Redistricting and Reapportionment

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      Democrats Say They Are Serious About State Elections. But Are They Too Late?

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      State-level races are becoming a central focus of American politics as the lasting effects of new congressional maps and election laws raise the stakes.Late on Nov. 8, 2016, the mood inside President Barack Obama’s West Wing turned grim. Hillary Clinton was coming up short. The realization was growing that Donald J. Trump would be elected president.Suddenly, David M. Simas, Mr. Obama’s political director, pumped his fist and called out, “Yes!”A cautious, cerebral lawyer, Mr. Simas was not known for attention-getting exultation. Asked why he was cheering, he deadpanned: “We just won a North Carolina Supreme Court seat.”Incongruous as it was, the moment of triumph in a relatively minor contest reflected a growing concern among Democratic leaders, all the way up to Mr. Obama, that their party needed a more assertive strategy for the end-of-decade redistricting fights to come. But as Democrats awakened to the depth of their plight, they found that learning to think small was easier said than done: Hopes of big gains at the state level in 2020, a crucial year for redistricting, did not materialize. Liberal voters showed they were less hungry to win those races than they were to oust Mr. Trump.Now, however, state-level contests like those for governor’s offices, legislatures and courts are suddenly moving from the periphery to the center of American politics. And the ongoing tussle over political maps is just one front in a larger conflict: As Mr. Trump pushes his false claims of a stolen 2020 election, what was once seen at most as a decennial scrum for partisan advantage in the provinces of government is transforming, in some Democrats’ minds, into a twilight struggle for the future of American democracy.“We’re at a moment of reckoning in America,” former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said during a recent fund-raising event for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group he formed that became the primary locus of Mr. Obama’s political activity when he left the White House. “I’m not being hyperbolic or alarmist. I think our democracy is on the line.”Fund-raising appeals on behalf of Democratic legislative candidates note the fact that at least six Republican state lawmakers were in Washington on Jan. 6, and that Republican-led states from Arizona to Georgia have passed laws tightening the rules around voting. And revelations about Mr. Trump’s ad hoc efforts to overturn the previous presidential election are fueling fears that in a rematch of 2020, Mr. Trump might conspire with G.O.P. state lawmakers to alter the outcome illegitimately.“We believe the right wing is signaling a strategy to steal the election through state legislatures in 2024,” said Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator whose group, the States Project, has announced plans to raise $30 million to support Democratic candidates in state legislative races in 2022.Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., left with microphone, at a Virginia rally in 2019. He formed a group focused on redistricting.Emma Howells for The New York TimesYet it remains to be seen whether such dire warnings will move voters. Selling rank-and-file Democrats on the importance of offices like state senator or state Supreme Court justice has proved daunting. In the 2020 campaign cycle, donors showered Amy McGrath, a doomed Democratic candidate for Senate from Kentucky, with $96 million, dwarfing the $51 million raised by the national Democratic Party committee responsible for aiding candidates for legislative seats in all 50 states. And Democrats tend to suffer disproportionately from “roll-off,” a phenomenon in which voters fail to complete their ballots, withholding their votes from candidates at the bottom of the ticket.“It feels very much like climbing uphill, pushing a rock while your arms are melting,” said Amanda Litman of the liberal group Run for Something, which recruits young people to run for state and local office.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.Gaby Goldstein, co-founder of Sister District, a grass-roots organization that supports progressive candidates in state legislative races, noted that conservatives have mobilized around state politics for decades. “I always say that Democrats are tardy to the party,” she said.The Democratic Party’s belated interest in lower-tier races grew out of its bruising experience in 2010, when Republicans rode an anti-Obama backlash to oust hundreds of Democratic incumbents nationwide. Spending just $30 million, Republicans flipped 680 state legislative seats and 20 chambers, a stunning victory that put them in position to redraw election maps and entrench their hold over those states — and their congressional delegations — for a decade.“Democrats were frankly unprepared during that cycle,” said Kelly Ward Burton, who at the time was running House Democrats’ campaign committee. Now the president of Mr. Holder’s redistricting committee, Ms. Burton has been working closely with several Democratic campaign groups in hopes of a different outcome from the current round of redistricting.Part hardball politics and part good-government activism, the groups’ strategy has been to break up G.O.P. “trifectas” where possible — reducing the number of states where Republicans enjoy full control of the redistricting process because they hold the governorship and majorities in both legislative chambers. They also ask candidates for state and federal offices to pledge support for “fair redistricting that ends map manipulation and creates truly representative districts,” an aspiration that is sometimes in tension with more partisan goals.Midway through the current redistricting brawl, the results of those Democratic efforts are mixed.The long-troubled Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee became a force under new leadership in 2016, setting up the party to take six chambers in the 2018 midterm elections. Since 2017, Democrats have flipped 10 governor’s offices, including in the battlegrounds of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and picked up seven state Supreme Court seats. Five states have passed nonpartisan redistricting reforms, putting map-drawing in the hands of independent commissions.But the blue wave that Democrats were counting on in 2020 never washed ashore. Although Democratic groups spent record amounts trying to win back G.O.P.