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Allison Riggs, a lawyer representing Common Cause in the lawsuit, said Hall was misleading the public and acted counter to his own warning during the process. “There were maps drawn behind closed doors, and you never thought to mention them at all?” Riggs asked Hall.

Our country has survived the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and many other hardships along the way. Although many have been left behind or left out during those struggles, we must expand our efforts for an inclusive democracy so that it lives up to its promise. We survived the insurrection and a coup attempt last year. Can our democracy withstand another attempt in the next presidential election? We cannot afford to find out. The Senate must immediately pass pending legislation that has already passed the House before it’s too late and work closely on reforms to the Electoral Count Act. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has indicated the Senate will again take up voting rights when it reconvenes. No Senate rule, including the filibuster, should stand in the way.

“It wasn’t an independent commission … The entire way it was set up was problematic from the beginning,” said Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York. Lerner, the executive director of the civic activist group, won a 2014 lawsuit asking a court to block the appearance of the word “independent” on the ballot when the constitutional amendment went to voters as a referendum, arguing it was misleading to give the commission that label.

“While the process was at times messy, it was an exercise in democracy done in public,” California Common Cause executive director Jonathan Mehta Stein said in a statement. That met the goal that his organization and others had in 2008 when they persuaded voters to take the redistricting out of the hands of public officials who had a vested interest in the outcome. This year’s effort, despite criticism, “put the California public in the driver’s seat,” he said, though the groups promised to seek improvements for the 2031 commission.

Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, echoed Effingham’s take. “Conversations are really underway to find a way forward that restores the Senate as a place where senators come together, debate issues of the day and actually pass them, not bury them,” said Spaulding. “I think there is a desire — not just among Senate Democrats, among Republicans as well. The Senate is not working as well as it has in the past.” Spaulding identified a number of previous efforts around altering the filibuster while preserving a significant portion of the rule, ideas that may be considered again.

“I think there is a tremendous amount of pressure on them to deliver on voting rights," said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause.