In 2018, there were several cases that were presented to courts for partisan gerrymandering after the 2018 elections. Jane C. Timm is a political reporter for NBC News. Wang: Michigan's 14th District jams together the African-American-dominated cities of Pontiac and Detroit, 31 miles apart. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs in Arizona State Legislature claimed that the word “Legislature” must be read narrowly, to include only “the representative body which makes the laws of the people.” Under this theory, Arizona’s redistricting commission is invalid because it bypasses the state’s representative body and gives someone else the power to draw congressional districts. Country regions of the state have strong Republican tendencies, while there are many large city areas which vote with the Democrats, sometimes suspiciously. The result was an example of cracking: A&T is divided between two districts that are reliably Republican, the 6th held by Mark Walker and the 13th represented by Ted Budd. "We're going to have to fight like hell to keep it — this is as serious as a heart attack.". The city is in the far-right of the district.

Their rationales have been slightly edited to improve clarity and reduce repetition. ", "We can't just assume that the success we've enjoyed in the states is going to be there," RSLC President Austin Chambers said, adding that he is concerned Republicans are more focused on re-electing President Donald Trump than the fight for statehouses that's so crucial to redistricting. This was opposed, so the government created two majority-black districts. Download Unite America's free report analyzing the impact of four key political reforms. In Shaw v. Reno, North Carolina planned to redraw their district lines to create one majority-black district. Still, they declined to act to rein in this offense — or a statewide offense in North Carolina.

The debate didn’t help. Disagree with their list? The Republican and Democratic parties worked together to create the district lines to ensure that the current parties holding office were safe. Nearly a decade ago, Republicans swept into office in state legislatures and in the House of Representatives, and went about remaking American politics — despite a Democrat in the White House. Gerrymandering, in U.S. politics, the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups (racial gerrymandering). Maybe it looks like a duck or a snake, or a pair of earmuffs. Lamar: Federal courts held that the long, snake-like 12th District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because it packed too many black voters and A&T students into one district.

"You'll see kind of more blatant partisanship," he told NBC News. With such a sprawl, it can be difficult for some communities to access their House member. Likewise, sometimes districts are drawn to ensure a favored candidate can successfully run for office. This argument, however, has not fared well, even before some of the Supreme Court of the United States’ most conservative members. Of these six states, Florida and Pennsylvania’s congressional gerrymanders were weakened — or rolled back entirely — by courts. When he retired last year, the voters' successor of choice was Jesus "Chuey" Garcia. What made you want to look up gerrymander?

And five of the districts (the 10th, 17th, 21st, 25th and 31st) are now represented by Republicans — meaning Austin's own liberal veteran, Lloyd Doggett of the 35th District, is the only Democrat representing the liberal city. Gerrymandered congressional districts often include unusual border lines that reach out to specific cities and towns to gain votes for a party. Send us feedback. These districts include sparsely-populated country areas and higher-density regions of Detroit so they come out Democrat as a whole. Rather than preserving A&T as an obviously distinct unit in the redistricting process, the new map split the university down the middle, which effectively dilutes the significant voting power of the university's 10,000 students. Comprising portions of Cuyahoga, Erie, Lorain, Lucas and Ottawa counties and bordering Michigan and Canada via Lake Erie, the narrow district is almost laughable — though it is probably the best place to visit in Ohio because of the beaches and Cedar Point amusement park. The result still isn't exactly a beauty — two separate shapes held together by a thin connection. A decade ago, Republicans gave themselves seemingly indestructible majorities through gerrymandering.

This Republican-dominated district is designed to include only Republican-voting country areas. Why the very richest Americans are refusing to take sides in the presidential race. "I'm bound and determined to make sure that candidates, activists and voters understand the stakes of the redistricting battle and the long-term consequences for our democracy," Holder said in a statement. Looming over all of this is the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a challenge to an Arizona constitutional amendment that took the power to draw legislative districts away from the state legislature, and gave it to an independent commission. The question is whether Roberts actually intends to remain neutral. Politics is full of all different types of moves and manipulation to win.

