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Tag: Redistricting

  • Federal judge rules Georgia’s district lines violated Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn

    Federal judge rules Georgia’s district lines violated Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn

    Washington — A federal judge ruled Thursday that some of Georgia’s congressional, state Senate and state House districts were drawn in a racially discriminatory manner and ordered state lawmakers to draw an additional Black-majority congressional district.

    U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, in a 516-page order, also said the state must draw two new Black-majority districts in Georgia’s 56-member state Senate and five new Black-majority districts in its 180-member state House.

    Jones ordered Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly and GOP governor to take action before Dec. 8, saying he wouldn’t permit 2024 elections to go forward under the current maps. That would require a special session, as lawmakers aren’t scheduled to meet again until January. If the state fails to enact remedial plans by his deadline that provide Black voters the opportunity to elect their favored candidates, Jones said the court will draw or adopt its own maps.

    The judge’s ruling

    “After conducting a thorough and sifting review of the evidence in this case, the Court finds that the State of Georgia violated the Voting Rights Act when it enacted its congressional and legislative maps,” Jones wrote. “The Court commends Georgia for the great strides that it has made to increase the political opportunities of Black voters in the 58 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite these great gains, the Court determines that in certain areas of the State, the political process is not equally open to Black voters.”

    The judge sought to dispel concerns about the Dec. 8 deadline he set for the new maps, writing that he is “confident that the General Assembly can accomplish its task” by then.

    “The General Assembly enacted the Plans quickly in 2021; the Legislature has been on notice since at least the time that this litigation was commenced nearly 22 months ago that new maps might be necessary; the General Assembly already has access to an experienced cartographer; and the General Assembly has an illustrative remedial plan to consult,” he wrote.

    Jones’ ruling follows a September trial in which the plaintiffs argued that Black voters are still fighting opposition from White voters and need federal help to get a fair shot. The state argued court intervention on behalf of Black voters wasn’t needed.

    The move could shift one of Georgia’s 14 congressional seats from Republican to Democratic control. GOP lawmakers redrew the congressional map from an 8-6 Republican majority to a 9-5 Republican majority in 2021.

    Rulings in other states

    The Georgia case is part of a wave of litigation after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year stood behind its interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, rejecting a challenge to the law by Alabama.

    Courts in Alabama and Florida ruled recently that Republican-led legislatures had unfairly diluted the voting power of Black residents. Legal challenges to congressional districts are also ongoing in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

    In the Alabama dispute, a three-judge district court panel said it was “deeply troubled” after the state redrew its map following the Supreme Court’s June decision but failed to provide a remedy for the likely Voting Rights Act violation. Alabama Republicans sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court again, but the justices declined their request to use the redrawn congressional map in upcoming elections. 

    New voting lines selected by the judges in October give the state a second district where Black voters make up nearly 50% of the voting-age population.

    Orders to draw new legislative districts could narrow Republican majorities in the state House and Senate. But on their own, those changes are unlikely to lead to a Democratic takeover.

    Jones, who sits on the federal district court in Atlanta, reiterated in his opinion that Georgia has made progress since 1965 “towards equality in voting. However, the evidence before this Court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.”

    He noted that despite the fact that all of the state’s population growth over the last decade was attributable to the minority population, the number of congressional and legislative districts with a Black majority remained the same.

    That echoes a key contention of the plaintiffs, who argued repeatedly that the state added nearly 500,000 Black residents between 2010 and 2020 but drew no new Black-majority state Senate districts and only two additional Black-majority state House districts. They also said Georgia should have another Black majority congressional district.

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  • North Carolina Republicans close in on new districts seeking to fortify GOP in Congress, legislature

    North Carolina Republicans close in on new districts seeking to fortify GOP in Congress, legislature

    RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Republicans closed in Tuesday on enacting new boundaries for the state’s congressional and legislative districts that aim to fortify GOP prospects both in the narrowly divided Congress and in the state General Assembly, where conservatives hope to solidify control there for the rest of the decade.

    The full Senate voted along party lines for maps for the state’s congressional delegation and for the Senate’s own districts. The state House voted later Tuesday for districts in their own chamber. House and Senate leaders aimed for their chambers to give final approval to all three maps Wednesday.

    They were all drawn by Republicans in time for the 2024 elections after recent state Supreme Court rulings reversed decisions of the court last year that had thrown out proposed district lines it had deemed were illegal partisan gerrymanders.

    The state’s highest court flipped from a Democratic to a Republican majority with the 2022 elections, and the GOP justices ruled in April that the state constitution placed no limits on shifting lines for partisan gain. The U.S. Supreme Court had already declared in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering claims weren’t subject to federal court review, either.

    Those rulings now diminish legal options for Democrats and their allies opposed to the new maps to challenge the lines in court. They also opened the door for the proposed U.S. House map that could help the GOP pick up at least three seats on Capitol Hill at the expense of first- and second-term Democrats. The 2022 elections, which were run under a temporary map created by trial judges, resulted in a 7-7 seat between the two parties.

    The congressional map that passed the state Senate creates 10 districts that appear to favor a Republican, three that favor a Democrat and one that could be considered competitive, according to statewide election data and political experts. Republicans currently hold a 221-212 seat advantage over Democrats in the U.S. House.

    Democrats whose seats are threatened by the plan are Reps. Jeff Jackson of Charlotte, Wiley Nickel of Cary and Kathy Manning of Greensboro. And first-term Rep. Don Davis, one of the three Black Democrats in the state’s delegation, would run in a competitive district in northeastern North Carolina. Republicans have defended their maps, particularly with their political leanings, as lawful.

    “Partisan consideration is a valid criterion in which we balance with other legitimate traditional redistricting criteria,” Sen. Ralph Hise, a Mitchell County Republican and co-sponsor of the congressional map proposal, said during floor debate. Demonstrators in the Senate gallery chanted “fair maps now” as the debate began before authorities quickly ushered them out.

    Republicans also redrew boundary lines for their respective chambers that also appear to keep the GOP in a good position to retain their current veto-proof majorities of 72 seats in the House and 30 in the Senate. Statewide election data and a Duke University professor’s analysis indicate keeping such a supermajority may be more challenging in the House, where Republicans reached 72 in April when then-Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County switched parties.

    Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and his allies have criticized the new maps as a power play by the GOP that discriminates against minority voters and fails to align with the political balance of the nation’s ninth-largest state. North Carolina statewide elections are usually close affairs. Redistricting maps approved by the General Assembly, however, aren’t subject to Cooper’s vetoes.

    While partisan gerrymandering claims have been short-circuited by the courts, critics have alleged racial gerrymandering in the maps that likely will result in federal Voting Rights Act litigation soon.

