The Hill: Voting bill seeks to crack down on gerrymandering

A new voting bill from Senate Democrats seeks to immediately address the most egregiously gerrymandered maps as states begin the once-a-decade redistricting cycle. 

The latest version of the Freedom to Vote Act seeks to address what courts have long been reluctant to do, giving judges firmer ground for rejecting maps by barring those that unfairly give a significant advantage to one political party. 

The legislation also goes further by establishing a test courts would use to immediately block the use of extremely gerrymandered maps in an effort to sidestep lengthy legal battles that might otherwise leave them in place for years. …

The downside is that maps that don’t trigger the formula, say those found to have only a 6 percent partisan gap, would have to go through the same lengthy court battles that dispute lines today.

Kathay Feng, director of redistricting and representation with Common Cause, pointed to litigation in North Carolina that dragged into 2018. 

“I think what’s going to happen is those lines that are measured by algorithms to be extreme gerrymanders will immediately be hauled into court and examined, and the worst of the worst gerrymanders will be reviewed and hopefully overturned,” she said.

“There will be a universe of redrawn lines that fall into a grey area where people may have to live with those lines or look for ways under their state constitution to fundamentally challenge them.”

To combat those maps, the bill simply seeks to ban partisan gerrymandering, writing that states cannot draw maps “with the intent or has the effect of materially favoring or disfavoring any political party.”

It’s a track many have used to justify other ills in voting laws beyond maps. State court judges in North Carolina on Friday struck down the state’s 2018 voter ID law, writing that though designed with political intent in mind, the policy unlawfully discriminated against Black voters.

Feng said the bar on partisan redistricting will nix a frequent excuse for maps that otherwise negatively affect minority voters.

“It will eliminate the most extreme partisan gerrymanders, and it will send a clear signal to those that are drawing the lines that they can no longer use that as their escape valve for all the manipulation they’re doing,” she said.