New U.S. Census Data to Set Off Bruising Gerrymandering Battle

[Celerity]

Let the Gerrymandering (and the Legal Battles) Begin

The Census Bureau will release data on Thursday, kicking off a huge fight over political redistricting, with control of Congress potentially hanging in the balance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/us/politics/census-redistricting-data-gerrymandering.html



The Census Bureau will release long-awaited district-level results on Thursday, setting off what is expected to be the most bruising, litigious and consequential redistricting battle in a generation, with control of Congress hanging in the balance and gerrymandering threatening to lock in quasi-permanent majorities in state legislatures across the country. With Democrats clinging to a slim margin in the House of Representatives, control of the chamber in 2022 could be decided through congressional redistricting alone: Republican-leaning states like Texas and Florida are adding new seats through reapportionment, and G.O.P.-dominated state legislatures will steer much more of the redistricting process, allowing them to draw more maps than Democrats.

In a matter of days — if history is any guide — as soon as state officials can crunch census data files into their more modern formats, an intense process of mapmaking, political contention, legal wrangling, well-financed opinion-shaping and ornery public feedback will unfold in statehouses, courthouses, on the air and even on the streets in regions of special contention. The redistricting fight arrives amid one of the most protracted assaults on voting access since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, an effort that has made the right to vote among the most divisive issues in American politics. And redistricting will take place this fall without critical guardrails that the Voting Rights Act had erected: a process known as preclearance that ensured oversight of states with a history of discrimination. The Supreme Court effectively neutered that provision in a 2013 ruling, meaning that it could take lawsuits — and years — to force the redrawing of districts that dilute the voting power of minority communities.

The looming nationwide struggle over congressional and state legislative maps will also occur on an extraordinarily accelerated timeline. The necessary census data is arriving months later than normal because of pandemic-related delays, leaving state legislatures, independent commissions and others responsible for drawing new maps to work extremely quickly to establish new districts before primary contests begin next year. The compressed schedule has already led to some pre-emptive lawsuits, mostly filed by Democrats, even before any maps were drawn. The two parties and allied outside groups have set aside tens of millions of dollars to pay for legal challenges. “For both parties, redistricting is like an amped-up war this cycle,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Whatever it takes, people will do.”

Despite the pressure to hurry, it could be September before mapmakers are able to give much indication of how new districts are shaping up, further ratcheting up the pressure on states with constitutional mandates to finish redistricting this calendar year. In the decade since the last round of map-drawing, two Supreme Court decisions have altered the landscape for Democrats, voting-rights groups and civil rights leaders in pushing back against what they deem egregious gerrymandering. In 2019, the high court ruled that gerrymandering for partisan gain was beyond the reach of federal courts, leaving such claims to be argued at the state level. Gerrymandering to dilute minority voting power is still illegal under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but experts worry that now it could be possible to disguise a racial gerrymander as a partisan one. More concerning for voting rights groups was the 2013 ruling’s removal of the preclearance requirement in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. While preclearance scarcely prevented all gerrymandering, experts argue that it created a deterrent and that its absence this year opens the door to abuse.

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[secondwind]

1. This frightens me to pieces....