    The congressional lines “unnecessarily pack and crack the state’s most urban and diverse communities, diminishing their voting power even though these are the very same areas where population has grown,” said Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Wake County Democrat. Republicans said they didn’t use voter population data based on race to form the boundaries.

    “We have complied with the law in every way on these maps,” Rep. Destin Hall, a Caldwell County Republican, said during debate on the state House districts.

    GOP lawmakers used parliamentary maneuvers to block or vote against Democratic amendments. That included one that would have altered districts in and north of Charlotte so that Democratic Sen. Natasha Marcus would be moved out of a proposed strong Republican district where GOP Sen. Vickie Sawyer also lives. Marcus said Republicans are trying to push her out of the Senate because she’s spoken strongly against GOP policies.

    Redistricting, meanwhile, seems to have worked in favor of Cotham, whom Democrats have castigated as a traitor for switching parties. Last November, Cotham won a state House seat in a Democratic district and was facing an extremely tough path for reelection if her district had stayed untouched. The new maps appear to offer her two options if she wants to run for office in 2024.

    The state House map proposal places Cotham’s residence in a new district where Republicans would have a slight advantage, according to statewide election data. And the Senate’s congressional redistricting proposal also would place her in a district along the state’s southern border. The district’s current representative, GOP Rep. Dan Bishop, is running for attorney general in 2024.

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  • Supreme Court seems skeptical of finding that South Carolina congressional district was racial gerrymander

    Supreme Court seems skeptical of finding that South Carolina congressional district was racial gerrymander

    Washington — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority expressed skepticism Wednesday with a lower court’s finding that a congressional district in South Carolina was racially gerrymandered in violation of the Constitution as it weighed a case that tested the disentangling of racial and political motivations for drawing voting lines.

    The justices spent much of the two-hour argument session questioning the validity of testimony by experts who appeared before a three-judge district court panel in October 2022. The justices debated why, after the Supreme Court effectively said partisan gerrymandering is permissible, mapmakers would have to impermissibly rely on race even if its used as a proxy for politics.

    “You think looking at 2020 and figuring out ‘were you a Trump voter or were you a Biden voter’ is not probative to whether you’re going to vote for Nancy Mace or not in the last election?” Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Caroline Flynn, an attorney in the solicitor general’s office who argued on behalf of the Biden administration.

    Republicans in South Carolina, who drew the new voting lines after the 2020 Census, said data from the 2020 presidential election provided a political explanation for the design of Congressional District 1, which the lower court said was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The lawmakers have said politics was the predominant motivating factor during the redistricting process, not race.

    “Suppose we think that data is fairly probative, does the whole case that plaintiffs had, the district court’s conclusion, then all fall? Because that’s really the linchpin of the response to the main argument that the state’s giving, which is we relied on this political data,” Kavanaugh said. “If that data is good, should we reverse?”

    The justices are reviewing a decision from the three-judge panel in South Carolina that found state Republican lawmakers intentionally let race drive the design of Congressional District 1.

    The dispute is the latest to come before the high court arising from the redistricting process that took place after the 2020 Census. But unlike a closely watched dispute involving Alabama’s congressional map, which the high court found likely violated the Voting Rights Act, the court battle involving the single district in South Carolina centers around claims that race was improperly used during the map-drawing process in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

    Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Flynn and Leah Aden, who argued on behalf of the NAACP of South Carolina, about the strength of the evidence offered by the map’s challengers during lower court proceedings. He expressed concern about the consequences of a ruling upholding the district court’s decision.

    “We’ve never had a case where there’s been no direct evidence, no map, no strangely configured districts, a very large amount of political evidence, whether the district court chose to credit it or not, and instead it’s all resting on circumstantial evidence,” he told Aden, adding, “I’m not saying you can’t get there, but it does seem that this would be breaking new ground in our voting rights jurisprudence.”

    Roberts later asked Flynn whether the Justice Department had ever supported a plaintiff in a case similar to the one before the court.

    “My point is a clear one,” he said. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

    The dispute over Congressional District 1

    Located along the state’s southeastern coast and anchored in Charleston County, the voters of Congressional District 1 have elected Republicans to the House from 1980 to 2016. But in 2018, Democrat Joe Cunningham won the seat in what was widely considered to be an upset win. The following congressional election, in 2020, saw a narrow victory by Republican Nancy Mace.

    During the redistricting process that began in 2021 when state lawmakers redrew South Carolina’s congressional voting map, GOP officials sought to give Congressional District 1 a stronger Republican tilt. To do this, they moved more than 140,000 residents out of District 1 and into Congressional District 6, long represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn.

    The map was enacted in January 2022, and Mace won reelection that November. But the NAACP’s South Carolina chapter and voter Taiwan Scott challenged the lines of Congressional District 1 as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and alleged the district was designed with racially discriminatory intent. Following an eight-day trial, the three-judge district court panel agreed with the map’s challengers and found that race was the predominant factor in the drawing of the district.

    The panel concluded that GOP lawmakers set a target of 17% Black voting-age population in Congressional District 1 and moved more than 30,000 Black residents from their home district into Congressional District 6 to produce a Republican tilt. The district court blocked the state from conducting an election with the GOP-drawn bounds for Congressional District 1, though it gave the legislature until 30 days after the Supreme Court issues a final decision to submit new lines.

    South Carolina Republicans asked the Supreme Court in February to review the district court’s decision, arguing it failed to adhere to the presumption that the Legislature acted in good faith, and did not disentangle race from politics.

    “Mere awareness of race does not prove racial dominance,” John Gore, who argued on behalf of the state, told the justices.

    Gore argued that the GOP legislators drew Congressional District 1 to adhere to traditional districting principles and sought to create a more secure Republican district. The Supreme Court in 2019 said the doors of federal courts were closed to claims of partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing voting lines to entrench the party in power.

    “The General Assembly had no reason to and did not use a racial target,” he said. “It used political data to pursue its political goals.”

    But civil rights groups, which are encouraging the Supreme Court to let the panel’s decision stand, argued that using race as the predominant factor for sorting voters violates the Constitution, even if it’s done for partisan gain, and said state lawmakers failed to prove “clear error” with the district court judges’ factual findings.

    “Black people were treated one-to-one, traded one in, one out,” Aden said, referencing the 30,000 Black voters who were moved out of Congressional District 1. “It’s only Black people in the design of this district that were treated with racial stereotyping, which is offensive to the Constitution.”

    Several of the justices focused on the district court’s finding that GOP lawmakers set a target of 17% Black voting-age population in order to make Congressional District 1 more Republican-leaning.

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the 17% figure remained unchanged even as maps proposed by state mapmakers evolved and the design of Congressional District 1 changed.

