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      Surprise as Black Democrats work with Republicans to undo electoral maps

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      A lawsuit brought by Black Democrats who partnered with Republican attorneys has undone Michigan’s first independently drawn legislative maps, in a development some other Democrats have labeled a GOP “power grab”.Republicans for decades controlled all or part of the state legislature, and developed districts that a judge in 2019 characterized as a “gerrymander of historical proportions”. Democrats in 2022 took control of the state government for the first time in over 40 years after a nonpartisan independent redistricting commission implemented more balanced maps.But a Republican-majority panel of federal district court judges appointed by a Republican circuit court judge ruled in early January that the maps diluted Black voting power and were drawn based on race, thus splitting communities that would otherwise vote in a bloc.Several Michigan Democrats who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to publicly criticize members of their party expressed dismay because a Republican judiciary now controls the redrawing process, and they fear the new maps will be more favorable to the GOP.Constituents in Detroit and elsewhere in the state will suffer if the legislature is turned back over to Republicans, some Democrats said. Michigan now has its first Black speaker of the house and more Black committee chairs than it has ever had, the maps’ supporters noted, and the speaker’s district is one of those included in the lawsuit.But former Michigan state representative Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, one of the lead plaintiffs along with a group of Black voters, told the Guardian her colleagues’ arguments were “ludicrous”. The new maps carved up Detroit into more districts than before, and that destroyed Detroit’s voting bloc, she added.The lawsuit encompasses 13 senate and house districts in and around Detroit, a city that is around 85% Black. Of those, eight districts are currently represented by Black representatives or senators.“We don’t want a majority on the backs of Black people who have no voice in selecting their own representation,” she said. “If the party is suggesting that the only way they can have a majority is by selling Black people up the river, then hell no. It’s not fair.”Typically, Republicans in other states argue on the opposite side of the Voting Rights Act and 14th amendment violations, which Democrats say is evidence the party is disingenuous and capitalizing on Democratic divisions to try to destroy the maps.Michigan Democratic party chair Lavora Barnes did not respond to specific questions from the Guardian, but in a statement said she is “confident that Democrats will be able to hold the majority in the House and maintain our Democratic trifecta that has continually delivered for Michiganders”.Previously, the party in charge of the legislature drew the maps every 10 years. That changed with the 2018 passage of a citizen initiative for an independent nonpartisan redistricting commission. The commission’s new lines went into effect this year, giving Democrats a much fairer shot at control.Michigan was one of a handful of swing states to come under full Democratic control in 2022 as the undoing of Roe V Wade galvanized voters, but their majority in both chambers is razor thin. The state’s congressional districts are not affected by the lawsuit, though a second suit is possible.Among the plaintiff’s lead attorneys is John Bursch, a former state solicitor general under GOP former attorney general Bill Schuette who has represented conservatives in anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion causes.In what observers say is an unprecedented move, the federal court appointed a special master to draw new maps at the same time as the commission, reasoning that the commission was beset by infighting and incapable of redrawing legislative lines in time for the 2024 elections.With the close proximity of the 2024 primaries, the moves make sense, even if it is unprecedented, said Josh Douglas, an election law and voting rights professor at the University of Kentucky.“It just shows that courts sometimes need to be creative as an election draws nearer,” he said.The court ruled the maps violated the US constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.The latter stems from the diminished number of majority-Black districts the commission drew because it connected the city to suburbs, which diluted the voting strength of Black voters. The districts should be at least 50-55% minority, observers say, and are currently about 35-40% minority.More importantly, the court ruled the maps violated the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, which prohibits the use of race as the primary consideration in drawing lines. The process of drawing lines can frequently be drawn based on race, and Black Democrats in other states have have previously partnered with white Republicans.Bill Ballenger, a conservative-leaning Michigan political analyst, said the maps were “clearly” flawed, and noted the Democratic judge on the panel, Janet Neff, agreed with the GOP members. He scoffed at the notion of a “power grab”.“Of course they are saying all this, but the commission has given Republicans a lot of ammunition,” he said.The ruling was highly critical of the commission, and though Neff agreed with the majority decision, she questioned the need for a “harsh” tone in the panels’ decision. State Democrats who spoke to the Guardian said they suspected it was meant to undermine the commission’s credibility, but the commission has been beset by partisan infighting.The plaintiffs’ attorneys seized on that this week as the court continues to work out the redraw’s specifics: “The commission and its members appear more intent on cannibalizing each other than functioning as a cohesive group to draw a set of acceptable maps.”Ultimately, the issue boils down to having an effective caucus of Detroit senators and representatives, Gay-Dagnogo said. She pointed to the Detroit caucus’s success in negotiating on behalf of residents over auto insurance reform and state takeover of the city’s public school system. Even well-intentioned legislators sometimes propose policies that are bad for Detroiters, she added.“That’s the importance of having representation from your community, being well versed in those issues, and being able to get in these roles to advocate for your community,” Gay-Dagnogo said. More