-held statehouses, their party ended last year worse off, losing both chambers in New Hampshire. As a result, Republicans not only kept control of prizes like the Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin legislatures, but they also have retained the power to draw maps for 187 congressional districts, while Democrats control the fate of just 75.As a result, Democrats’ hopes of keeping the House may rest on legal challenges to maps that Republican-led states have already approved. And a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, which put partisan gerrymandering claims beyond the purview of federal courts, ensures that state courts will be the main arena for such lawsuits.In 2019, Democrats lost a crucial state Supreme Court contest in Wisconsin by fewer than 6,000 votes, cementing the body’s conservative majority. But the election of liberal judges in North Carolina and Ohio has given Mr. Holder’s group, and other liberal outfits allied with it, at least a chance to win in court what Democrats lack the power to achieve in Republican-dominated legislatures.Tim Butler, a Republican state lawmaker in Illinois. Aggressive gerrymandering in the state could net Democrats at least one additional House seat.Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register, via Associated PressElsewhere, high-minded sentiments are yielding to the demands of brass-knuckle politics. Many Democrats cheered the aggressive gerrymandering in Illinois, where maps approved by Gov. J.B. Pritzker could net them at least one additional House seat, and they are urging a similar approach in New York, where a Democratic supermajority may seek to gerrymander its way to capturing as many as four seats currently held by Republicans.None of which is lost on Republicans. “Democrats pretend to be for ‘fair maps,’ but they use every advantage they get,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Map by Map, G.O.P. Chips Away at Black Democrats’ Power

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      Black elected officials in several states, from Congress down to the counties, have been drawn out of their districts this year or face headwinds to hold onto their seats.More than 30 years ago, Robert Reives Sr. marched into a meeting of his county government in Sanford, N.C., with a demand: Create a predominantly Black district in the county, which was 23 percent Black at the time but had no Black representation, or face a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act.The county commission refused, and Mr. Reives prepared to sue. But after the county settled and redrew its districts, he was elected in 1990 as Lee County’s first Black commissioner, a post he has held comfortably ever since.Until this year.Republicans, newly in power and in control of the redrawing of county maps, extended the district to the northeast, adding more rural and suburban white voters to the mostly rural district southwest of Raleigh and effectively diluting the influence of its Black voters. Mr. Reives, who is still the county’s only Black commissioner, fears he will now lose his seat.“They all have the same objective,” he said in an interview, referring to local Republican officials. “To get me out of the seat.”Mr. Reives is one of a growing number of Black elected officials across the country — ranging from members of Congress to county commissioners — who have been drawn out of their districts, placed in newly competitive districts or bundled into new districts where they must vie against incumbents from their own party.Almost all of the affected lawmakers are Democrats, and most of the mapmakers are white Republicans. The G.O.P. is currently seeking to widen its advantage in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and because partisan gerrymandering has long been difficult to disentangle from racial gerrymandering, proving the motive can be troublesome.But the effect remains the same: less political power for communities of color.The pattern has grown more pronounced during this year’s redistricting cycle, the first since the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and allowed jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to pass election laws and draw political maps without approval from the Justice Department.How Maps Reshape American PoliticsWe answer your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.“Let’s call it a five-alarm fire,” G.K. Butterfield, a Black congressman from North Carolina, said of the current round of congressional redistricting. He is retiring next year after Republicans removed Pitt County, which is about 35 percent Black, from his district.“I just didn’t see it coming,” he said in an interview. “I did not believe that they would go to that extreme.”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.A former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Mr. Butterfield said fellow Black members of Congress were increasingly worried about the new Republican-drawn maps. “We are all rattled,” he said.In addition to Mr. Butterfield, four Black state senators in North Carolina, five Black members of the state House of Representatives and several Black county officials have had their districts altered in ways that could cost them their seats. Nearly 24 hours after the maps were passed, civil rights groups sued the state.Representative G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina said he was retiring next year after Republicans removed Pitt County, which is 35 percent Black, from his district.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesAcross the country, the precise number of elected officials of color who have had their districts changed in such ways is difficult to pinpoint. The New York Times identified more than two dozen of these officials, but there are probably significantly more in county and municipal districts. And whose seats are vulnerable or safe depends on a variety of factors, including the political environment at the time of elections.But the number of Black legislators being drawn out of their districts outpaces that of recent redistricting cycles, when voting rights groups frequently found themselves in court trying to preserve existing majority-minority districts as often as they sought to create new ones.