    “Thousands of people were moved in and out of this district and yet that line, the line concerning the amount of Black adult-voter participation, remained the same,” she said. “If what the court found here was not happening, how do you explain the consistency of that line?”

    But Justice Samuel Alito later indicated that was to be expected if Republican lawmakers, in a state where race and party align, were driven by a political objective.

    “If they are disregarding race entirely and looking only at politics, where race and politics are so closely aligned, it isn’t surprising that when you want to get a district that has a certain Republican percentage, you’re going to get a district that has a steady [Black voting age population],” he said.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that legislatures can use party to achieve political goals under the Supreme Court’s prior decisions, and suggested the absence of an alternative map hurt the civil rights group’s case.

    “The plaintiff bears the burden of overcoming a good-faith presumption that the legislature is doing just what it says,” he said. “How do you prove that they are acting in bad faith without showing that they could achieve their objective some different way?”

    The means for sorting voters, whether by race or politics, was expected to be a key factor during arguments, especially when it comes to states where voting is polarized, making it difficult to separate race from politics.

    “At its core, this case is a race or politics case because the court erroneously thinks partisan gerrymandering isn’t the problem for it to police, partisanship ends up being a successful defense to claims of racial gerrymandering. The question is which motive dominated, is it race or partisanship?” Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard University, told CBS News.

    Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, likened the improper focus on race during redistricting to a driver who only watches the speedometer and ignores traffic patterns, road conditions and other vehicles.

    “If you’re so fixated on the speedometer that you ignore everyone else and only stare at the speedometer, you’re going to crash,” he told CBS News. “The allegation proven to a trial court is essentially, South Carolina was only looking at the speedometer and crashed.”

    Levitt said he believes it’s unlikely the Supreme Court will make it more difficult for voters to challenge the use of race as a driving factor in the crafting of district lines, but said the case is important because “when legislature have a single-minded focus, as was proven here, they do damage to the public interest.”

    “The overall thrust is the court’s suspicion that state governments should be doing things based on race,” he said. “It’s not that they say districts have to be drawn race-blind, but the thrust of their opinions elsewhere is real skepticism of race driving the train. I don’t think they’ll back off of this type of claim. The risk is that as a practical matter, it’s difficult for plaintiffs to prove that a state legislature was in fact drawing districts in order to put minority constituents inside or outside of their district without good reason.”

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  • Former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice advises Republican leader against impeachment

    Former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice advises Republican leader against impeachment

    MADISON, Wis. — There should be no effort to impeach a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice based on what is known now, a former justice advised the Republican legislative leader who asked him to review the issue.

    Some Republicans had raised the prospect of impeaching newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz if she did not recuse from a redistricting lawsuit seeking to toss GOP-drawn legislative district boundary maps. On Friday, she declined to recuse herself, and the court voted 4-3 along partisan lines to hear the redistricting challenge.

    Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had asked three former justices to review the possibility of impeachment. One of those three, David Prosser, sent Vos an email on Friday, seemingly just before Protasiewicz declined to recuse, advising against moving forward with impeachment.

    Prosser turned the email over to the liberal watchdog group American Oversight as part of an open records request.

    “To sum up my views, there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now,” Prosser wrote to Vos. “Impeachment is so serious, severe, and rare that it should not be considered unless the subject has committed a crime, or the subject has committed indisputable ‘corrupt conduct’ while ‘in office.’”

    Vos on Monday made his first comments about Protasiewicz since she declined to recuse from the case and Vos got the email from Prosser. In his statement, Vos did not mention impeachment. He did not return text messages Monday or early Tuesday seeking further comment.

    Vos raised the threat of impeachment because he argued that Protasiewicz had prejudged the redistricting case when during her campaign she called the current maps “rigged” and “unfair.” Vos also said that her acceptance of nearly $10 million from the Wisconsin Democratic Party would unduly influence her ruling.

    Protasiewicz on Friday rejected those arguments, noting that other justices have accepted campaign cash and not recused from cases. She also noted that she never promised or pledged to rule on the redistricting lawsuit in any way.

    Other justices, both conservative and liberal, have spoken out in the past on issues that could come before the court, although not always during their run for office like Protasiewicz did. Current justices have also accepted campaign cash from political parties and others with an interest in court cases and haven’t recused themselves. But none of them have faced threats of impeachment.

    In his email to Vos, Prosser said he did not think Protasiewicz had met the standard for impeachment, which is reserved for “corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors.”

    She has not committed a crime or corrupt conduct, Prosser said.

    “In my view, ‘corrupt conduct’ is not a term that is open to a mere political grievance,” Prosser wrote. “If that were the case, legislative bodies could be trading questionable impeachments with considerable frequency.”

    Prosser cautioned that using impeachment to delay or affect the outcome of any single case “will be viewed as unreasonable partisan politics.”

    Prosser, a former Republican Assembly speaker, was the only one of the former justices who came forward to say they were on the panel created by Vos. But the records he turned over to American Oversight show that he was also apparently working with former Chief Justice Patience Roggensack on looking at impeachment.

    The group has filed a lawsuit alleging that the panel Vos created is breaking the state open meetings law.

    “Justice Prosser’s opinion letter demonstrates why Speaker Vos’ secret panel needs to operate in public,” said Heather Sawyer, American Oversight’s executive director, in a statement. “We still don’t know everyone involved or what other work has been done, and will keep pressing to ensure that the people of Wisconsin have full transparency and accountability regarding the Speaker’s impeachment plans.”

    Vos announced the formation of the impeachment review panel on Sept. 13. Vos refused to say who he asked and Prosser also would not tell a judge when asked during a court hearing on the American Oversight lawsuit last month.

    Text messages from Roggensack to Prosser on Sept. 14 show her asking if Prosser is free for a meeting. Prosser also released a voicemail from Roggensack left that same day referring to the text and asking to speak with him on “a matter that I thought we were going to look at together.”

    Prosser, during that Sept. 29 hearing, denied the claim made by American Oversight that the panel was a governmental body subject to the state’s open meetings law.

    In a voicemail he released from Roggensack from Oct. 2, Roggensack says she wants to talk with him about why “we, whatever we are, are not a governmental body.”

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  • Black voting power gets boost in Alabama as new US House districts chosen by federal judges

    Black voting power gets boost in Alabama as new US House districts chosen by federal judges

    MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Federal judges on Thursday selected new congressional lines for Alabama to give the Deep South state a second district where Black voters comprise a substantial portion of the electorate.

    The new map sets the stage for potentially flipping one U.S. House of Representatives seat from Republican to Democratic control and could lead to the election of two Black Congressional representatives to the state’s delegation for the first time. The judges stepped in to pick a new congressional map after ruling that Alabama illegally diluted the voting power of Black residents, and that the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature failed to fix the Voting Rights Act violation when they adopted new lines this summer.

