YES! Magazine: Citizens Wanted Fairer Electoral Districts. Politicians … Not So Much

ery 10 years, legislators or appointed commissions across the country take the latest U.S. census data and redraw the boundaries of electoral districts to reflect the shifts of population. Too often, those new maps protect incumbents and partisan politics, not the interests of voters.

In 2022, however, the redistricting cycle has been marked by a groundswell of citizen engagement to create fair maps that give greater political clout to communities of color. In many states, a history of gerrymandering along political and racial lines has led to a lopsided concentration of power, which activists are looking to correct. Unfair redistricting this cycle has led to court challenges in a dozen states, and often, those are the same states that have adopted laws making it harder to vote after the 2020 election.

The double assault of unfair maps and voter suppression is leading to renewed calls on Congress to pass voting rights legislation before the 2022 midterm election. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pledged to try for a fifth time to get legislation protecting voting rights approved, and President Biden has called for changes to Senate rules to enable that. Those efforts may have been doomed by Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s opposition to changing the chamber’s filibuster rule. …

In the 2011 cycle, All About Redistricting, a site created by election law scholars as a clearinghouse of redistricting information, found that courts overturned congressional plans in five states and drew the lines themselves in 12 states. Courts also struck down all or part of state legislative maps in 13 states drawn in 2011, and drew the lines themselves in eight states.

“I view the court process as a continuation of the redistricting process,” says Kathay Feng, the national redistricting manager of Common Cause.

Unfortunately, some states don’t seem to mind being sued. North Carolina’s maps were among those struck down in the last cycle. Yet, Feng says its lawmakers again approved maps that already are being challenged in new lawsuits.

“They cracked and packed Black voters, resulting in the dilution of their votes,” says Feng of North Carolina’s most recent maps, referring to practices in which communities of color are “cracked,” or split up to reduce their political power, or “packed” into the same district in greater numbers than necessary to reduce their power in surrounding districts. “They held sham hearings where locations were moved or, in one instance, the doors to the building were locked. All in all, a bad process.” …

Feng agrees that not all commissions work well. For example, in some states with advisory-style commissions that turn over final map decisions to the legislative branch, the lawmakers may ignore the commissions’ work and revert to their usual politicking. “Places like Utah and New Mexico had commissions drawing proposed maps that were ultimately thrown into the trash can and redrawn by their state legislatures. We had hoped advisory commissions might at least be a half-step.”

But Feng sees progress in states like California, Colorado, Michigan, and Arizona, where redistricting commissions were designed to be more independent and actively reach to get public input. In Michigan, she says, the redistricting commission held over 100 meetings and 200 presentations and received 21,000 public comments. In California, its commission welcomed alternative maps submitted by individuals and more than 36,000 public comments.

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission wrapped up map drawing in the final week of December. This was the second cycle the state used the commission, composed of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four unaffiliated Californians.

“California was a success,” says Feng. “They boosted Latino representation in a state where 40% of the population is Latino. There was significant public input given and significant changes in response to the testimony.”