“Without a doubt it’s worse than it was in any recent decade,” said Leah Aden, a deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. “We have so much to contend with and it’s all happening very quickly.”Republicans, who have vastly more control over redistricting nationally than Democrats do, defend their maps as legal and fair, giving a range of reasons.Kirk Smith, the Republican chairman of Lee County’s board of commissioners, said that “to say only a person of a certain racial or ethnic group can represent only a person of the same racial or ethnic group has all the trappings of ethnocentric racism.”In North Carolina and elsewhere, Republicans say that their new maps are race-blind, meaning officials used no racial data in designing the maps and therefore could not have drawn racially discriminatory districts because they had no idea where communities of color were.“During the 2011 redistricting process, legislators considered race when drawing districts,” Ralph Hise, a Republican state senator in North Carolina, said in a statement. Through a spokesperson, he declined to answer specific questions, citing pending litigation.His statement continued: “We were then sued for considering race and ordered to draw new districts. So during this process, legislators did not use any racial data when drawing districts, and we’re now being sued for not considering race.”In other states, mapmakers have declined to add new districts with majorities of people of color even though the populations of minority residents have boomed. In Texas, where the population has increased by four million since the 2010 redistricting cycle, people of color account for more than 95 percent of the growth, but the State Legislature drew two new congressional seats with majority-white populations.And in states like Alabama and South Carolina, Republican map drawers are continuing a decades-long tradition of packing nearly all of the Black voting-age population into a single congressional district, despite arguments from voters to create two separate districts. In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the Republican-controlled State Legislature should draw a second majority-Black House district.Allison Riggs, a co-executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights group, said that the gerrymandering was “really an attack on Black voters, and the Black representatives are the visible outcome of that.”Efforts to curb racial gerrymandering have been hampered by a 2019 Supreme Court decision, which ruled that partisan gerrymandering could not be challenged in federal court.Though the court did leave intact Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial gerrymandering, it offered no concrete guidance on how to distinguish between a partisan gerrymander and a racial gerrymander when the result was both, such as in heavily Democratic Black communities.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      North Carolina Supreme Court Delays 2022 Primary Elections

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      In response to lawsuits over North Carolina’s political maps, the justices issued an order on Wednesday pushing back the state’s primaries from March to May.The North Carolina Supreme Court ordered a two-month delay in the state’s 2022 primary elections on Wednesday, giving critics of the state legislature’s gerrymandered political maps additional time to pursue a legal battle to redraw them.The unsigned ruling was a setback for the Republican-controlled General Assembly, which created the maps and had argued that a delay in the primaries would sow chaos among both candidates and voters.The court ordered the March 8 primary elections for all offices postponed until May 17, citing “the importance of the issues to the constitutional jurisprudence of this state, and the need for urgency” in deciding the maps’ legality. New boundaries for state legislative districts and for North Carolina’s 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives face three lawsuits filed by Democrats and voting-rights advocates in a state court in Raleigh.In a state split almost evenly between Republican and Democratic voters, the new maps give Republicans a sweeping political advantage. The new House map, for example, would all but ensure victory for G.O.P. candidates in 10 of the 14 districts, with a decent shot at winning an 11th seat.The legal struggle over the new boundaries appears to have split state judges along political lines as well. On Monday, Republicans had secured a ruling in the state Court of Appeals, which is dominated by Republican judges, upholding the March 8 primary date. The state Supreme Court, which overruled the decision, is narrowly controlled by Democratic justices.The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which is representing the plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits, hailed the ruling as a victory for voters.“It sends a clear message that North Carolinians deserve to cast their ballots in elections held in fair, constitutional voting districts,” Hilary Harris Klein, the group’s senior voting rights lawyer, said in a statement.Republican state legislators issued a news release calling the ruling a political power grab. “The Democrats on the Supreme Court want districts that elect more Democrats, so they’re blocking every election in the state until they get their way,” one Republican, State Senator Ralph Hise, said.Delays in primary elections resulting from gerrymandering lawsuits are not unusual. Federal judges twice postponed the 2012 primary election in Texas as part of a redistricting dispute. North Carolina, where there have been more lawsuits over redistricting than in many other states, also has a history of postponement: The State Board of Elections ordered the 2004 primaries delayed during one of those court battles.The state Supreme Court issued a vastly expedited schedule for resolving the gerrymandering litigation, beginning with an order that the state Superior Court in Raleigh hand down an initial ruling next month. The Supreme Court also has signaled that appeals of that ruling will be accelerated as well.The order to delay primary elections seems likely to further fuel Republican outrage over Supreme Court rulings that have gone against the party’s wishes.A former state Republican Party chairman suggested last month that the justices should be impeached for a ruling in a long-running dispute over state funding for education. The legislature appears to agree and has added impeachment to its agenda for a special legislative session starting late this month. More

