The GOP’s gerrymandering scheme backfires

The GOP’s gerrymandering scheme backfires

Jennifer Rubin — Read time: 3 minutes

Columnist |

Trying to tinker with who votes is a risky business. For example, reduced turnout does not automatically favor Republicans; likewise, high turnout, as we saw in the Virginia gubernatorial race in November, does not necessarily benefit Democrats. So we can enjoy the political karma when Republican schemes to limit the vote wind up helping the other side, as has been the case with gerrymandering.

Although we warned at the time the 2020 Census results were announced that it was impossible to assess which party would benefit from redistricting, the near-unanimous conventional wisdom was that the GOP would prove the bigger winner. That confidence now seems misplaced.

Democrats have tried for years, most recently in the For the People legislation and then in the slimmed-down Freedom to Vote Act, to curtail gerrymandering, which often results in diminished voting power for key Democratic constituents such as Black people and Latinos. Republicans, relying on their advantage in state legislatures, have strenuously opposed any redistricting reform that would take away or diminish lawmakers’ power to redraw voting maps. It turns out Republicans may have gotten the worst of both worlds — pro-Democratic gerrymandered maps in some states plus independent commissions and court-enforced referenda that block overly generous Republican-tilting maps in others.

“The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday upended Republican efforts to lock in political dominance in the state, saying that congressional and state legislative maps were partisan gerrymanders that violated the State Constitution,” the New York Times reports. “The ruling requires the Republican-controlled legislature not only to submit new maps to the court, but to offer a range of statistical analyses to show ‘a significant likelihood that the districting plan will give the voters of all political parties substantially equal opportunity to translate votes into seats’ in elections.”

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counterpointNew York’s Democratic gerrymander is egregious. The courts must intervene.

This outcome was similar to a recent ruling in Ohio that struck down a map favoring Republicans that did not comply with a fair redistricting referendum and an Alabama court decision that threw out a Republican-favored map that sought to depress Black people’s voting power. “The legal decisions have been a boon for Democrats, who started the latest redistricting cycle at a significant disadvantage,” says the Times. “The court decisions in North Carolina, Ohio and Alabama all forced Republicans back to the drawing table and are likely to result in either more competitive seats or opportunities for Democrats in the midterm election.”

Meanwhile, the New York legislature came up with a map heavily favoring Democrats, giving them a gain of three seats in a state that is losing a seat in Congress. David Wasserman of Cook Political Report tweeted: “There’s little doubt that if the NY reform’s anti-gerrymandering language were enforced as the OH reform’s language has been, NY’s Dem gerrymander would be struck down too.”

The Cook Political Report now finds that Democrats are “on track to net two to three seats from new maps alone — a significant shift. … So far, Democrats have caught most of the ‘breaks.’” While D.C. Republicans hold on to gerrymandering, Democrats out in the states have pushed for commissions that have resulted in “favorable lines … in California and New Jersey, and to a lesser extent Michigan.” To top it off: “Republicans in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri (thus far) and Texas passed on destroying Democratic incumbents, instead focusing on entrenching their own members. And, so far Democrats have had more success challenging GOP maps in court than vice versa.”

In short, Republicans’ aversion to federal redistricting reform might have left them in an arguably worse position. They wound up fueling state reform efforts; letting New York and Illinois Democratic-controlled legislatures tilt a total of four seats their way; and leaving Democratic litigators free rein to litigate for better maps elsewhere.

Democrats should take note. Republicans’ antidemocratic tactics and obstruction can backfire. And both legislative reform and litigation opportunities abound out in the states. Put differently, Republicans do not come out ahead simply by blocking federal voting rights reform.