    “It’s a historic day for Alabama. It will be the first time in which Black voters will have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in two congressional districts,” said Deuel Ross, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who represented plaintiffs in the case.

    Black voters in 2021 filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s existing plan as an illegal racial gerrymander. The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld the three-judge panel’s finding that Alabama’s prior map — with one majority-Black district out of seven in a state that is 27% Black — likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act. The three-judge panel said the state should have two districts where Black voters are the majority or close to it.

    The panel selected one of three plans proposed by a court-appointed expert that alters the bounds of Congressional District 2, now represented by Republican Rep. Barry Moore, who is white. The southeast Alabama district will stretch westward across the state to the Mississippi border. Black residents will go from comprising less than one-third of the district’s voting-age population to 48.7%.

    “We’re glad to see that process result in a federal court selecting a map that allows all, all the people of Alabama to have their voices heard,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday.

    The decision was a loss for Alabama Republicans, who were reluctant to create a Democratic-leaning district, and approved a map with a 39.9% Black voting age population in Congressional District 2. The three-judge panel said last month that they were “deeply troubled” that Alabama lawmakers flouted their instruction, and plaintiffs made unflattering comparisons to segregationist Gov. George Wallace’s efforts in 1963 to fight court desegregation orders.

    The judges adopted the new lines after issuing a preliminary injunction that blocked use of the latest state-drawn plan. The judges said the new map must be used in upcoming elections, noting Alabama residents in 2022 voted under a map they had ruled illegal after the Supreme Court put their order on hold to hear the state’s appeal.

    Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said while the map will be used in 2024, the state will continue the legal fight to restore the state-drawn lines for future elections. The case is expected to go to trial before the same three-judge panel next year. Alabama has argued that the three-judge panel. which includes two Trump appointees, is seeking changes that go beyond what the June Supreme Court decision required.

    Marshall criticized the court-adopted map for connecting cities on opposite ends of the state.

    “The Voting Rights Act was enacted to undo gerrymanders, not create them … Anyone who looks at the state’s map next to the map now imposed on the state can tell which is the racial gerrymander,” Marshall said in a statement.

    Plaintiffs in the case on Thursday called the decision an “unequivocal win that will translate to increased opportunities for those who have too long been denied the fair representation they deserve.”

    Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the case, said many Black voters in the area had grown accustomed to being ignored. He said the new map should remedy that. “It’s the beginning of another chapter,” Milligan said.

    It is Alabama’s first significant revamp of its congressional districts since 1992, when Alabama was ordered by the courts to create a majority-Black district, Congressional District 7, now represented by Rep. Terri Sewell, a Black Democrat.

    The new map could pit two current Republican congressmen against each other in 2024, and also draw a crowded field vying for the revamped District 2. Moore’s home is now in District 1, currently represented by Republican Rep. Jerry Carl. Moore said Thursday that he is “prayerfully” weighing what to do in 2024.

    The court-ordered lines in Alabama come as redistricting cases are pending in Louisiana, Georgia and elsewhere.

    Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said other states should view the Alabama decision as an example of “basic fairness” and a “warning that denying equal representation to Black voters, violating the Voting Rights Act, and defying federal court orders is a direct tie to an odious past and will no longer be tolerated.”

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  • What are the threats facing American democracy?

    What are the threats facing American democracy?

    What are the threats facing American democracy? – CBS News


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    President Biden issued several stark warnings about threats to American democracy Thursday in Arizona. CBS News election law expert and political contributor David Becker discusses what stood out from the president’s speech.

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  • Analysis: What makes a fair election? Recent redistricting the most politically balanced in years

    Analysis: What makes a fair election? Recent redistricting the most politically balanced in years

    Democrats have for years bemoaned partisan redistricting plans that helped Republicans win far more congressional seats than expected. But that advantage has disappeared.

    In the first elections held with 2020 census data, Democrats battled back with their own gerrymandering that shaped districts to their advantage and essentially evened the outcome. Though Republicans won control of the House from Democrats, the closely divided chamber more accurately reflects the ratio of Republicans to Democrats among voters nationally than at any time in recent years, according to a new Associated Press analysis.

    “On the one hand, we have fairer, more representative outcomes. But it looks like we have more gerrymandering happening,” said Doug Spencer, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who administers the All About Redistricting website.

    The AP’s analysis found that Republicans won just one more U.S. House seat in 2022 than would have been expected based on the average share of the vote they received nationwide — an insignificant edge in determining the GOP’s 222-213 seat majority.

    A similar situation played out in state capitols in the 2022 elections. The AP found that Democrats and Republicans notched a nearly equal number of states with House or Assembly districts tilted in their favor — a sharp contrast to the sizable Republican edge during the previous decade.

    The difference is not just that Republicans gerrymandered less but that “more Democrats picked up the practice,” Spencer said.

    A lot is at stake. Districts drawn to the advantage of one party can help it win, maintain or expand majorities, which in turn can affect the types of laws enacted on divisive topics such as abortion, guns, taxes and transgender rights. That’s evident this year, as Republican- and Democratic-led states move in opposite directions on many of those issues.

    The dissatisfaction once voiced most loudly by Democrats in states gerrymandered by Republicans is now also rising from Republicans in such places as rural Macoupin County, Illinois. A Republican represented the former coal mining county in Congress during the past decade. But a Democrat won the redrawn district in 2022 after it got transformed into a slender snake-like shape — with a head in the twin university cities of Champaign and Urbana and a new tail in the Democratic suburbs of St. Louis.

    Republican-leaning Macoupin County resembles a bulge in the middle — the only entire county remaining in the 13th District.

    “We’re tied now to people – boat anchors up to the north and boat anchors in the south – that we have very little in common with, and we’re not happy,” said Tom Stoecker, the Macoupin County GOP chairman.

    Illinois’ congressional districts had the largest partisan slant nationally, helping Democrats win three more seats than expected based on their percentage of votes, according to the AP’s analysis. Among statehouse chambers, the largest partisan tilt was in the Nevada Assembly — again favoring Democrats.

    Republicans still reaped rewards in some places. Texas Republicans won about two more U.S. House seats than would have been expected based on their percentage of votes. A long-running GOP tilt also continued in the Wisconsin Assembly.

    The AP analyzed the effect of redistricting on the 2022 elections using an “efficiency gap” formula intended to spot cases of potential gerrymandering. The test — designed by Eric McGhee, a researcher at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, and Harvard Law School professor Nick Stephanopoulos — identifies states where one party is extraordinarily efficient at translating votes into victories. That can occur when politicians in charge of redistricting pack voters for their opponents into a few heavily concentrated districts or spread them among multiple districts to dilute their voting strength.

