delegation will jump to nine members from five, and its State House delegation to 15 representatives from nine. But local Black elected officials and civil rights groups contend that while the intention may have been noble, the result actually dilutes Black voting strength, not only in general elections but also in primaries, in which elections for Black legislators are almost always decided.The reduced percentages of Black voters in some of the new districts may prevent candidates from winning primary elections on the strength of the Black vote alone, those critics say.“The goal of creating partisan fairness cannot so negatively impact Black communities as to erase us from the space,” said Adam Hollier, a state senator from the Detroit area. “They think that they are unpacking, because that is the narrative that they hear from across the country, without looking at what that means in the city of Detroit.”Republicans were also discussing possible challenges to the new maps.“We are evaluating all options to take steps necessary to defend the voices silenced by this commission,” Gustavo Portela, a Michigan G.O.P. spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday, without elaborating on whose voices he meant.The G.O.P. advantage in Michigan’s Legislature has held solid for years even as Democrats carried the state in presidential elections and won races for governor and U.S. Senate. In 2014, Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat, won the seat formerly held by Carl Levin by more than 13 percentage points. Yet in the same year, Republicans in the State Senate expanded their supermajority, winning 27 of 38 seats.So great a divergence between statewide and legislative elections is often a telltale sign of a gerrymandered map. And a lawsuit in 2018 unearthed emails in which Republicans boasted about packing “Dem garbage” into fewer districts and ensuring Republican advantages “in 2012 and beyond.”But the new State Senate map would create 20 seats that President Biden would have carried in 2020 and 18 that former President Donald J. Trump would have carried, giving Democrats new hopes of competitiveness.The new maps offer no guarantee that Democrats will win either chamber, however. And in a strong year for the G.O.P., which 2022 may be, Republicans could retain their advantage in the Legislature and could also come away with a majority of the state’s new 13-seat congressional delegation.The congressional map includes three tossup seats where the 2020 presidential margin was less than five points, and two more seats that could be competitive in a wave year, with presidential margins of less than 10 points. Two current Democratic representatives, Haley Stevens and Andy Levin, were drawn into the same district, setting up a competitive primary in the 11th District. Both declared their intention to run on Tuesday.The State House will also feature at least 20 competitive districts.Preserving such competition, election experts say, is one of the key goals in redistricting reform.“This is the quintessential success story of redistricting,” said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “These maps treated the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, about as fairly as you could ever imagine a map being. In all three cases, whoever gets the most votes statewide is likely to control the chamber or the delegation. And there’s competition in all three maps.”Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More