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      Redistricting Makes California a Top House Battlefield for 2022

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      As legislators across the country draw House maps to protect incumbents, a nonpartisan commission of California citizens is drafting one that will scramble political fortunes for both parties.FRESNO, Calif. — For nearly three years, Phil Arballo has been running for Congress against Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican that Democrats across the country have loved to loathe, raising money by the truckload and compiling an email outreach list that is all the more impressive considering his lack of political experience.On Monday, Mr. Nunes announced he would resign from Congress at year’s end to lead former President Donald J. Trump’s media and technology company, continuing an unswerving fealty to Mr. Trump that had turned him into a national figure of admiration on the right and contempt on the left.Mr. Nunes was prodded toward that decision in large part by the nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which this week is putting the finishing touches on new boundaries.The plan is likely to transform the district he has represented for 19 years from a dusty, rural swath that voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 by 5 percentage points into one centered here in Fresno, the fifth-largest city in California, which Joseph R. Biden Jr. would have carried handily.Mr. Arballo, who lost to Mr. Nunes last year and had been hoping to challenge him again, realizes he will have a different opponent.“It’s going to be fun, though,” Mr. Arballo said, speaking from his spare campaign headquarters in a nondescript office park here. “And what we can do is also wash away the gerrymandering that’s going to be happening all over the country.”Legislatures from Nevada to Georgia are drafting new House district lines under the required reapportionment that occurs every 10 years. Most of them are seeking to protect incumbency and maintain a partisan edge by eliminating competitive seats, a process that Republicans in particular have exploited to gain a heavy early advantage in their push to wrest control of the House next year. The Justice Department filed suit on Monday against a Texas map gerrymandered by the Republican-led legislature that would make that state redder, potentially leaving only a single district in play.Mr. Nunes in Washington last year. He announced on Monday that he would resign from Congress to lead former President Donald J. Trump’s media and technology company.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut in California, the map will stand in stark contrast to most of the country, scrambling the fortunes of lawmakers in both parties and creating the broadest — perhaps the only — true battlefield for 2022. Lawmakers should see the full plan by Friday, and the commission will send it to the secretary of state by Dec. 27.Legislatures in nine other states, working off the 2020 census, have completed new maps of 116 House districts. In only 10 of those would the candidate who won 2020 have prevailed by 7 percentage points or less, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project; that is half the number of competitive districts that existed in 2018 and 2020.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.In contrast, California alone could end up with eight or nine battleground districts.“There’s no question we’re going to end up with more competitive seats,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant in Sacramento.The first draft of the map shocked much of the California delegation. No longer able to count on his rural, agricultural base, Mr. Nunes would have had to win over the gracious neighborhoods along Van Ness Avenue in Fresno, with their verandas and Black Lives Matter flags, and the hipsters of the city’s Tower District, who have more affection for Devin Nunes’ Cow, a Twitter account mocking the congressman, than the man himself. The commission appears intent on giving Latinos in the Central Valley a chance to elect their first representative ever.Mr. Nunes could have moved to a new district taking shape along the Nevada border, which will be heavily Republican, but he chose to go elsewhere. He was not alone in pondering a new future. After losing his San Diego-area seat to a Democrat in 2018, another outspoken conservative, Darrell Issa, moved to a conservative district abandoned by the indicted Republican Duncan Hunter. That seat could end up far more competitive.Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican, won a special election to replace a young Democrat felled by a sex scandal, then shocked Democrats by winning re-election last year by 333 votes in a district that Mr. Biden won by 35,000. The commission, however, appears intent on lopping off Republican-heavy Simi Valley from Mr. Garcia’s district in north Los Angeles County, leaving him holding on by a thread to a considerably less conservative seat.“It makes guys like me perk up and go, ‘OK, what was the rationale for dumping this?’” Mr. Garcia said of the commission’s decision. “When you go through all the questions that are, in my opinion, objective, the only thing you’re left with is a rationale that is political.”Democrats are at risk, too. The commission has proposed eliminating the Los Angeles seat of Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who in 1992 became the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress. Representative Katie Porter, a hero of the national Democratic Party, appears likely to be left with a more Republican district in Orange County — a fate that could prompt her to run for the Senate instead, either by challenging Alex Padilla, the Democrat appointed to fill Vice President Kamala Harris’s seat, or waiting for Senator Dianne Feinstein, 88, to step aside.Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard on Capitol Hill in 2019. The nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission has proposed eliminating her seat.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesCalifornia’s 10th Congressional District, currently represented by Representative Josh Harder, a young, up-and-coming Democrat, will become heavily Republican, most likely sending Mr. Harder in search of a new district. (It was the expected destination of Mr. Nunes.) That could cost the quiet backbench Democrat Jerry McNerney, who might find himself a sacrificial lamb.The former governor who set the process in motion, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is watching the free-for-all with glee. When he took office in 2003, he had never thought of redistricting reform, he said in an interview last week. But what he found was a system he called “wacky,” in which Democrats and Republicans came together every 10 years to redraw the lines of State Assembly districts, State Senate seats and U.S. House seats to preserve the status quo — politicians picking their voters, not the other way around.“It was worse than the Politburo,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who came to office after a recall election. “The Constitution says, ‘We the people,’ not ‘We the politicians.’”From 2002 to 2010, one California congressional district changed party hands. Since 2012, when the first map of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s redistricting commission went into effect, 16 seats have flipped. He called it “without doubt” one of his proudest achievements.The commission includes five Republicans, five Democrats and four members not affiliated with a party, selected from citizen applicants. Commissioner J. Ray Kennedy, a Democrat, said the panel must create districts of equal population that are contiguous and compact, and to the extent practicable, keep counties, cities, neighborhoods and “communities of interest” together.A person should be able to walk from any part of a district to another without crossing into a different one, though bulges and loops do form to comply with the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that minority voters get representation. Competitiveness is not a criterion, but it is a byproduct.Compliance with the Voting Rights Act could create the first two Latino districts in the Central Valley, to the detriment of two Republicans: Mr. Nunes and Representative David Valadao, who will square off next year with Rudy Salas, a member of the State Assembly and a prime Democratic recruit. The district remains highly competitive but will slightly shift from Fresno and into Mr. Salas’s stronghold of Bakersfield.“The way that the commission is looking at this independently, it’s actually shifting the district toward my home base, Kern County, which is my media market, where they’ve known me for at least 12-plus years since my time at City Council, and now with the State Assembly,” Mr. Salas said on Tuesday. “So I feel very confident.”The contrast between California and the rest of the country is stark.Ryan Mulcahy, the campaign manager for Mr. Arballo’s congressional campaign, in Fresno, Calif., on Friday.Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesIn Georgia, Republican legislators collapsed two competitive districts won narrowly by Democrats into one heavily Democratic district in suburban Atlanta. The state will have no competitive districts next year.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      G.O.P. Cements Hold on Legislatures in Battleground States

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      Democrats were once able to count on wave elections to win back key statehouses. Republican gerrymandering is making that all but impossible.Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in four battleground states that are set to secure the party’s control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the G.O.P. against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections.In Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have either created supermajorities capable of overriding a governor’s veto or whittled down competitive districts so significantly that Republicans’ advantage is virtually impenetrable — leaving voters in narrowly divided states powerless to change the leadership of their legislatures.Although much of the attention on this year’s redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted.And statehouses have taken on towering importance: With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the country’s policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.“This is not your founding fathers’ gerrymander,” said Chris Lamar, a senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center who focuses on redistricting. “This is something more intense and durable and permanent.”This redistricting cycle, the first one in a decade, builds on a political trend that accelerated in 2011, when Republicans in swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan drew highly gerrymandered state legislative maps.Since those maps were enacted, Republicans have held both houses of state government in all three places for the entire decade. They never lost control of a single chamber, even as Democrats won some of the states’ races for president, governor and Senate.All three of those Northern states are likely to see some shift back toward parity this year, with a new independent commission drawing Michigan’s maps, and Democratic governors in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will probably force the process to be completed by the courts.Gerrymandering is a tool used by both parties in swing states as well as less competitive ones. Democrats in deep-blue states like Illinois are moving to increase their advantage in legislatures, and Republicans in deep-red states like Utah and Idaho are doing the