    Previous AP analyses found that Republicans benefited from a strong edge under districts drawn after the 2010 census. The GOP won about 22 more U.S. House seats than expected based on its share of the votes in 2016 — about 16 extra seats in 2018 and about 10 excess seats in 2020. By comparison, the one-seat GOP tilt in the 2022 election was essentially a political wash.

    “By many metrics, we had the fairest congressional map and the fairest state legislative map in decades, and that’s a truly great thing for democracy,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has challenged Republican-drawn maps in court.

    Bisognano attributes the change primarily to four states — Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Under congressional maps drawn by Republicans, those states combined in 2016 to elect 39 Republicans and just 17 Democrats — about nine more Republicans than expected based on their share of the votes. But in 2022, under maps adopted by courts and Michigan’s new independent commission, those states combined to elect 26 Republicans and 29 Democrats. In a reversal, Democrats carried about one more seat than expected based on their share of the votes.

    In each of the two most recent midterm elections, the AP’s analysis identified 15 states where a political party won at least one more congressional seat than would have been expected based on its votes. Twelve of those favored Republican in 2018.

    But the redistricting gains were more evenly split last year. Democrats gained at least one more congressional seat than expected from their vote percentage in eight states — California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington. Meanwhile, Republicans gained at least one extra seat in seven states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, New York, Texas and Wisconsin.

    The new Illinois districts were drawn by the Democratic-dominated state Legislature and signed into law by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, despite a pledge during his 2018 campaign to veto any maps drawn by politicians. Pritzker said the maps — which added a second predominantly Latino district while maintaining three predominantly Black districts — would “ensure all communities are equitably represented.”

    Under the new districts, Illinois Democrats widened their 13-5 congressional advantage to a 14-3 majority — flipping one Republican seat and merging others. The state lost one seat due to declining population.

    Republican Rep. Rodney Davis was drawn out of the 13th District he represented for a decade and placed in the heavily Republican 15th District. He lost in a GOP primary to Rep. Mary Miller, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. The reshaped 13th District was won by Democrat Nikki Budzinski, a former aide to Pritzker and President Joe Biden.

    “That district was drawn in a very gerrymandered way to maximize the Democrat turnout,” Davis told the AP.

    Numerous more politically neutral alternatives could have been drawn, said Sheldon H. Jacobson, director of the Institute for Computational Redistricting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

    “This was just a horrendous situation and really doesn’t represent the people of Illinois,” Jacobson said.

    Fair representation also has been called into question in Nevada, where the Democratic advantage from redistricting was so large that it could have swayed control of the state Assembly. Though Republican candidates received more total votes, Democrats won a 28-14 majority last fall — seven more Democratic seats than would have been expected, according to the AP’s analysis.

    A lawsuit brought by affected residents and several Republican elected officials alleged the new districts were “an intentional extreme partisan gerrymander” that illegally diluted votes. But a judge said there was no clear standard to weigh partisan gerrymandering claims under the Nevada Constitution — echoing a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that federal courts also have no business deciding partisan gerrymandering claims.

    The Reno area’s Somersett golf community had been part of a Republican-controlled Assembly district, but the new maps split it into two. A Democrat now represents part of the subdivision while the rest was placed in a rural Republican-led district that stretches hundreds of miles to the Oregon and Idaho borders.

    “It was really bad for our community,” said Jacob Williams, president of the Somersett Owners Association, who ran unsuccessfully in a Republican primary for the state Assembly. “It was quite deflating.”

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  • S. Carolina’s US House maps under scrutiny because of race

    S. Carolina’s US House maps under scrutiny because of race

    A trial to determine whether South Carolina’s congressional maps are legal closes Tuesday with arguments over whether the state Legislature diluted Black voting power by remaking the boundaries of the only U.S. House district Democrats have flipped in more than 30 years.

    The trial also marks the first time the South Carolina maps have been legally scrutinized since the U.S. Supreme Court removed part of a 1965 law that required the state to get federal approval to protect against discriminatory redistricting proposals.

    A panel of three federal judges will hear closing arguments in the case in Charleston. A ruling is expected later.

    The Republican-dominated General Assembly redrew the maps early this year based on the 2020 U.S. census, and they were used in this month’s midterm elections.

    According to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP, the new boundaries unconstitutionally split Black voters in the state’s 1st, 2nd and 5th Districts and packed them all into the 6th District, which already had a majority of African American voters.

    The civil rights group has asserted during months of arguments that the General Assembly’s actions not only diluted Black voting strength, but also strengthened the 6-to-1 advantage Republicans have in the state’s U.S. House delegation. The last time a Democrat flipped a U.S. House seat was in 2018. Before that Democrats hadn’t won a seat from Republican control since 1986.

    The new congressional districts “render Black voters unable to meaningfully influence congressional elections in those districts,” the NAACP lawyers allege in the lawsuit.

    Attorneys for state lawmakers said the 1st District had to have changes because much of South Carolina’s more than 10% population growth from 2010 to 2020 happened along the coast.

    The Legislature also insisted it followed guidance the U.S. Supreme Court laid out in 2013 when it overturned a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring South Carolina and eight other mostly Southern states to get federal approval when they redrew district maps.

    “The General Assembly did not improperly use race in drawing any district or in enacting any redistricting plan,” the Legislature’s attorneys wrote. “The General Assembly may have been aware of race in drawing districts and redistricting plans, but such awareness does not violate the Constitution or law.”

    The crux of the NAACP argument is that the Legislature ignored “communities of interest” in several regions of the state: places where voters share economic, social, historic or political bonds or are located within the same geographic or government boundaries.

    They cited several plans lawmakers did not adopt that would have kept Charleston and surrounding areas entirely in the 1st District instead of breaking off some areas with significant African American populations and putting them into the 6th District.

    Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace won under the old map in 2020 by 1.3 percentage points. Under the new map, she won reelection to the 1st District earlier this month by 13.9 percentage points.

    ___

    James Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Democrats defend every state legislative chamber in their control this year

    Democrats defend every state legislative chamber in their control this year

    Democrats were able to defend every state legislative chamber in their control this year — making it the first midterm elections since 1934 in which the party in power has not lost a chamber. 

    They were also able to flip chambers in several states, a shift from previous midterm cycles where Democrats have struggled at the state level. In Pennsylvania, Democrats narrowly gained control of the state House for the first time since 2010. They flipped the Minnesota Senate for the first time in a decade, and both chambers in Michigan, giving the party a trifecta in both states. In Wisconsin and North Carolina, Democrats prevented Republicans from gaining supermajorities, protecting Democratic governors’ veto power. And in New Hampshire, control of the House remains unknown, nearly two weeks after the elections. 

