Dems eye redistricting redos to regain House majority

[RandySF]

Democrats are still smarting from the 2022 redistricting process, which contributed to the narrow loss of their House majority. To win it back, they’re angling for a redo in several states.

The Supreme Court handed them a major victory last week when it struck down Alabama’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander — a ruling that could ultimately cost Republicans a handful of seats across the South. Democrats are now asking new liberal court majorities in New York and Wisconsin to reconsider their 2022 decisions to implement GOP-friendly congressional maps.

They’re adopting a work-the-refs strategy that Republicans have deployed in the past; Democrats previously excoriated GOP operatives for plans to seek new maps in North Carolina and Ohio after a shift in the balance of power in the high courts of both states.

Democrats often employ high-minded rhetoric about democracy in these cases, but they are keenly aware that even a small advantage could determine who controls the chamber in 2025. Republicans’ four-seat majority in the House means both sides are prepared to exhaust every option.

“It’s absolutely corrupt and pathetic,” said Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) of Democrats’ New York effort. “They may have changed the makeup of the court in order to affect an outcome. I hope that’s not the case.”




https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/16/dems-redistricting-regain-house-majority-00101997

[bucolic_frolic]

1. George Santos is vulnerable

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Where Texas redistricting lawsuits stand after U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Alabama case

Democrats could be able to pick up three to seven seats in Texas. However, assholes like state Senator Joan Huffman are hiding facts and playing discovery games that may delay the trial. I know one of the attorneys on the NAACP team and I know Chad Dunn who is the Texas Democratic Party outside counsel. This is going to be a nasty fight

Link to tweet

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/13/texas-redistricting-lawsuits/

Breaking from a recent pattern of weakening protections for voters of color, the U.S. Supreme Court last week left intact a key portion of the federal Voting Rights Act. The decision’s importance in ongoing litigation over the political maps Texas drew in 2021 will largely be felt in what didn’t happen.....

The Texas redistricting case is actually a set of consolidated lawsuits brought by individual Texans, organizations that represent Texans of color, the Texas NAACP and the U.S. Department of Justice, among others, who claim the Texas Legislature discriminated against voters of color in its 2021 map drawing.

The updated maps were meant to reflect the explosive growth captured in the 2020 census, almost all of it driven by Texans of color. But the Republican-drawn maps largely serve to bolster the party’s dominance, giving white voters even greater control of political districts throughout the state.....

The federal three-judge panel considering the case canceled a September 2022 trial a month before it was set to begin after disputes over discovery left both the state and the various plaintiff groups questioning whether they’d have enough time to prepare to make their cases in a federal courtroom in El Paso.

At issue are subpoenas and motions to compel certain documents from legislators and third parties. The state and the plaintiffs are also quarreling over lawmakers’ assertions during depositions of what’s known as legislative privilege, which allows legislators to keep secret their communications on policy along with their “thoughts and mental impressions.”....

The Senate’s chief map-drawer, Joan Huffman, a Republican from Houston, also said throughout the redistricting process that the maps were drawn “race blind” but were presented to legal counsel who cleared them as compliant with federal law meant to protect voters of color from discrimination. Huffman repeatedly declined to disclose how they reached that conclusion, though.

Huffman is a truly racist nasty piece of work.

[gratuitous]

3. SOP for the GOP

They lose court battle after court battle on their gerrymandered districts. Then they run out the clock, and there's no choice but to hold the election under the illegal lines that were put in place. Dang if Republicans don't win a majority, and the legislature is tasked again with drawing a legal map, but then they don't and it goes to court, and they lose the legal battle, then they don't get a legal map drawn in time, and so they hold the election under the illegal lines, because that's all they have, and wouldn't you know it, but Republicans come out of the election with a majority again.

But the lede from the Politico article was hilarious: "Democrats are still smarting from the 2022 redistricting process, which contributed to the narrow loss of their House majority." Weren't Democrats supposed to get totally munched in the 2022 off-year election? They were going to lose the House by a couple dozen seats at least, and the Senate would be in Republican hands again. The narrative now is that Democrats are smarting over their narrow loss of the House in 2022. I'm not much of one for moral victories, but the 2022 results were really, really good for Democrats, and if a few states can be forced to draw fair maps (Texas, Ohio, North Carolina), the Republicans could be out of power for decades.