same.But in politically contested states where Republicans hold full control, legislators are carefully crafting a G.O.P. future. They are armed with sharper technology, weakened federal voting statutes and the knowledge that legal challenges to their maps may not be resolved in time for the next elections.In Texas, North Carolina and Ohio, Republican governors have signed into law new maps with a significant advantage for the party. Georgia is moving quickly to join them.Republicans say that the growth of such heavily skewed legislatures is both the result of the party’s electoral victories and of where voters choose to live.State legislative districts are by nature much smaller in population than congressional districts, meaning they are often more geographically compact.As Democratic voters have crowded into cities and commuter suburbs, and voters in rural and exurban areas have grown increasingly Republican, G.O.P. mapmakers say that they risk running afoul of other redistricting criteria if they split up those densely populated Democratic areas across multiple state legislative districts.“What you see is reflective of the more even distribution of Republican and right-leaning voters across wider geographic areas,” said Adam Kincaid, the director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. Trying to draw more competitive legislative districts, he said, would result in “just a lot of squiggly lines.”He pointed to maps in Wisconsin that were proposed by a commission created by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. Under those designs, Republicans would still have a majority in both state legislative chambers (though with significantly smaller margins).“They’re limited by geography,” Mr. Kincaid said. “There’s only so many things you can do to spread that many voters across a wide area.”Democrats note that Republicans are still cracking apart liberal communities — especially in suburbs near Akron and Cleveland in Ohio and in predominantly Black counties in northern and central North Carolina — in a way that helps the G.O.P. and cuts against a geographical argument.“They are carving up Democratic voters where they can’t pack them,” said Garrett Arwa, the director of campaigns at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He argued that Democratic map proposals “all put forth better and more fair maps that I would say are far from a Rorschach test.”Democrats have fewer opportunities to unilaterally draw state legislative maps, particularly in battleground states. Of the 14 states where the margin of the 2020 presidential race was fewer than 10 percentage points, Democrats are able to draw state legislative maps in just one: Nevada. Republicans control the redistricting process in six of those 14 states. (The rest have divided governments, or their maps are drawn by commissions.)But when Democrats have had an opening, they have also enacted significant gerrymanders at the state legislative level. In Nevada, Democrats are close to finalizing a map that would give them supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, despite President Biden’s winning just 51 percent of the state’s vote last year.The same holds true in deeply blue states. In Illinois, newly drawn State Senate maps would give Republicans roughly 23 percent of seats in the chamber, even though former President Donald J. Trump won more than 40 percent of voters in the state in 2020.Republicans have taken two approaches to ensure durable majorities in state legislatures. The tactics in Texas and Georgia are more subtle, while Republicans in Ohio and North Carolina have taken more brazen steps.In Texas and Georgia, the party has largely eliminated competitive districts and made both Republican and Democratic seats safer, a move that tends to ward off criticism from at least some incumbents in the minority party.“Out of the 150 seats in the Texas House, only six of them are within seven points or closer,” said Sam Wang, the director of the Princeton Redistricting Project. Republicans now hold a 20-seat advantage in the chamber, 85 to 65, and the new maps will give the party roughly two more seats. So while the G.O.P. lawmakers did not try to draw an aggressive supermajority, “what they really did a good job of there is getting rid of competition and getting a reasonably safe majority for themselves,” Mr. Wang said.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      The Problem of Political Despair

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      On Friday morning, after a night of insomnia fueled by worries about raising children in a collapsing society, I opened my eyes, started reading about efforts by Wisconsin Republicans to seize control of the state’s elections, then paused to let my tachycardiac heartbeat subside. Marinating in the news is part of my job, but doing so lately is a source of full-body horror. If this were simply my problem, I’d write about it in a journal instead of in The New York Times. But political despair is an issue for the entire Democratic Party.It’s predictable that, with Donald Trump out of the White House, Democrats would pull back from constant, frenetic political engagement. But there’s a withdrawal happening right now — from news consumption, activism and, in some places, voting — that seems less a product of relief than of avoidance. Part of this is simply burnout and lingering trauma from Covid. But I suspect that part of it is about growing hopelessness born of a sense that dislodging Trump has bought American democracy only a brief reprieve.One redeeming feature of Trump’s presidency, in retrospect, was that it was possible to look forward to the date when Americans could finish it. Covid, too, once seemed like something we’d be able to largely put behind us when we got vaccinated. Sure, Trumpism, like the virus, would linger, but it was easy to imagine a much better world after the election, the inauguration and the wide availability of shots.Now we’re past all that, and American life is still comprehensively awful. Dystopia no longer has an expiration date.My friend Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host, uses the phrase “the bad feeling” to describe certain kinds of stories about America’s democratic unraveling. “The bad feeling