    In a memo first shared with CBS News, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) said the victories serve as a lesson to Democrats up and down the ballot.

    “Democrats made history in state legislatures this year — defying the odds, bucking political wisdom, and laying out a blueprint for Democratic wins at the state legislative level,” wrote DLCC president Jessica Post. She credited investing early and helping local leaders and said that unlike 2010, Democrats this decade will be able to go on offense. Now, the DLCC is calling for the party to continue building from the ground up.

    Post argued that some of the obstacles Democrats faced this year stemmed from GOP control of some of the nation’s state legislatures because it’s the legislature that often controls the way congressional districts are drawn.

    “Democratic efforts to control the U.S. House are more difficult because of Democrats’ failure to invest in state legislatures earlier,” Post wrote. “Congressional Democrats were running in districts rigged by Republican state legislators in many states. If Democrats want to fight back against the MAGA agenda and make our country better for all Americans, that work must start in state legislatures.”

    The state level successes come on the heels of redistricting. According to the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), there are many reasons for Democrats’ victories in 2022 but investment in state level races was a part of it. 

    “It was a big lesson of the last decade, that Democrats needed to be more focused on the states and state level infrastructure, and I think you’ve seen the party really rally to that over the last several cycles, and 2022 was the culmination of that investment,” said NDRC President Kelly Burton said.

    The NDRC started its work before the actual redistricting process. Compared to the previous decade, Republican control over the redistricting process decreased by more than 20%. Burton said without such efforts, the results would have been worse for Democrats. She believes the party will continue to invest heavily on the state level because it’s paying off.

    The DLCC started sending funds to legislature candidates for 2022 last fall and released its strategy identifying what it believed would be the most competitive states in the spring. In total, the DLCC raised and spent $50 million this cycle, surpassing the 2018 midterms. Its finance team also helped state partners raise more than $105 million for targets this election season. 

    The memo noted two major themes were front and center during this election cycle as part of its winning strategy: abortion rights and protecting democracy. 

    The DLCC recognized abortion rights would be a major factor in state legislative elections early on and launched its States to Save Roe website in January even before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. It then continued to capitalize on the issue “at every turn.” 

    The committee also worked to tie all Republicans to what it called “MAGA extremists” and warned Republicans posed an existential threat to democracy. As part of that, they took aim at state officials like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania who was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, for former President Trump’s speech.

    At the same time, candidates continued to address how they would lower costs, the memo said, blunting some of the attacks by Republicans amid soaring inflation. Some efforts included direct relief checks, tax rebates or working to cut child and health care costs.

    While the DLCC is calling for the party to build off the 2022 successes, it was not alone in its efforts to increase Democrats’ numbers in the state assemblies and senates. The States Project invested nearly $60 million in state chambers, the most in a single cycle by an outside effort. 

    The DLCC is now looking to 2024, helping to defend majorities as well as flip seats in states like New Hampshire and Arizona. Next year, Virginia is also a battleground with its off-year elections. 

    While Republicans lost chambers in 2022 – they did see representation grow in several states. In Florida, where the party already had a trifecta, Republicans were able to gain supermajorities in both the state House and Senate. They were also able to gain supermajorities in at least one chamber in Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. In Oregon, GOP candidates also gained seats – ending Democrats’ supermajority in the state.

    In a memo to donors following the election, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) said it had its best fundraising cycle to date but pointed to significant spending disadvantages. Overall, the RSLC spent a record $30 million but was outspent by Democratic groups combined at the state legislative level four to one.

    It is not yet clear just how much outside Republican groups spent on legislative races.  

    Sarah Ewall-Wice

    CBS News reporter covering economic policy.

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  • State Supreme Court wins shaped by abortion, redistricting

    State Supreme Court wins shaped by abortion, redistricting

    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Republicans have claimed key victories in state Supreme Court races that will give them an advantage in major redistricting fights, while Democrats notched similarly significant wins with help from groups focused on defending abortion access.

    The expensive fights over court control in several states in Tuesday’s election highlight just how partisan the formerly low-key judicial races have become. Observers say they’re a sign of what to expect as legal battles over abortion, voting rights and other issues are being fought at the state level.

    “Nothing about this election suggests to me that we’re going to see these races quiet down anytime soon,” said Douglas Keith, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, which tracks spending in judicial races.

    About $97 million was spent on state Supreme Court elections during the 2019-2020 election cycle, according to the Brennan Center. Once this year’s numbers are tallied, spending records are expected to be shattered in some of the 25 states that had races targeted by groups on the right and the left.

    One of the biggest players was the Republican State Leadership Committee, which focused heavily on the court races in North Carolina and Ohio.

    “Republican wins in the Tarheel State and Buckeye State ensure that the redistricting fights ahead in those states within the next decade are ruled on by strong conservatives who will follow the Constitution and don’t believe it’s their role to draw maps from the bench,” said Dee Duncan, president of the committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative.

    North Carolina’s court flipped from a 4-3 Democrat majority to 5-2 Republican Tuesday night. The court in recent years has issued decisions favoring the Democratic majority in cases involving redistricting, criminal justice, education funding and voter ID laws.

    At least $15 million was spent on those races, with more than $8 million from two super PACS — one on the left that focused primarily on abortion and one on the right that focused on crime. Despite the outside groups’ involvement, candidates ran on a similar platform of keeping personal politics out of the courtroom.

    “Now, we’ll be watching to make sure that the justices sitting in those seats follow through on those promises,” said Ann Webb, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

    In Ohio, Republicans maintained their 4-3 majority on the court, with two GOP justices fending off challenges and a sitting Republican winning her bid for chief justice. The state’s GOP governor, Mike DeWine, will appoint a justice to fill the resulting vacancy.

    The results may expand the conservative bent of the court even further, with cases regarding the state’s six-week abortion ban and redistricting on the horizon. Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who did not seek reelection, has sided with court’s three Democrats on high profile cases.

    But Democratic groups working to protect abortion rights ramped up efforts to defend seats after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and saw victories in several other parts of the country.

    In Illinois, which is surrounded by states with abortion bans that took effect after Roe was overturned, groups pushing to retain the state’s Democrat court majority had warned a GOP takeover could result in similar threats to access.

    “I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t think abortion was the critical issue in these races,” Terry Cosgrove, president and CEO of Personal PAC, an abortion rights group that spent nearly $3 million supporting the Democrats in the races.

    In Michigan, Democrats maintained their 4-3 majority on the Supreme Court after incumbent justices from opposing parties who had split on a key abortion ruling won reelection. Michigan’s high court races are officially nonpartisan, though the state’s political parties nominate candidates.

    Democratic-backed Justice Richard Bernstein, who voted with the court’s majority to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot, won reelection along with Republican Justice Brian Zahra, who voted against it. Voters approved the measure Tuesday.

