New York Times: The Election Is Over. The Fight Over Voting Rules and Gerrymanders Isn’t.
New York Times: The Election Is Over. The Fight Over Voting Rules and Gerrymanders Isn’t.
WASHINGTON — With Raphael Warnock’s victory in the Georgia Senate race on Tuesday, the major midterm elections are over.
But the battles over voting rules, restrictions and political boundaries that will help determine who wins the next ones barely paused for ballot-counting before resuming in force.
Indeed, the day after Mr. Warnock’s election, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a potentially seismic case brought by Republicans in North Carolina that could give state legislatures significantly expanded power over election laws — and virtually unlimited authority to draw gerrymandered maps.
The landscape is familiar. Democrats who took control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota are preparing legislation to broaden voting access, including measures in Michigan that would mandate absentee ballot drop boxes.
Republicans, who control a majority of legislatures across the country, are proposing new restrictive legislation they say would combat election fraud, though it remains exceedingly rare. And though both parties have benefited from gerrymanders, Republicans are far more likely to make it a centerpiece of their electoral strategy. …
Another voting battle is brewing in Ohio, aiming to force compliance with amendments to the state’s Constitution on nonpartisan redistricting that were ignored in maps drawn this year.
Ohioans had voted to create a bipartisan commission explicitly directed to draw political maps reflecting the state’s political balance. Instead, the Republican-dominated commission created state legislative and congressional maps that the state Supreme Court repeatedly rejected as Republican gerrymanders. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, voted with Democratic justices against the gerrymanders.
As election deadlines loomed last spring, federal courts ordered the maps to be used anyway, to be replaced with new ones by 2024.
Justice O’Connor retires from the court at the end of the year. Mr. Seitz, the Ohio state representative, predicted that the court will reverse course on redistricting, because November elections chose a sitting Republican justice to succeed Justice O’Connor and Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, will appoint a new justice to fill that vacancy. …
Voting rights advocates are mulling whether to mount another dauntingly expensive ballot initiative to make the commitment to nonpartisan maps ironclad, said Catherine Turcer, the executive director of Common Cause Ohio.
And the bar to success might get even higher. Republican legislators proposed a constitutional amendment last month that would raise the threshold for voter approval of constitutional changes to 60 percent of the vote, from the current simple majority.
Republicans call it a move “to safeguard Ohio’s constitution from special interests” who pour money into initiative campaigns. Ms. Turcer called it an effort to shield the ruling party from anything that could dilute its control.
“It’s clear these people are drunk on power,” she said. “And what do you do with those kinds of people? You take away their keys.”