is that pit of the stomach feeling that we’re not OK, and it’s not clear we’re going to be OK,” he told me.Bill Armstrong, courtesy of ClampArt, New YorkThe problem isn’t just that polls show that, at least right now, voters want to hand over Congress to a party that largely treats the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes. That’s upsetting, but it’s also fairly normal given the tendency of American voters to react against the party in power, and in a democratic system Republicans should prevail when they have public sentiment behind them.What’s terrifying is that even if Democrats win back public confidence, they can win more votes than Republicans and still lose. Gerrymandering alone is enough to tip the balance in the House. North Carolina, a state Joe Biden lost by 1.3 percentage points, just passed a redistricting map that would create 10 Republican seats, three Democratic ones and one competitive one. “Democrats would have to win North Carolina by 11.4 points just to win half its congressional seats,” FiveThirtyEight reported.There are already lawsuits against the map, but the Supreme Court — which is controlled by conservatives even though Democrats won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight elections — gutted constitutional limitations on gerrymandering in 2019.Things are, if anything, even worse in the Senate, where growing geographic polarization threatens to give Republicans a near lock on the chamber. As my colleague Ezra Klein wrote last month, the Democratic data guru David Shor predicts that if Democrats win 51 percent of the two-party vote in 2024, they will lose seven seats compared to where we are now.Meanwhile, Republicans are purging local officials who protected the integrity of the 2020 election, replacing them with apparatchiks. It will be hard for Republicans to steal the 2024 election outright, since they don’t control the current administration, but they can throw it into the sort of chaos that will cause widespread civil unrest. And if they win, it’s hard to imagine them ever consenting to the peaceful transfer of power again. As Hayes said, there’s an inexorability about what’s coming that is “very hard to watch.”Already, the Republican Party winks at the violent intimidation of its political enemies. During the presidential campaign, a right-wing caravan tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road, and Senator Marco Rubio cheered them on. School board members and public health offices have sought help from the Justice Department to deal with a barrage of threats and harassment. Three congressional Republicans have said they want to give an internship to the teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse. One of those Republicans, Representative Paul Gosar, earlier tweeted an animated video of himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the overwhelming majority of his caucus stood by him.I look at the future and I see rule without recourse by people who either approve of terrorizing liberals or welcome those who do. Such an outcome isn’t inevitable; unforeseen events can reshape political coalitions. Something could happen to forestall the catastrophe bearing down on us. How much comfort you take from this depends on your disposition.Given the bleak trajectory of American politics, I worry about progressives retreating into private life to preserve their sanity, a retreat that will only hasten democracy’s decay. In order to get people to throw themselves into the fight to save this broken country, we need leaders who can convince them that they haven’t already lost.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Republicans Have an Edge in the Emerging 2022 Congressional Maps

      by

      On a highly distorted congressional map that is still taking shape, the party has added enough safe House districts to capture control of the chamber based on its redistricting edge alone.WASHINGTON — A year before the polls open in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are already poised to flip at least five seats in the closely divided House thanks to redrawn district maps that are more distorted, more disjointed and more gerrymandered than any since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.The rapidly forming congressional map, a quarter of which has taken shape as districts are redrawn this year, represents an even more extreme warping of American political architecture, with state legislators in many places moving aggressively to cement their partisan dominance.The flood of gerrymandering, carried out by both parties but predominantly by Republicans, is likely to leave the country ever more divided by further eroding competitive elections and making representatives more beholden to their party’s base.At the same time, Republicans’ upper hand in the redistricting process, combined with plunging approval ratings for President Biden and the Democratic Party, provides the party with what could be a nearly insurmountable advantage in the 2022 midterm elections and the next decade of House races.“The floor for Republicans has been raised,” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of House Republicans’ campaign committee, said in an interview. “Our incumbents actually are getting stronger districts.”Congressional maps serve, perhaps more than ever before, as a predictor of which party will control the House of Representatives, where Democrats now hold 221 seats to Republicans’ 213. In the 12 states that have completed the mapping process, Republicans have gained an advantage for seats in Iowa, North Carolina, Texas and Montana, and Democrats have lost the advantage in districts in North Carolina and Iowa.All told, Republicans have added a net of five seats that the party can expect to hold while Democrats are down one. Republicans need to flip just five Democratic-held seats next year to seize a House majority.