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      Voting Rights Act faces new wave of dire threats in 2024

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      As 2023 comes to a close, the Voting Rights Act is facing a series of dire threats that could significantly weaken the landmark civil rights law.A suite of three different pending cases could gut the ability of private plaintiffs to challenge the Voting Rights Act, make it harder to challenge discriminatory election systems, and limit the Voting Rights Act’s protections in areas where a single racial minority doesn’t constitute a majority.“It’s a shock to the system,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.The new wave of attacks come after the supreme court unexpectedly issued a decision in June that upheld a critical provision of the law.In a 5-4 decision, the justices beat back an effort by Alabama that would have made it much harder to use the Voting Rights Act to challenge voting districts that weaken the influence of Black voters. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts sent a strong signal the court wasn’t interested in reconsidering its jurisprudence around Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the most powerful tool voting rights litigators have to challenge districts. It was a full-throated defense of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law the court has aggressively weakened in recent years.“The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our [section] 2 jurisprudence anew,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion in the case, Allen v Milligan, that was joined by his fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh and the three liberal justices. “We find Alabama’s new approach to [section] 2 compelling neither in theory nor in practice. We accordingly decline to recast our [section] 2 case law as Alabama requests.”The rulings was a sigh of relief for voting rights lawyers. Over the last decade, the court has ruled against voting rights at nearly every turn. It gutted the pre-clearance requirement at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, greenlit aggressively removing people from voter rolls, made it harder to challenge discriminatory voting laws, and made it nearly impossible to challenge a voting rule as long as an election is near.There’s nothing new about an onslaught of threats facing the Voting Rights Act, which has faced efforts to weaken it virtually since the moment it was enacted. But those attacks appear to be finding a more receptive audience in a supreme court and federal judiciary reshaped by Donald Trump that are willing to entertain fringe legal ideas.“The Voting Rights Act, in 2023, in some ways is on more stable footing than it was last year. And in other ways feels like it’s poised to undergo a whole new set of threats,” said Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney at the Campaign Legal Center.ArkansasThe most significant threat is a case from Arkansas that could block the ability of private litigants – voters, civil rights groups, political parties – from bringing cases to enforce the Voting Rights Act. No “private right of action” exists under the law, the US court of appeals for the eighth circuit said in a novel ruling earlier this month.It was a decision invited by the supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. In 2021, they issued a separate opinion musing that the court had never definitively said whether or not private parties could bring section 2 cases – a surefire invitation to litigants to try and get the question before the court.If private parties can’t sue under the Voting Rights Act, it would make it virtually impossible the enforce the law. Non-governmental groups, which have more resources than the justice department and can move much more quickly, have brought the vast majority of cases in the six decades since the Voting Rights Act was enacted. If enforcement were only up to the government, priorities could change from administration to administration (the justice department filed very few voting rights cases under Donald Trump).“It would completely eviscerate the last remaining power behind the Voting Rights Act in any way real way,” said Lakin, the ACLU attorney, who represents the plaintiffs in the Arkansas case.The issue has created even more uncertainty for voting rights litigators in an environment in which they already have a reduced toolkit to combat voting discrimination after the Shelby county decision.“It is certainly frustrating,” Lang said. “When you look at all the work that’s yet to be done in the voting rights space. And instead of getting that work done, lawyers get sidetracked having to fight old battles over them.”GeorgiaThe Arkansas case isn’t the only serious threat to the Voting Rights Act. In Georgia, an appellate court recently ruled the Voting Rights Act couldn’t be used to challenge the way the state had chosen to elect the five members of its public service commission (PSC), which oversees utilities. Under state law, each of the five members are elected by the entire state, a method that “unlawfully dilutes the votes of Black citizens under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act”, the US district judge Steven Grimberg ruled last year. A district system would better ensure that Black voters