Get our newsletter in your inbox twice a week. That gives Evers the power to veto legislation seeking to maintain the GOP’s gerrymanders in the next redistricting cycle (although there are whispers that Wisconsin Republicans are looking for a way to bypass Evers and enact new maps without his signature). They declined to put a dollar number on the effort, but have said they are "planning multimillion-dollar investments in key states. America's decennial congressional redistricting process — when roughly even-sized House districts are drawn, usually by state politicians — has become one of the most important battles in politics, as the parties seek to gain advantage by drawing sometimes crazy looking maps. And in Virginia, Democrats now dominate the state’s congressional delegation after the party’s strong performance in the 2018 midterms. Oleson: Maryland is the shamefaced owner of the single worst gerrymander in the nation. Its convoluted shape has packed in as many Democratic voters as possible, and they're currently represented by Brenda Lawrence. With a name like gerrymandering, you have to wonder a bit where the term came from. Montana (Legislative districts only) New Jersey. In this case, the district lines were redrawn to create districts where the populations were equal. There are current cases that are being brought to the Supreme Court. There are quite a few unusually-drawn lines near Dallas, but this one is clearly the worst of them all. The result was an extremely packed majority-minority district that reaches New Orleans and looks almost surrounded by a very oddly shaped and disfigured district. This means that the party that controls the state government during this redistricting process potentially has the power to lock itself into power through gerrymandering. News. District 13, located in northeastern Philadelphia, is obviously gerrymandered when viewed on the Philadelphia map. This case was noteworthy, because it looked at whether gerrymandering could be considered legal. It combines the predominantly white neighborhoods of south Baton Rouge with its suburbs and some coastal parishes. The Court will not end partisan gerrymandering, but it also appears reluctant to revive creative legal theories that would return the power to draw legislative maps to partisan lawmakers. Instead the Austin area is chopped up and dispersed among six different districts. Email correspondence among GOP operatives in 2011, obtained by Michigan news outlets, included one summarizing the party's control over the House mapmaking: "In a glorious way that makes it easier to cram ALL of the Dem garbage in Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland and Macomb counties into only four districts," the 14th among them. However, the second district was very irregular, leading to a lawsuit. While the district still includes Raleigh and Chapel Hill, it formerly included Durham — placing the Duke and North Carolina campuses in one district. Millions rely on Vox’s explainers to understand an increasingly chaotic world. Wang: Now held by Democrat David Trone, the 6th was drawn by Democrats to pack as many Republican voters as possible into a single meandering district. When you see a district map that has been packed, the boundaries are long and convoluted like a snake. The gerrymandering wars are heading South. Gerrymandering is the illegal act of drawing electoral district lines in such a way so as to give the gerrymandering party more votes in an election. The 3rd District mangles the central part of the state as it snakes its way northeast from Annapolis, then west, again eastward, and one more time northwest(ish) until it's close to the top of the state — passing in and out (and sometimes back in again) of four counties and Baltimore City. Although Republicans often get blamed for gerrymandering, it is usually done by the Democratic Party. North Carolina judges struck down state legislative maps, 17 of the state’s 27 congressional districts, redrawn, relying on a new constitutional amendment that prohibits districts drawn “with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.”, violates the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, invalidating 11 of Virginia’s state house districts, complicated, multi-stage redistricting process, Congress managed to agree on at least one thing: Avoiding a government shutdown, The debate’s segment on race was doomed before it even began. One of the districts is Democrat, the other Republican. The group and its affiliates recently announced they had raised $52 million since 2017. Indeed, a decision reading the word “legislature” narrowly could have sweeping implications for the redistricting wars. "Gerrymander" is one of those words that really takes the cake as far as political jargon goes. Pennsylvania gets the worst of gerrymandering because it is a state with many contrasts. However, since race was used as a factor in the redistricting, and due to the fact that they looked at the state as a whole rather than district by district, the Supreme Court ruled that it was racial gerrymandering. At the League of Women Voters, we saw this when we sought to arrange an election forum in a district with a border 225 miles long; no one place was easily accessible to all the voters in the district. In Maryland, for example, the Democratic government enacted a gerrymander that, in the words of then-Gov. It’s a big test for Eric Holder.".

Now, however, many of these gerrymanders lie in shambles. If they wanted to gerrymander next year, they'll likely have the power. John Bisognano, executive director of Holder's redistricting group, said Holder has spoken out against Democrats seeking to rig the system and the former AG also has expressed support for nonpartisan redistricting, a concept that's grown in popularity as states seek to opt out of the gerrymandering wars. Levers for a better democracy. To be clear, Republicans still benefit from many of the gerrymandered maps they drew nearly a decade ago. Northern Ohio gets haywire, particularly in the Cleveland area. Gerrymandering! The Supreme Court has declined to outlaw partisan gerrymandering — saying only states can police that — but it also removed a key safeguard against the practice by gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Elbridge gerry + salamander; from the shape of an election district formed during Gerry's governorship of Massachusetts, For When 'Lowdown Crook' Isn't Specific Enough.

District 11 may look on the map like it is an example of gerrymandering, but it is actually located along a mountain range. This district is long and narrow so it can include Jacksonville, a predominantly Democrat city.

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