“They’re really taking a whack at competition,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The path back to a majority for Democrats if they lose in 2022 has to run through states like Texas, and they’re just taking that off the table.”Competition in House races has decreased for years. In 2020, The New York Times considered just 61 of the 435 House elections to be “battleground” contests. The trend is starkest in places like Texas, where 14 congressional districts in 2020 had a presidential vote that was separated by 10 percentage points or less. With the state’s new maps, only three are projected to be decided by a similar margin.Redistricting, which happens every 10 years, began late this summer after states received the much-delayed results of the 2020 census. The process will continue, state by state, through the winter and spring and is to be completed before the primary contests for next year’s midterm elections.How Maps Reshape American PoliticsWe answer your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.In most states, the map drawing is controlled by state legislators, who often resort to far-reaching gerrymanders. Republicans have control over the redistricting process in states that represent 187 congressional seats, compared with just 84 for Democrats. The rest are to be drawn by outside panels or are in states where the two parties must agree on maps or have them decided by the courts.Gerrymandering is carried out in many ways, but the two most common forms are “cracking” and “packing.” Cracking is when mapmakers spread a cluster of a certain type of voters — for example, those affiliated with the opposing party — among several districts to dilute their vote. Packing is when members of a demographic group, like Black voters, or voters in the opposing political party, are crammed into as few districts as possible.The Republican gains this year build on what was already a significant cartographic advantage. The existing maps were heavily gerrymandered by statehouse Republicans after the G.O.P.’s wave election in 2010, in a rapid escalation of the congressional map-drawing wars. This year, both parties are starting from a highly contorted map amid a zero-sum political environment. With advancements in both voter data and software, they have been able to take a more surgical approach to the process.Republicans are cautious about doing a premature victory lap in case the country’s political mood shifts again over the next year. Democrats believe that while keeping their House majority will be an uphill battle, they have a stronger chance of maintaining control in the Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris currently breaks a 50-50 tie.Republicans also argue that there could in fact be many newly competitive House districts if Mr. Biden’s approval ratings remain in the doldrums and voters replicate the G.O.P.’s successes in elections this month.Democrats, without much to brag about, accuse Republicans of being afraid of competitive elections.“Fear is driving all of this,” David Pepper, a former Ohio Democratic Party chairman, said on Wednesday at a hearing to discuss a proposed map that would give Republicans 13 of the state’s 15 congressional seats. “Fear of what would happen if we actually had a real democracy.”More districts are certain to shift from Democratic to Republican in the coming weeks. Republican lawmakers in Georgia and Florida will soon begin debating new maps..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Several other states have completed maps for the 2020s that entrench existing Republican advantages. Republicans in Alabama and Indiana shored up G.O.P.-held congressional districts while packing their state’s pockets of Democrats into uncompetitive enclaves. In Utah, a new map eliminates a competitive district in Salt Lake City that Democrats won in 2018. Republicans have made an Oklahoma City seat much safer, while Colorado’s independent redistricting commission shored up the district of Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican and Trump ally, so much that her leading Democratic opponent, who had raised $1.9 million, dropped out of the contest to defeat her.And in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a map that protects the state’s 23 Republican incumbents while adding two safely red seats, a year after the party spent $22 million to protect vulnerable House members.“The competitive Republican seats are off the board,” said Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s clearinghouse for designing new maps.Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, at an event on redistricting this month. Democrats in the state may draw its lone Republican congressman out of a district.Brian Witte/Associated PressIn one of the few states where Democrats are on offense, Illinois will eliminate two Republican seats from its delegation and add one Democratic one when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs the map that the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature approved last month. New York is likely to add seats to the Democratic column once the party’s lawmakers complete maps next year, and Maryland Democrats may draw their state’s lone Republican congressman out of a district. Democrats in Nebraska also managed to preserve a competitive district that includes Omaha after initial Republican proposals sought to split the city in two.Calling the Republican moves an “unprecedented power grab,” Kelly Burton, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said that the G.O.P. was “not successfully taking over the battleground” but instead “proactively and intentionally trying to remove competitive seats.”Several other states where Republicans drew advantageous districts for themselves a decade ago will now have outside commissions or courts determining their maps.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Redistricting Explained: Your Questions Answered

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      Suppose a state has 25 voters who live in a perfect grid. Sixty percent of them belong to the Blue party, and 40 percent to the Red party.

      Say the state has five House seats. We need districts roughly the same size. We can draw them to fairly reflect the population: Blue gets three seats, Red gets two seats.

      But what if we want to give Blue the advantage? If we draw the districts like this, Blue holds a majority in all five districts.

      Now, let’s draw a map that helps the Red party. We’ll need to get creative, since it’s in the minority. But check out what happens if we draw the districts this way. More