could elect the candidate of their choosing to the PSC.But the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit overturned that decision in November. The Voting Rights Act couldn’t be used to change the way the PSC was elected, a three-judge panel said, because the Georgia legislature had chosen to elect its commissioners that way. “Georgia chose this electoral format to protect critical policy interests and there is no evidence, or allegation, that race was a motivating factor in this decision,” the judge Elizabeth Branch, who was nominated by Trump for the bench, wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.The decision could have far-reaching consequences. It could be read to prohibit Voting Rights Act challenges in Georgia to the state assembly school boards or county commissions – bodies of government where civil rights litigators have long turned to the law to combat voting discrimination.TexasAnother threat to the Voting Rights Act is fast emerging from Texas. Earlier this year, a district judge struck down the city of Galveston’s four county commission districts. When Republicans redrew the districts in 2021, they got rid of the sole district in which Black and Latino voters were able to elect the candidate of their choice. Striking down the districts in the case, the US district judge Jeffrey Brown called the effort “stark and jarring”.A three-judge panel for the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit upheld that ruling. It noted that neither Black people nor Hispanic people constituted a majority on their own in the district at issue, but that precedent allowed them to be considered together for purposes of a Voting Rights Act claim.But then the panel did something unusual. It went on to say it believed that precedent was wrong. And in a highly unusual step, it urged the full court to review the case and overrule it. The full fifth circuit has since agreed to hear the case, and paused redrawing the Galveston district in December, a signal it is skeptical that the Voting Rights Act protects so-called “coalition districts”.Whether or not the Voting Rights Act applies in areas where no minority group makes up a majority, but a coalition of minorities votes cohesively as one, is a question that has not been definitively answered by the supreme court. A ruling saying that those areas are not protected under the Voting Rights Act would make it harder to challenge districts in diverse multi-racial areas.The issue is already playing out in litigation outside of Texas. In Georgia, a federal district judge ordered Republicans to redraw their congressional map to include an additional majority-Black congressional district in west Atlanta. Republicans did that, but they dismantled another district in which a coalition of minority voters formed a majority and had been electing the candidate of their choice. It’s a strategy that is betting courts will embrace the idea that coalition districts aren’t protected.If the supreme court applies its precedent on the Voting Rights Act consistently, it should uphold coalition districts, experts say.“Prohibiting these coalition claims amount to a kind of racial essentialism that the conservatives on the court have been railing against for a long time,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “It’s actually … weird to assert that Blacks and Latinos experience is just different. And different enough that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t care.”The emergence of all three attacks has created even more uncertainty in voting rights litigation. But while there’s plenty of reasons to be disturbed by the recent rulings, voting rights experts aren’t warning of a five-alarm fire just yet.They say there are reasons to be somewhat optimistic. First, there is a different section of federal law independent of the Voting Rights Act that gives private parties the ability to bring federal lawsuits to protect civil rights.Second, outside of the eighth circuit, no other court has said that a private right of action doesn’t exist. The ultra-conservative fifth circuit even affirmed that one existed earlier this year, and the panel rejected a request to reconsider in December.Beyond Gorsuch and Thomas, it’s also not clear that a majority on the supreme court will embrace the idea that no private right of action exists.While the eighth circuit ruled no private right of action exists, no other court has issued similar rulings. “It is important for us to kind of wait. This could be a big challenge. If so, we’re gonna meet it head on. It could be a blip,” Lang said.“The crazier claims and the crazier holdings and the crazier findings don’t speak for all of the judicial system. And they certainly haven’t found purchase with the supreme court,” Levitt said.And while the spate of recent cases represents a new level of threats against the Voting Rights Act, lawyers note that the law has long faced efforts to dismantle it and it has survived largely intact.“The challenges to the Voting Rights Act and efforts to dismantle it are going to exist as long as the voting rights act exist. Based on what the supreme court said this year, I expect the Voting Rights Act to exist for a while,” Lang said. “The fact that people are still coming at it with everything they’ve got I think is because it’s maintaining its power.” More