    “The Michigan Supreme Court election was critical especially since we didn’t know what the status of (the abortion rights amendment) would be,” said Ashlea Phenicie, communications director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, which spent nearly $1 million on the races.

    Kansas voters kept all six state Supreme Court justices who were on the ballot for separate yes-or-no votes on whether they remained on the bench another six years. The state’s most influential anti-abortion group, Kansans for Life, pushed to remove five of them, largely over the court’s 2019 decision declaring access to abortion a “fundamental” right under the Kansas Constitution.

    Two of the six court members on the ballot were part of the 6-1 majority in that 2019 decision. Voters also retained the court’s most conservative member, the only dissenter in the 2019 abortion decision.

    Republican bids for court seats failed in even some of the most conservative parts of the country.

    Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller defeated Joseph Fischer, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored the state’s “trigger law” ending abortion following Roe’s reversal. Fischer also was the lead sponsor of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that voters rejected Tuesday.

    Supreme Court Justice Robin Wynne in Arkansas, which has had some of the most contentious judicial races over the years, fended off a challenge from District Judge Chris Carnahan, a former executive director of the state Republican Party.

    Arkansas’ court seats are nonpartisan, but Carnahan had touted himself as a conservative and had the endorsement of the state GOP. A group formed by a Republican lawmaker ran TV ads calling Wynne, who served as a Democrat in the state Legislature in the 1980s, a liberal.

    An unprecedented partisan pitch by Montana Republicans to install a party loyalist on that state’s Supreme Court also fell short, with Justice Ingrid Gustafson defeating challenger James Brown, who had the backing of Gov. Greg Gianforte and other top Republicans. The unusually expensive campaign came as the court is preparing to hear challenges over Montana’s abortion restrictions and voting access.

    Gustafson called her win a sign that voters were more interested in experience than ideology.

    “The people in Montana think our judiciary is doing a good job and it is a very, very small minority that has some sort of other agenda,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; Ed White in Detroit, Michigan; and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana contributed to this report. ___ Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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  • Black representation in Alabama tested before Supreme Court

    Black representation in Alabama tested before Supreme Court

    MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The invisible line dividing two of Alabama’s congressional districts slices through Montgomery, near iconic sites from the civil rights movement as well as ones more personal to Evan Milligan.

    There’s the house where his grandfather loaded people into his station wagon and drove them to their jobs during the Montgomery Bus Boycott as Black residents spurned city buses to protest segregation. It’s the same home where his mother lived as a child, just yards from a whites-only park and zoo she was not allowed to enter.

    The spot downtown where Rosa Parks was arrested, igniting the boycott, sits on one side of the dividing line while the church pastored by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the protests, sits on the other.

    The lines are at the center of a high-stakes redistricting case bearing Milligan’s name that will go before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, setting up a new test of the Voting Rights Act and the role of race in drawing congressional boundaries.

    At the center of the case is a challenge by various groups arguing that the state violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters when it failed to create a second district in which they make up a majority, or close to it. African Americans account for about 27% of the state’s population but are the majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts.

    “Our congressional map is not reflective of the population that lives in Alabama,” said Milligan, 41, one of several voters who joined interest groups in filing the lawsuit.

    The case the Supreme Court will take up Tuesday centers on whether congressional districts in Alabama were drawn to reduce the political influence of Black voters, but it’s also part of a much broader problem that undermines representative government in the U.S. Both major political parties have practiced gerrymandering — drawing congressional and state legislative boundaries to cement their hold on power — but Republicans have been in control of the process in far more states since after the 2010 elections. That has allowed them to win an outsized share of statehouse and U.S. House seats and means GOP policies — including on abortion restrictions — often don’t reflect the will of most voters.

    An Associated Press analysis from 2017 showed that Alabama had one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country.

    Republicans dominate elected office in Alabama and are in charge of redistricting. They have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress.

    A three-judge panel that included two appointees of President Donald Trump ruled unanimously in January that the Alabama Legislature likely violated the Voting Rights Act with the map. “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel said.

    The judges ordered state lawmakers to draw new lines for this year’s election and create a second district where Black voters either made up a majority or near majority of the population. But on a 5-4 vote in February, the Supreme Court sided with Alabama to allow this year’s congressional elections to take place without adding a second predominantly Black district. Two justices suggested it was too close to spring primaries to make a change.

    The lawsuit claims the Alabama congressional map dilutes the voting strength of Black residents by packing a large number of them into a single district — the 7th, where 55% of voters are Black — while fragmenting other communities. That includes the state’s Black Belt region and the city of Montgomery.

    The current districts leave the vast majority of Black voters with no realistic chance to elect their preferred congressional candidates anywhere outside the 7th district, the lawsuit contends.

    “This is just about getting Black voters, finally, in Alabama the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. It’s not necessarily guaranteeing that they will have their candidate elected,” said Deuel Ross, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs.

    The groups contend that the state’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district. Milligan, who is six generations removed from enslaved ancestors who lived in the Black Belt, ticked off the consequences for Black residents who are not able to have representation that aligns with their needs: addressing generational poverty, the lack of adequate internet service, Medicaid expansion and the desire for a broader array of health care services.

    “In choosing not to do that, you’re denying the people of the Black Belt the opportunity to elect an additional person that can really go to the mat on their interests,” said Ross, who is one of the attorneys who will argue the case in a challenge backed by the Biden administration.

    ___

    African Americans served in Alabama’s congressional delegation following the Civil War in the period known as Reconstruction. They did not return until 1993, a year after the courts ordered the state to reconfigure the 7th Congressional District into a majority-Black one, which has since been held by a succession of Black Democrats. That 1992 map remains the basis for the one in use today.

    “Under numerous court challenges, the courts have approved this basic plan. All we did is adjust it for population deviation,” said state Rep. Chris Pringle, a Republican and chairman of the legislative committee that drew the new lines.

    Alabama argued in court filings that the state’s Black population is too spread out to be able to create a second majority district without abandoning core redistricting principles such as keeping districts compact and keeping communities of interest together. Drawing such a district, the state argued, would require mapping acrobatics, such as connecting coastal areas in southwest Alabama to peanut farms in the east.

    In a statement to The Associated Press, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the map is “based on race-neutral redistricting principles that were approved by a bipartisan group of legislators.” He said it looks similar to three prior maps, including one cleared by the Justice Department and another enacted in the 2000s by “the Democrat-controlled Legislature.”

    “The Voting Rights Act does not force states to sort voters based on race,” Marshall said in a statement. “The VRA is meant to prohibit racial gerrymanders, not require them.”

