KEY POINTS
The battle to redraw U.S. congressional districts is taking place for the first time in decades without certain federal redistricting protections.
This is raising concerns that voters of color could get sidelined even as they have become a larger share of the population.
The Census data shows the U.S. has grown more diverse over the past decade. Hispanic, Asian and multiracial communities grew rapidly while the white population declined for the first time in history.
The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act that required nine mostly Southern states to get federal approval for their congressional maps.
The battle to redraw U.S. congressional districts is taking place for the first time in decades without certain federal redistricting protections, raising concern that voters of color could get sidelined even as they have become a larger share of the population.
The Census Bureau this week released data that will serve as the basis for states to redraw their congressional districts. The process will influence the balance of power in the United States for a decade to come and could have an impact on the narrowly divided House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.
The Census data shows the U.S. has grown more diverse over the past decade. Hispanic, Asian and multiracial communities grew rapidly while the white population declined for the first time in history.
Though still the largest group overall in the U.S., the white population shrank by 8.6%. The Hispanic population has grown by 23%, the Asian population by 35%, and the Black population by 5.6%. The multiracial population also grew the fastest over the past decade, with a 276% increase.
While this data shows a significant increase in communities of color over the past decade, their political representation may suffer as states redraw their political maps, experts say.
“It’s certainly possible we may actually see a rollback in minority representation, despite population growth, and we expect this will be an area of significant litigation over the decade,” said Adam Podowitz-Thomas, the senior legal strategist for the Princeton Gerrymandering Project and the Princeton Electoral Innovation Lab.
The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act that required nine mostly Southern states to get approval for their congressional maps from the federal government. Counties in states outside the South, such as New York and California, were also subject to preclearance rules.
To get approval, states had to demonstrate to the federal government that their redistricting plans did not have a discriminatory purpose or impact on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group, according to the Justice Department.
The absence of preclearance this year will give way to greater gerrymandering that could threaten the political power of minority communities despite their growing populations in the U.S., experts say.
‘Single-party control’
Gerrymandering refers to the manipulation of district lines to favor one party or class of people. Though the tactic is used by both parties, Republicans are in a stronger position because they hold single-party control in more states, according to Samuel Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “Single-party control of map drawing in a state is certainly the biggest motivator and predictor of gerrymandering,” Wang said. Republicans have control over drawing congressional maps in 18 states and legislative maps in 20 states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, according to a report published by the Brennan Center for Justice in February. Democrats, on the other hand, only have control of congressional maps in seven states and legislative maps in nine states, according to the report. The remaining states have independent commissions and bipartisan control over map drawing or they don’t need maps because they are single-district states. In total, Republicans have the ability to draw 187 congressional districts and Democrats 84, according to NBC News. The practice of gerrymandering often targets voters of color and can be achieved by two tactics commonly known as cracking and packing.
Single-party control of map drawing in a state is certainly the biggest motivator and predictor of gerrymandering.
Samuel Wang DIRECTOR OF THE PRINCETON GERRYMANDERING PROJECT
Cracking involves spreading out a minority community between districts so they make up a small portion of the electorate and have little political power in each district, according to Wang. But a minority community can also be packed into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts, Wang added.
After the last Census, in 2010, Republicans
made legislative gains by gerrymandering in a number of states where they had single-party control, according to Yurij Rudensky, a redistricting counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.
“It really is a type of subversion of this democratic process that harms and shakes our system of government to its core, because it means that election outcomes are predetermined and that voters don’t actually get to select their representatives,” Rudensky said. “Republican operatives did that at the start of the decade.”
Gerrymandering in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania alone gave Republicans 16 to 17 more congressional seats than they would have had with unbiased maps, the Brennan Center report said.
A number of Republican operatives also launched the Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP, which raised more than $30 million to redraw electoral maps in favor of GOP candidates in 2010, according to a court filing obtained by the Brennan Center.
“This year the gerrymandering will be terrible,” said University of Minnesota demographer Steven Ruggles. “Without the preclearance, you can expect that Republicans will be more brazen about gerrymandering, even more than they were in 2010.”
The Census Bureau released initial state-level data in April used to apportion the 435 seats in the House that showed a slight shift in political power to the Republican-led South and West.
Texas gained two congressional seats, while Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one, according to the April census data. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each
lost a seat.
Democrats are clinging to a slim majority in the House. They control 220 seats, while the GOP has 212. There are three vacancies.
Reference: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/gerrymandering-could-limit-minority-voters-power-even-after-census-gains.html