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      Georgia Republicans finalize district maps to comply with judge’s order

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      Republican state lawmakers in Georgia have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order, though Democrats and advocacy groups say the new maps create one majority-Black district at the expense of another diverse district.US district judge Steve Jones ordered Georgia lawmakers to redo their redistricted maps in October after a lawsuit claimed they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black people.He gave lawmakers until 8 December to redraw maps to create “an additional majority-Black district” in west metro Atlanta. He warned “the state cannot remedy the section 2 violations found herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans”.Georgia lawmakers did not appear to heed that instruction. They created the additional majority-Black district in west Atlanta, but dismantled another district where Black voters had been joining with other racial minorities to elect the candidate of their choosing. The dismantled district is now represented by Lucy McBath, a Democrat. The plan ensures that Republicans are able to maintain a 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.It’s not legally settled whether districts with a collection of voters from various minority groups are protected under the Voting Rights Act in the way Black voters are, though critics of the Republican plan say it doesn’t fix the problem of diluting the Black vote.State representative Sam Park, Georgia’s Democratic caucus whip, said on the statehouse floor today that “it’s self-evident that the Republican party’s primary goal is to maintain political power at all costs – even to the detriment of Georgia voters’ freedoms, our representative democracy and the rule of law”.The new maps will require court approval. With candidates finalizing plans to run in these new districts next year, there’s a time crunch on the case. A 20 December hearing is scheduled to go over the new maps.Georgia Republicans planned to appeal the case while also working in a special session to comply with Jones’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Georgia redistricting case comes as several other southern states contend with similar rulings to redo their maps after facing lawsuits over Black voting power. While redistricting happens every decade and maps are usually finalized in a year or two, some of these states have slowed the process to try to keep their preferred maps for the 2024 cycle. More

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      Wisconsin supreme court appears poised to strike down legislative maps and end Republican dominance

