Associated Press: South emerges as flashpoint of brewing redistricting battle

The partisan showdown over redistricting has hardly begun, but already both sides agree on one thing: It largely comes down to the South.

The states from North Carolina to Texas are set to be premier battlegrounds for the once-a-decade fight over redrawing political boundaries. That’s thanks to a population boom, mostly one-party rule and a new legal landscape that removes federal oversight and delays civil rights challenges.

It’s a collision of factors likely to tilt the scales in the GOP’s favor with dramatic impact: Experts note the new maps in the South alone could knock Democrats out of power in the U.S. House next year — and perhaps well beyond. …

Control in the South has a history of leading to rigging the democratic process — from voting rules to district maps — to disempower Black voters. In Georgia, the state’s GOP-controlled legislature is responding to Democrats’ recent surge and former President Donald Trump’s false claim of mass voter fraud with a raft of proposals that would make it harder to vote — including one to end Sunday early voting, popular among Black churchgoers.

Such restrictions wouldn’t have been possible eight years ago, when the Justice Department was required to approve any changes ahead of time in states with a history of voting rights violations. But, in 2013, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court struck down federal requirements that Georgia and eight other states “preclear” voting and redistricting changes. It ruled that the federal formula based on the states’ previous violations was outdated. …

Redistricting on the basis of race remains illegal under the Voting Rights Act. But proving a violation can take years in court, allowing multiple elections to go forward with maps that may later be found illegal. For example, in North Carolina — the Republican legislature alone has redistricting power, without input from the state’s Democratic governor — the legislature drew maps in 2010 that were eventually found to be racially gerrymandered. But those maps remained in place for two House elections before being redrawn to cost the GOP two seats.

“It means a state can engage in midnight gerrymandering and essentially evade court review, run elections with those gerrymandered maps and get away with it until the next election,” said Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s redistricting director.