8/23/20
Both parties are already gearing up for a fight when redistricting is next underway.
On one side, there is the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and its National Democratic Redistricting Committee. On the other, there's the Republican State Leadership Committee and the National Republican Redistricting Trust. Both sides, TheHill.com reports, are raising gobs of money.
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| District 22 in southeast Texas. There are also fully-encircled pockets of land in District 22 that are in other districts. |
Redistricting is a kingmaker. When the majority party draws up a congressional map so that it creates a sure-win district for itself, it disenfranchises every member of the other party who lives there.
For years, gerrymandering was outside voters' notice. That changed after the 2010 Census, when these de facto power grabs were too egregious to ignore, particularly by Republicans in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Democrats were similarly accused of drawing wayward district lines in Illinois and Maryland. Numerous court battles forced some redistricting during the rest of the decade, but they were hard-won, expensive battles. As a result, some states have instituted redistricting via bipartisan committee.
As a result of the lopsided redistricting, Democratic majorities in vote totals were emasculated. In 2012, TheHill.com says, Democratic House candidates won 49.6 million votes, outdoing Republican House candidates by 1.4 million votes. Nevertheless, Democrats won 201 seats to the Republicans' 234 seats.
If that's not disenfranchisement, you can call it something else: Under any other name, it would smell just as sweet.
You'll recall, too, that current round of redistricting started many months ago. The Census is the basis for drawing districts based on population, and the administration tried for months to force the Census Bureau to serve the Party of Trump. The administration tried and failed to add a citizenship question, which, along with threats of stripping naturalized immigrants of their citizenship, would have intimidated immigrants.
The president leaned hard, too, into skipping homeless and undocumented residents, who have been included in previous counts. One of those groups rarely votes and the other can't, but their presence still affects the population counts used for redistricting. It was another attempt to shear Democrats of full representation under the law.
We'll have to keep on eye on this. Fortunately, this time around, a lot more eyes will be watching too.
Has redistricting been kind to your preferred candidates since 2010? How do you think the redistricting system could be changed to be more fair to all parties? Will you be able to follow redistricting proceedings as an individual citizen?
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