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      The Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to strike down the current maps for the state legislature after three hours of oral argument on Tuesday, a decision that could end more than a decade of Republican dominance and eliminate some of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States.The four liberal justices on the court all seemed ready to embrace an argument from challengers in the case, Clarke v Wisconsin elections commission, that the maps violate the state constitution because they include more than 70 districts. It was unclear, however, how the justices would handle the redrawing of a map and whether it would immediately order elections for the entire legislature next year in new districts. Wisconsin voters elect 99 assembly members every two years, but only about half of the 33-member state senate would normally be up for election next year.Much of Tuesday’s oral argument focused on how to interpret the definition of contiguity in Wisconsin’s constitution. The document mandates that assembly districts “be bounded by county, precinct, town or ward lines, to consist of contiguous territory and be in as compact form as practicable” It says state senate districts shall be comprised of “convenient contiguous territory”. Despite that requirement, 75 of the state’s 132 legislative districts – 54 in the state assembly and 21 in the senate – contain at least one detached piece.Taylor Meehan, an attorney for legislative Republicans, argued that districts had long been considered to be contiguous as long as they kept towns, counties and wards whole. In Wisconsin, localities have annexed disconnected parts of land that have resulted in strange shapes. “You can define contiguity as strictly or as loosely as you want,” she said.“That’s the tail leading the dog. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to look at the definition to determine what the law is,” said Jill Karofsky, a liberal elected in 2020, who asked some of the most pointed questions.Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, another liberal on the court, said history from the time Wisconsin’s constitution led her to believe that it was “unconvincing” that contiguous could “mean something other than physical contact”.Mark Gaber, a lawyer from the non-profit Campaign Legal Center who represented some of the challengers, also said that it was possible to draw physically contiguous districts that included the detached portions.“There’s not a single place in Wisconsin where it’s not possible to bound the districts with county, town and ward lines and to be 100% contiguous,” Gaber said.In 2011, Republicans drew districts for the state legislature that were so distorted in their favor that it made it impossible for them to lose their majorities. Last year, the state supreme court implemented new maps that made as little change as possible from the old ones when lawmakers and the state’s Democratic governor reached a redistricting impasse.The court’s liberal wing seemed unsettled on how they would proceed with a potential remedy to fixing the maps (state election officials have said they would need a new map in place no later than 15 March 2024 for use in next year’s elections). The justices asked all of the lawyers in the case on Tuesday to submit the names of non-partisan mapmakers who could serve as a special master to advise them in coming up with new maps. The request signaled the court was aware of the need to move quickly if they are going to strike down the map.Meehan, the attorney for legislative Republicans, and Richard Esenberg, an attorney with the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, both argued that any non-contiguous defects in the map could be addressed with tweaks to the defective areas and without redrawing the entire map. Redrawing the entire map, they suggested, would simply allow the challengers a back door to try to get districts that were more friendly to Democrats. Meehan said the arguments were a “wolf in sheep’s clothing designed to backdoor a political statewide remedy”.Karofsky seemed unpersuaded.“Over half of the assembly districts in this state have a constitutional violation,” she said. “Why don’t we start clean?”Sam Hirsch, a lawyer representing mathematicians and statisticians challenging the maps, urged the justices not to draw the map themselves, but instead give the legislature a chance to fix them. Getting involved in the actual districting, he said, was a “slippery slope that you don’t want to go down”.Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice, pressed the challengers to explain how they should think about partisan fairness if the maps get redrawn. He suggested that there was no way for a court to determine whether there was an acceptable number of Republican or Democratic districts.Gaber responded with a much simpler principle that he said should guide decision.Many of the questions from the conservative justices sharply pressed the challengers in the case why they had not raised their claims two years ago, when the supreme court initially decided the redistricting case. Justice Rebecca Bradley, one of the three conservatives on the seven-member court, repeatedly noted that two years ago, no party had raised a contiguity challenge and had stipulated that all the districts complied with the court’s definition of contiguity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe clear subtext was that the challengers were bringing the new claims now because liberals flipped control of the supreme court. The case was filed the day after Janet Protasiewicz formally took her seat on the supreme court in August, flipping control of the bench and giving liberals a 4-3 majority. Protasiewicz, who called the maps “rigged” during her campaign last year, a comment that has prompted Republicans in the legislature to threaten impeaching her.Bradley interrupted Mark Gaber, a lawyer for challengers, less than 10 seconds after he began his argument on Tuesday. “Where were your clients two years ago?” she asked. At one point Bradley bluntly said that the challengers were only bringing the case because the composition of the court had changed.The question set the tone for many of the questions from Bradley and the court’s conservative minority. They pressed Gaber and other attorneys seeking to get rid of the maps on why they did not raise their arguments two years ago when the court picked the current maps.“You are ultimately asking that this court unseat every assemblyman that was elected last year,” said Bradley, comparing the plaintiffs’ request to implement a new map before the 2024 elections – and additionally, to hold early special elections for representatives not up for election in 2024 – to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. She later asked Esenberg, one of the attorneys defending the map, whether he really expected to get a fair hearing before the court.Other challengers warned that a court decision wading into redistricting would invite future challenges and would signal there was no finality to rulings in redistricting cases. “Is there any end to this litigation?,” Annette Ziegler, a court’s chief justice and a conservative, asked at one point.“It is remarkable to see a matter, a particular case or controversy, fully litigated before this court, and then an attempt made to effectively reopen this a year later, after a change in the composition of the court,” said Esenberg. He described a situation where the state repeatedly and rapidly adjusts its legislative maps, hindering representatives’ ability to serve their constituents in office.“The constitution takes a back seat to what you just described?” countered Justice Rebecca Dallet.Several of Bradley’s questions were pointed. At one point, she yelled at Karofsky, a liberal on the court, for cutting her off during a question and asked: “Are you arguing the case?”The map for Wisconsin’s state assembly may be the most gerrymandered body in the US. It packs Democrats into as few districts as possible while splitting their influence elsewhere. Even though Wisconsin is one of the US’s most politically competitive states, Republicans have never held fewer than 60 seats in the state assembly since 2012. The gerrymandering in the assembly carries over to the state senate, where Wisconsin law requires districts to be comprised of three assembly districts.The court’s liberal justices seemed less interested in a second part of the challenge to the map, an argument the way the maps came to be implemented ran afoul of the state constitution. In 2021, the state supreme court took over the redistricting process after the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, vetoed a GOP-drawn plan. The court, which then had a conservative majority, invited a range of submissions for a new map, but announced it would pick a proposal that made as little change as possible to the existing maps. It initially chose a plan drawn by Evers, but that map was rejected by the US supreme court. The state supreme court then chose a different plan submitted by legislative Republicans. It was the same map Evers had vetoed in 2021.That decision, the challengers argue, allowed the legislature to essentially override Evers’s veto, the challengers say, violating the separation of powers between governmental branches. The state supreme court also exercised a constitutionally permissible role in choosing a map, they say, because the governor and lawmakers had reached an impasse. More

