The party clash over redistricting has barely begun, but the two sides already agree on one thing: to a large extent, it all boils down to the south.
The states from North Carolina to Texas must be the main battlegrounds for the struggle that takes place once every decade for the redrawing of political boundaries. This is thanks to a population boom, mainly one-party rule and a new legal scenario that removes federal oversight and delays civil rights challenges.
It is a collision of factors that tend to tip the balance in favor of the Republican Party with dramatic impact: experts note that the new maps only in the South can lift Democrats out of power in the US House next year – and perhaps much more.
“The South is really going to stand out,” said Ryan Weichelt, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire who oversees the redistricting.
Of the 10 new seats expected in Congress this year, six are likely to be in the southern states, with a new expected in North Carolina, two in Florida and three in Texas.
Republicans control legislatures in these states, leaving them with almost complete opinion on what the new districts will look like – a stark contrast to other parts of the country where state governments are divided or where non-partisan commissions are tasked with redesigning the state legislature and legislative lines.
Finally, this will be the first time in more than 50 years that the Department of Justice will not automatically revise new legislative maps in nine states, mainly in the south, to ensure that they do not discriminate.
“It is a very different scenario than it has been for more than 50 years,” said Deuel Ross, senior advisor to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Republicans are under additional pressure to strengthen their political position in the region as their population grows, largely due to the influx of newcomers with Democratic tendencies. This weakened control of the Republican Party, most dramatically highlighted in Georgia, where Democrats just won a presidential race and two for the Senate.
The party is already eyeing targets. In Georgia, they can choose whether they want Democratic MPs Lucy McBath or Carolyn Boudreaux or both, adding more conservative voters from the far north of Atlanta to both legislative districts.
In Florida, they can try to flood Democratic Representative Stephanie Murphy’s district with new Republican voters as they win a new seat in the Orlando area, one of two that the state is expected to add.
And in Texas, which is expected to win three seats in Congress, the majority from any state, the Republican Party may try to win more seats at the center of its state’s boom – Democratic Houston – which can still elect Republicans.
Currently, a gain of five seats would hand over control of the House to the Republican Party. That number may increase or decrease before November 2020, depending on the result of special elections for several vacant seats.
To be sure, there will be limits – both legal and practical – on how much power Republicans can gain from a new map. While controlling the process, demographic trends in the southern states are working against them. Many of the new residents are college educated, racially diverse and young – all groups that Republicans have struggled to conquer.
This means that the party can only attract some “safe” neighborhoods. And as these states are experiencing explosive growth, efforts to perfectly divide large cities like Houston and Atlanta may collapse over time, as tens of thousands of new residents continue to move.
“You have all these compensatory things,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist. “Democrats are doing better in suburban areas, states are becoming more diverse, along with Republicans in control of all the levers of government.”
Control in the South has a history of leading to manipulate the democratic process – from voting rules to district maps – to weaken black voters. In Georgia, the Republican-controlled state legislature is responding to the recent increase in Democrats and former President Donald Trump’s false allegation of electoral fraud with a series of proposals that would make it more difficult to vote – including one to end voting on Sunday, popular with black churchgoers.
These restrictions would not have been possible eight years ago, when the Department of Justice was forced to approve any changes in advance in states with a history of voting rights violations. But in 2013, the conservative majority in the Supreme Court overturned federal demands that Georgia and eight other states “pre-release” the vote and redistrict changes. He determined that the federal formula based on previous states’ violations was out of date.
Several states – including Texas and North and South Carolina – responded quickly with new voter identification laws. Some civil rights advocates fear that the party will also take advantage of the lack of oversight in redistricting.
“If they are using what was obviously a lie about electoral fraud in 2020 to approve new restrictions on voting in Georgia and Texas, then I think the same will apply when the Census data are released” to start the redistricting process said Ross. .
Race-based redistricting remains illegal under the Voting Rights Act. But proving a violation can take years in court, allowing multiple elections to proceed with maps that can later be considered illegal. For example, in North Carolina – the Republican legislature alone has the power to redistrict, without the contribution of the Democratic state governor – the legislature drew maps in 2010 that ended up being considered racially distorted. But those maps remained in effect for two House elections before they were redesigned to cost the Republican Party two seats.
“This means that a state can engage in gerrymandering at midnight and essentially evade court review, run elections with those messy maps and get away with it until the next election,” said Kathay Feng, director of redistricting for Common Cause.
Jason Torchinsky, general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said there are significant limits to what Republican legislatures can accomplish, even if they follow the path of racial gerrymandering – which, he noted, can still result in harmful lawsuits and injunctions against maps federal judges.
“This notion that, in some way, the lack of pre-compensation will leave minorities unprotected is false,” said Torchinsky.
Some Republicans note that the party must be careful not to allow its power over rules and borders to override persuasion. He must still try to win over newcomers to the South with ideas.
“We need to remind these new residents that they are moving to these states, ideally, based on the policies that Republicans have established,” said Hooff Cooksey, Virginia’s Republican strategist.
Virginia emerges as a warning to the Republican Party – a once solidly Republican state that has become solidly Democratic as the growing and educated population of Washington, DC’s suburbs turned against the party. A federal court redesigned state maps in 2016 because it found that the legislature – split between the two parties – and a Republican governor had misused racial criteria in redistricting.
Democrats conquered the state chamber in 2019 and Virginia now uses a non-partisan commission to draw its legislative maps.
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