    Standing in a meeting room at the Alabama Statehouse and pointing to a poster-size version of the map, Pringle said lawmakers prioritized a race-neutral approach. The lawsuit alleges the Republican lawmakers packed Black voters into certain areas, but Pringle said when they were drawing lines they “turned race off” as an option on the computer. Only later did they apply the racial data points.

    “I think the Supreme Court is going to back us up that we complied with existing law,” Pringle said.

    ___

    Alabama’s 7th Congressional District snakes a winding path from the western neighborhoods of Birmingham through the state’s Black Belt — a swath of land named for the rich soil that once gave rise to antebellum plantations — to sections of Montgomery.

    Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, who has represented the district, has been the lone Democrat among the state’s seven House members since she took office in 2011. The state’s other six districts have reliably elected white Republicans for the last decade.

    Sewell was the only member of Alabama’s delegation to support restoring the most effective anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted in a 2013 Supreme Court decision that also arose from an Alabama case. The provision, referred to as preclearance, forced Alabama, other states and some counties with a history of voting discrimination to get Justice Department or federal court approval before making any election-related changes.

    Some Black voters outside Sewell’s district say they feel their concerns are overlooked because there is no motivation for Republican officeholders in districts that favor the GOP to pay attention to their issues.

    “Fair representation and full representation of the voters in the state of Alabama would mean that a third of the population should get a third of the representation in Congress, and that at least includes one additional seat,” Sewell said. “Look, I think that I would welcome the opportunity to have another seat where I have a colleague that will fight for, you know, voting rights and civil rights, that that will understand that this country has gotten far when it comes to diversity. But we have a long ways to go.”

    Alabama’s congressional delegation voted unanimously for the CARES Act, which provided federal aid to state and local governments during the Trump administration as the COVID-19 outbreak was erupting across the country. But that unity vanished when President Joe Biden took office.

    Sewell was alone in the delegation in supporting the American Rescue Plan, legislation passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by Biden. Among other things, she said, the bill benefited community health centers and the health care response at historically Black colleges.

    One of them, Alabama State University, was founded two years after the Civil War and in an area where the districts divide. Sewell also was alone in supporting other significant legislation since Biden took office — including the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and the recent Inflation Reduction Act, which, among other provisions, capped out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients and helped millions of Americans afford health insurance by extending coverage subsidies.

    Those types of priorities speak to the Rev. Murphy Green, a local political activist who is supporting the long shot bid by the Democratic candidate in the race for the 2nd Congressional District, where the Republican incumbent won with 65% of the vote two years ago.

    He particularly pointed to the health care price controls enacted by Democrats, including for insulin. While diabetes also is a problem for white residents, it is especially systemic among Black people and the cost of drugs to combat it is a priority, Green said in an interview.

    “I am a diabetic,” he said. “My congressman voted against price controls on the cost of insulin.”

    ___

    Montgomery, which is split into two congressional districts, is a municipal version of the state when it comes to redistricting.

    From customers at a well-known barbershop to shoppers at a convenience store, from groups sitting in empty lots and residents in some of the neighborhoods that are being shifted, the question of who represents them in Congress and who will be on the ballot in November brings a range of answers.

    The 2nd Congressional District seat has been held by white Republicans for decades, except for two years when a conservative white Democrat got a bounce from turnout related to Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.

    Of dozens of people approached, the majority are aware there is an Alabama case going to the Supreme Court, but they don’t know details of the racial gerrymandering behind the case. Some are unaware of who their congressional representative has been.

    In Heritage Barber and Style Shop, a local Black barbershop that rides the line between the 2nd and 7th congressional districts and sits across from Alabama State, Stephen Myers, 77, talks about the state’s maps and attempts to minimize Black voting strength.

    “What’s different?” he said.

    In the decades he has lived in his home, Myers said he has never had the opportunity to cast a “meaningful” vote for a Democrat. Keeping people motivated under those conditions is a challenge, he said.

    The operator of a civil rights site tour, Myers said he passed along the significance of voting to his children and grandchildren, but motivating the current generation? “That’s a good question,” he said.

    The frustration is shared by the Rev. Benjamin Jones, who heads the St. James Missionary Baptist Church, a congregation of about 300 tucked into the former farmlands of east Montgomery County.

    He recalled the sacrifices of older generations during the civil rights movement. His father, for example, would attend protests and marches that sometimes ended with him going to jail, while his mother would stay home so she could bail him out.

    “So it is frustrating to know that people went through those type things, but seemingly in 2022 there hasn’t been that much progress in the voting arena in terms of being able to elect people,” he said. “It’s not about someone who shares your same skin tone, but someone who at least cares enough about your politics to be concerned about your issues.”

    ___

    The strategy to challenge a map with a safe majority-Black district comes with risks. As the case goes before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, advocates fear an adverse ruling could affect future redistricting cases.

    Five conservative justices were in the majority in the February vote blocking the use of the map during this year’s elections. A sixth, Chief Justice John Roberts, objected to the procedure his colleagues used to prevent the districts from being redrawn.

    But Roberts has a long history of opposition to the Voting Rights Act and wrote the opinion in the 2013 Supreme Court decision that dismantled part of the law.

    The February decision by the court is “a troubling sign of what may be to come,” said Michael Li, senior counsel in the Democracy Center for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

    He said there is a real chance the Supreme Court could further gut the Voting Rights Act and “make it all but impossible to use.”

    “If the VRA doesn’t apply in the Black Belt of Alabama, it is hard to see it applying in many places,” Li said.

    The effects of a decision in favor of Alabama could be widespread, potentially allowing states to dismantle or alter districts that have elected Black, Latino and other minority candidates.

    Standing by King’s former church in downtown Montgomery, one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs acknowledges the risk.

    “I am nervous and I’m not afraid to say that,” said 26-year-old Khadidah Stone. “I think the nervous part is looking at what happened in the summer with Roe v. Wade. When I’m looking at that, I look at what else is up to possibly being attacked.”

    Even if the plaintiffs prevail, the Alabama Legislature could redraw the lines in a way that actually could jeopardize the one majority Black, Democratic-leaning district. Lowering the percentage of Black voters in Sewell’s district could take an overwhelmingly safe district to one that is less so.

    Hank Sanders, a Democrat and former longtime state senator who helped draw the congressional map Alabama put in place 20 years ago, said there is a risk that “you could end up losing both.”

    But he said the risks have always been there in pursuing civil and voting rights. That is especially true in Alabama and more specifically Montgomery, where memorials to those advances coexist within sight of statues and memorials honoring the Confederacy.

    “If we didn’t take risks and we didn’t take a chance, we’d still be in segregation now,” he said.

    ___

    Sherman reported from Washington. Associated Press data reporter Aaron Kessler contributed to this report.

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of democracy receives support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    ___

    Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics

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