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      Court rules that only US government can sue to enforce Voting Rights Act

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      A federal appeals court shocked voting rights groups on Monday with a ruling that only the US government, not outside groups or citizens, could sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act’s provisions.The civil rights law, which outlaws racial discrimination as it relates to voting, has typically been enforced by lawsuits from these groups, not by the government itself. Now that the Republican-appointed eighth circuit court of appeals has made the ruling by 2-1, this “private right of action” to enforce Section 2 of the law is called into question.The ruling stemmed from a case brought by the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and Arkansas Public Policy Panel over new maps created during redistricting that the two groups allege diluted the voting power of Black voters in the state.While courts at all levels have allowed private claims seeking to enforce the voting rights law for decades, this is an “assumption that rests of flimsy footing”, the opinion written by Judge David Stras, who was appointed by Donald Trump, said. The ruling dissected the law itself, finding it did not include specific language that allows anyone aside from the attorney general to bring enforcement action.In a dissenting opinion, Chief Judge Lavenski Smith said that, though the courts may not have directly addressed the idea of private parties trying to enforce this law, it has repeatedly heard these cases, so it would follow that “existing precedent that permits citizens to seek a judicial remedy”.The ruling is not simply an esoteric question of law: it would dismantle the primary mechanism voting rights groups use to protect against racial discrimination in voting, often in the form of lawsuits challenging electoral maps.Voting rights groups expect the ruling will be appealed to the US supreme court. The eighth circuit ruling applies to the states the circuit court covers: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.Wendy Weiser, the vice-president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the decision “radical” and wrote on X that it was “deeply wrong, and it goes against decades of precedent and practice”. More

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      Louisiana must draw new congressional map by mid-January for 2024 elections

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      The Louisiana state legislature has until the middle of January to enact a new congressional map after a federal court ruled that the state’s current map illegally disfranchises Black voters.A conservative federal appeals court in New Orleans issued the deadline on Friday. According to the order, if the state legislature doesn’t pass a new map by the deadline, then a lower district court should conduct a trial and develop a plan for the 2024 elections.Whether the outgoing Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, will call a special session to redraw the political boundaries or whether his elected Republican successor, Jeff Landry – who will be inaugurated on 8 January – will have enough time to call a special redistricting session and meet the court’s deadline has yet to be determined.Black voters in Louisiana represent about one-third of the state’s population, but currently represent a majority in just one out of six congressional districts in the state.Republicans have argued the current map is fair, with Democrats arguing the districts discriminate against Black voters in the state.A lower court in June 2022 struck down Louisiana’s current congressional map. The court ruled that the map violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered a new map to be drawn that includes a second congressional district with a majority of Black voters.The ruling was appealed to the US fifth circuit court of appeal. Black voters in Louisiana pushed for an emergency appeal to expedite the new map drawing before the 2024 election year, though that was rejected in October.A special session of the Louisiana legislature now has until 15 January to decide on a new congressional map. Edwards has yet to call that session, though he has said he plans to do so.“As I have said all along, Louisiana can and should have a congressional map that represents our voting population, which is one-third Black,” Edwards said in a statement on the recent ruling. “This is about simple math, basic fairness, and the rule of law.“With the fifth circuit’s action today, I remain confident that we will have a fair map with two majority Black districts before the congressional elections next year.”US House representative Troy Carter of New Orleans, Louisiana’s sole Black and Democratic member of Congress, said he “sincerely” hopes the state’s legislature will draw a new map with a second majority-Black district. Carter posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, to urge lawmakers to “do the right thing” and said “there is no need to wait for a court to force compliance with clear law”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEdwards leaves office on 8 January, when his elected Republican successor, Jeff Landry, will be inaugurated. If it’s left to Landry to call a special session after his inauguration, the timing will be tricky.The session couldn’t start until seven days after the proclamation is issued, meaning the earliest lawmakers could return to Louisiana’s state house in Baton Rouge is the 15 January deadline.Landry did not immediately comment on Friday. The appellate court’s order does say the district court retains the discretion to grant “limited additional time” if requested.If the legislature refuses to draw a new map, a trial will be held in the district court. Plaintiffs in the case could object to the plan and new map, and the court will determine whether it is compliant under the Voting Rights Act.“The court is to conclude all necessary proceedings in sufficient time to allow at least initial review by this court and for the result to be used for the 2024 Louisiana congressional elections,” the fifth circuit’s court order said. More

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      Virginia white voters’ mail-in ballots face fewer challenges, Democrats say

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      Virginia Democrats are concerned that non-white voters in the state are getting their mail-in ballots flagged for possible rejection at much higher rates than their white counterparts ahead of a closely watched election day on Tuesday.Virginia, like all states, requires voters to fill out certain information on the envelope in which they return their ballot. In Virginia that includes their name, address, birth year and last four digits of their social security number. If any of that information is missing, voters have until 13 November to provide it. If they don’t provide it by the deadline, the ballot is rejected.An internal analysis by the Democratic Party of Virginia, shared with the Guardian, found election officials have flagged 6,216 mail-in ballots for possible rejection as of Friday – 2.89% of the total mail-in ballots cast. Voters have fixed issues with more than half of those ballots, the party said, so there are 2,783 ballots that could be rejected.Black voters were much more likely than white voters to have their ballots flagged for potential rejection, the party’s analysis showed. Statewide, 4.82% of ballots submitted by Black voters have been flagged for rejection as of Friday, compared with 2.79% for white voters, the party’s analysis showed.“This is unacceptable, and raises the stakes for election officials to get this right. Every Virginian has a constitutional right to vote and have that ballot counted. That means taking the ballot cure process seriously,” Aaron Mukerjee, who is leading the state party’s voter protection efforts said in a statement.The Virginia department of elections did not return a request for comment.Even if the majority of voters are able to cure their ballots, it’s still alarming to see racial disparities in the ballots being flagged, Mukerjee said.“This is just an additional burden, especially for voters of color, who are now having to go through a multi-stage process in order to have their vote counted with no discernible benefit to the security of elections,” he said in an interview.In some localities, the disparity was clear, according to the Democratic party’s analysis. In Richmond, the state capital, more than 11% of ballots returned by Black voters were flagged for possible rejection, compared with about 5.5% for white voters. In Henrico county, more than 6.5% of ballots returned by Black voters were flagged for rejection, compared with about 3% for white voters.And even after significant numbers of voters have cured their ballots in both counties, the potential rejection rate for Black voters remained more than twice as high as their white counterparts.Under state law, local election officials are required to contact voters who turned in mail-in ballots by Friday and inform them that they need to cure their ballot. Mukerjee said the party was concerned because it was hearing from voters who had not received notice from local election offices.While the number of ballots rejected is usually a tiny fraction of the total votes cast, the uncounted votes make a difference in state legislative races, which can be decided by razor-thin margins. In 2018, a house of delegates race resulted in a tie and was determined by a drawing from a hat. The Republican candidate won the contest, giving the party control of the house of delegates.The cure period past election day, something many states allow, also could delay final election results in close races as candidates and parties race to track down those whose ballots have been flagged to try and get them to cure any problems.Virginia recently changed its rules around mail-in voting, making it significantly easier to vote that way. Until this year, Virginia voters had to get a witness to sign their mail-in ballot. That requirement was eliminated on 1 July and replaced with a requirement that voters provide their year of birth and the last four digits of their social security number. At least one local registrar sent out incorrect and outdated voting instructions.It’s not clear what is causing the disparity. Mukerjee said about 40% of the rejections it had studied were because of issues with providing the last four digits of a social security number or birth year.Virginia’s elections next week will determine which party controls the state legislature and could give Governor Glenn Youngkin and state Republicans power to advance new restrictions on abortion among other GOP priorities.Last week, Virginia election officials said they had erroneously removed nearly 3,400 eligible people from the voter rolls, more than 10 times the number they had initially disclosed. Officials have said anyone wrongly removed will be restored to the rolls, though there are ongoing questions about how the error occurred and concerns about lingering confusion.Virginia reported rejecting 2,649 ballots in 2022 – less than 1% of those returned – and said more than 4,300 people had successfully fixed an issue with their ballot. More

