Cook Political: Democrats LEAD in Redistricting

[brooklynite]

Link to tweet

[blm]

1. GOP is EXPECTED to act ruthlessly. No one expects

Dems to counter those tactics

[Nevilledog]

2. GOP basically maxed out gerrymandering in 2010. There's just not a lot of room for expansion.

I realize they have some wiggle room to fuck us over, but it's nothing like 10 years ago.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Pretty much this...nt

[ibegurpard]

12. Pretty much

But they still have some room as Tennessee just proved by slicing the Nashville area into 3 different congressional districts when it was previously one. That's also why the Utah congressional delegation will be 4 R instead of 3 R and 1 D. They carved Salt Lake County 4 ways and threw it in with the rest of DEEPLY Republican Utah.

[wryter2000]

4. Alabama?

How did it happen there?

[brooklynite]

5. "How A Court Ruling In Alabama Could Boost Black Political Power Throughout The South"

FiveThirtyEight

On Jan. 24, Alabama became the second state (after Ohio) to have its new congressional map struck down in court. But while Ohio’s map was thrown out by the state Supreme Court for violating the state constitution, Alabama’s was overturned by three federal judges who determined the map short-changed Black voters of representation in Congress. That’s a significant difference because it will require the Supreme Court to weigh in, potentially reshaping federal law in the process. As a result, the ruling could reverberate far beyond Alabama. It could open the door for increased nonwhite representation in other states, too — if it holds up on appeal.

As a refresher, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering was a political question that federal courts should not adjudicate. However, they can still hear cases relating to racial gerrymandering — i.e., whether a map discriminates against voters of a certain race. Alabama poses just such a question. Back in November 2021, Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map that created six majority-white districts and just one majority-Black district. Civil-rights advocates sued, arguing that Black voters in the state were entitled to a second district under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

Under Section 2 of the VRA, it’s illegal to deny members of a racial minority equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. This has been widely interpreted to mean that, when possible,1 states must draw congressional districts where nonwhite voters are the dominant voting bloc, so as to reasonably ensure they can elect their preferred candidate.

And as maps proposed by the plaintiffs demonstrated, it is readily possible to draw two predominantly Black congressional districts in Alabama. For example, in the plaintiffs’ illustrative plan A, the 2nd District’s voting-age population (VAP) is 50.0 percent Black, and the 7th District’s VAP is 50.3 percent Black.

"Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered"

[wryter2000]

14. Thanks

[MaryMagdaline]

6. Are Repugs refusing to register with census?

Sounds like some paranoid stuff they might do so no one would know where their guns are.

[Lochloosa]

7. DeathSentence has not finished in Florida.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/politics/florida-redistricting-desantis/index.html

Dave Wasserman, an editor of The Cook Political Report and a redistricting guru, called DeSantis' proposal on Twitter "the most brutal gerrymander proposed by a Florida (Republican) yet."

[WHITT]

8. And And And

The PA Supreme Court grabs the redistricting map from a lower court, rejecting the Repub map and WILL DO IT'S OWN MAP.

All the the Repubs are like, but, But, BUT!

[budkin]

9. It would be so much better if there were NO gerrymandering...

But we can't let them take advantage while we try to play fair. We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot.

[MoonRiver]

15. This!

We'll play fair when the "rules" are fair.

[Ace Rothstein]

10. If only we could fix WI.

State legislature there has completely broken the distracting at the state and national levels.

[Greybnk48]

16. It's awful in WI. As bad or worse than NY was. n/t

[ibegurpard]

11. The conventional wisdom narrative that took hold

On redistricting was typically lazy on the part of the breathless political media. It was all about which states were gaining representation with little attention being paid to how lines would shake out in states that were LOSING it. And I haven't seen much analysis yet as to how the deliberate undercutting of the Census may have led to states like Texas and Arizona getting fewer seats than forecast.

[wellst0nev0ter]

13. Caveat

Link to tweet