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The dataset will also show whether the census underestimated people of color in certain areas, and it will show whether individual states should add additional opportunity districts for blacks and Latinos, as required by the Voting Rights Act. This officially paves the way for a wave of lawsuits expected from both sides as the redistribution progresses.
The process is also at the center of the battle for control of Congress. The redistribution decisions made over the next few months will perhaps be the most important determining factor in whether the Democrats can retain their very slim majority in the House.
Crazy race to redistribute
A handful of states are expected to adopt new maps quickly, including Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Iowa. Other states with close maturities: Oregon, North Carolina, California and Virginia.
When the data drops Thursday afternoon, it will come in what is called a ‘legacy format’ – which means redistribution agencies will have to download large files and convert them so that they can be easily read by software. mapping. It may take days or weeks.
“It’s like Ikea furniture instead of Pottery Barn,” said Kelly Ward Burton, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “When you buy from Pottery Barn, everything comes together. It’s like, ‘This is your office.’ But when you get it from Ikea, it’s like, “Build it yourself. “
In Colorado, the state’s independent commission already released a draft map in late June using data that did not come from the 10-year tally. He will now update that map, which created a new district north of Denver, and commissioners will review the new plans on September 6.
“We needed the data to create preliminary plans so that we had something to say when we hit the road,” Jessika Shipley, director of personnel for the independent state commission, said of the first plans. But, with census data in hand, those map lines can – and probably will – shift. The commissioners also have yet to answer some philosophical questions that will greatly influence the final appearance of the map.
“They have the choice of saying what competitiveness should mean,” Shipley said. “Which communities of interest should be privileged over others? These types of decisions, essentially, are the ones they can make value judgments about and should make value judgments about. “
Some states are not limited by early deadlines for submitting new cards, but set early primary dates – and subsequently early filing deadlines. These could also be moved as states consider new cards.
Texas, which has a deadline of mid-December 2021 for candidates to apply for a March 1, 2022 primary, is one such state. But those dates may soon move: When GOP Gov. Greg Abbott called a second special state legislative session earlier this month, he called on lawmakers to consider a bill “changing the periods filing and associated election dates, including any second, for the Texas primary election in 2022.
(This special session is currently at a standstill because Democrats continued their walkout to protest Republican-led legislation that would add new barriers to voting.)
Illinois, another state that typically has early primaries, has already moved its primaries from mid-March to late June due to redistribution delays.
Who was counted – and how are they represented?
Democrats will look at the data to see if they can be successful in lobbying for new majority-minority districts, especially in the southern states. Possible candidates for additional opportunity districts in the South include Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia.
Any additional seats protected by the Voting Rights Act in those states would help increase the Democrats’ footprint in the South. The first step for Democratic groups is a lobbying campaign to urge these state legislatures to voluntarily create new districts. If that fails, the NDRC plans to take the case to court.
And the defenders are also looking outside the South. Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, ticked off a wide range of states – including Texas, Colorado, and California – as potential states where new Latin-dominated districts could be drawn.
Thursday’s post will also allow advocates to see how Americans have been counted – and, most importantly, whether a population has been missed or “underestimated.”
“Where do we know the people are, but they just weren’t counted due to unusual circumstances? Said Kathay Feng, national director of redistribution of the good government group Common Cause. She noted that in addition to the significant problems caused by the pandemic, this was the first time the Census Bureau had pushed people to respond online, a major change for the agency.
“It’s kind of like the Hubble Telescope. It’s the best we’ve got, but we know there’s a scratch on it, ”she said. added. “Can we know exactly where the distortion is, caused by that scratch on the lens?” “
Since the release of the distribution data in April, Latino politicians and advocates have constantly worried that their communities are underestimated, which could diminish the political representation of a rapidly growing population in the United States. could be done to remedy this, in particular for the redistribution of Congress.
“It’s really about how to prevent it for the next time,” Saenz said.
A changing legal landscape
The legal battles during this redistribution cycle will be very different from those of the past decade. Importantly, the 2019 Supreme Court ruling that federal courts should have no role in deciding partisan gerrymandering complaints ensures that state courts will take center stage in most future lawsuits.
With liberal judges generally being more likely to crack down on partisan gerrymandering, partisan lightening of the judiciary in individual states will be paramount. North Carolina and Pennsylvania court redistribution rulings in the middle of the decade suggest those justices are more open to side with Democrats seeking to prevent Republicans from drawing cards that are disproportionately in their favor.
But in 2020, Cheri Beasley, the Democratic Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court of North Carolina narrowly lost her reelection to Republican Paul Newby. The Chief Justice can play an important role in the redistribution of disputes.
Meanwhile, the Florida State Supreme Court has taken a sharp turn to the right thanks to a host of people appointed by GOP Governor Ron DeSantis. Even though voters in Florida changed the state’s constitution to bar state lawmakers from including politics in the redistribution, the change in the justice system has raised Democrats’ concerns that it will not shut down. Republican attempts to dismantle the new Democratic districts in Orlando and St. Petersburg. Those seats were drawn in the middle of the last decade, when a less conservative state Supreme Court overturned the initial GOP card.
Democrats have also become nervous about what they describe as a GOP-friendly top court in Virginia, which will intervene in the state redistribution process if there is a standoff by the state commission, who draws the cards for the first time.
The compressed redistribution schedule also means legal battles over constituency boundaries may not be resolved in time for the midterm elections. “Depending on where we think litigation is needed, we may need to make triage decisions and pursue some cases after the 2022 election,” said Saenz, who noted that the law-based cases on voting rights would still be brought to federal court. “Even if that means the election will have been held using faulty lines.”
But given the high-profile nature of the redistribution and the importance of what the lines of the map actually point to halfway through, policy makers are hoping the courts will prioritize and streamline these cases.
“When a judge wants to go fast, he can,” Ward Burton said. “And the judges during the redistribution, on the net for the most part, want to land the plane.”
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