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      What we learned from our Florida voting rights investigation

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      Since taking office in 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republicans who control the Florida legislature have led one of the most aggressive efforts to restrict voting – particularly in Black communities – in the United States.It’s an attack that has unfolded on many fronts. The state has prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to vote. DeSantis’s administration has levied significant fines against voter registration groups, in some cases for minor errors. Republicans have rewritten Florida’s election laws to create new voting barriers, weakened Black political power in the state, and used a new state agency to intimidate voters.The Guardian has been investigating Ron DeSantis’s attack on voting rights. Here are a few of the most consequential actions DeSantis, who is running for president, has taken to restrict voting.1He created an agency to crack down on voter fraud with troublesome resultsVoter fraud is exceedingly rare, both in Florida and across the United States. But in 2022, DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature created a new agency, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, to crack down on it. The agency was one of the first of its kind in the country. DeSantis initially proposed funding it with $6m and filling it with 52 staffers. The proposal prompted outrage, with some noting it would have more manpower than some local law enforcement agencies have to investigate murder. The legislature eventually funded it with $1.1m in 2022 for 15 positions and increased the budget to $1.4m this year. Voting rights advocates saw the move as a thinly veiled effort to intimidate people into not voting.2He’s prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to voteIn August 2022, DeSantis held a press conference flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers announcing he was arresting 20 people and charging them with illegally registering and voting. They were the first charges filed under the Office of Election Crimes and Security and each charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fourteen of those charged were Black, and at least two of the men were arrested by armed officers.It quickly emerged that all of those charged were confused about whether they could vote, partly because of a new state law. All 20 had prior criminal convictions that made them ineligible to vote, but said they had not been told that. All of them had received voter registration cards in the mail. Voting advocates said the prosecutions were thinly veiled efforts to discourage people with felony convictions from trying to vote after Florida changed the rules around their eligibility with bipartisan support.Judges have dismissed several of the cases so far, noting that statewide prosecutors exceeded their jurisdiction in bringing them. The state is appealing those dismissals.3He’s intimidated groups trying to register votersSince 2021, DeSantis and the Florida legislature have consistently made it harder for third-party groups to try to register voters in Florida. Voters of color are about five times more likely to register with such groups in the state.The legislature has changed the law so that groups now have to turn in forms in the county where the voter lives (previously they could return them anywhere in the state). It imposed steep fines for errors: $500 for each form that was turned in to the wrong place. The state has raised the maximum a group could be fined from $1,000 to $250,000.As of mid-July, at least 26 groups had racked up more than $100,000 in fines for registration errors. In some cases, the voter lived at the county border, just hundreds of feet away from the county line, and had listed the wrong address on their own registration form.4He’s directly weakened the influence of Black votersWhen it came time to redraw Florida’s congressional districts in 2022, Republicans in the legislature proposed a map that gave them a hold on 18 of the state’s 28 congressional seats. One of the districts they left in Democratic hands was a north Florida district that stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee. The district was 46% Black and the only one represented by a Democrat in that part of the state.DeSantis went out of his way to dismantle it. He objected to the legislature’s plan, saying he believed the district unconstitutionally benefited Black voters. When the legislature drew an alternative one that kept Jacksonville in one district and split up the rest, DeSantis objected to that too. Instead, he drew a map that chopped up the district into four where Republicans were heavily favored. Indeed, they won all four districts last fall.In a court case DeSantis conceded his map diminished the power of Black voters in northern Florida, but is challenging the state measure that outlaws that kind of reduction as unconstitutional. In September, a Leon county judge sided with the challengers in the case and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts. The state is appealing to the Florida supreme court, which is likely to ultimately decide the case. More