The Major SCOTUS Ruling On Racial Redistricting

Yesterday's ruling by the Supreme Court on Alabama's discriminatory Congressional districts is expected to have far-reaching impacts on other Republican-dominated states trying to minimize African-American voting impact through gerrymandering. Coming as a surprise, given the right-wing makeup of the Court's majority, the ruling actually bolstered section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Court had previously weakened with its decision in Shelby v. Holder in 2013. The New York Times article looks at the impacts of the Alabama decision beyond that state's borders, and potentially to the future control of Congress:

"The ruling could result in multiple Southern states having their maps struck down through pending Voting Rights Act challenges.

In Louisiana, where Black voters make up one-third of the population, a case before the Supreme Court had been put on hold pending the Alabama decision. Now a second majority-Black district could be drawn.

'We know that in compliance with the principles of the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana can and should have a congressional map where two of our six districts are majority Black,' Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, a Democrat, said on Thursday. 'Today’s decision reaffirms that.'

The Supreme Court decision is also expected to send legislators in Georgia back to the drawing board for their congressional maps. On Thursday, a federal judge in a pending Georgia case asked both parties to provide supplemental materials in light of the new ruling.

And in Texas, where Republicans drew an aggressive gerrymander that could lock in power for a decade, nine cases in the federal court system could be affected by Thursday’s decision, according to a tracker kept by the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank.

Across the South, the decision raises the prospect of adding three majority-Black districts in reliably red states, changes that would upend what will be a pitched battle for control of the House of Representatives next year."  (our emphasis)

We're hoping the estimate of "three majority-black districts" in red states can be doubled or more, now that the conservative Supreme Court has rejected blatant attempts by the Republican / New Confederate / Shooters party to compress African-American voters into the fewest Congressional districts possible. Now, there's a real chance beginning in 2024 that Congressional elections in the South will reflect the population mix, rather than the desire of Republicans to choose their electorate.

 

Ohio Supreme Court Nixes Republican Gerrymander

More of this, please:

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down GOP-drawn state House and Senate district maps as unconstitutional gerrymandering in a 4-3 decision Wednesday, sending the maps back to the drawing board.

Advocates of redistricting reform hailed the decision as a resounding victory for Ohio voters who overwhelmingly approved changes to the state constitution to limit partisan line-drawing in 2015.

“This ruling sends a clear message to lawmakers in Ohio: they may not put politics over people," said attorney Freda Levenson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, who argued for opponents of the maps.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio Redistricting Commission – which is tasked with drawing legislative maps and dominated by Republicans – could not ignore parts of the Ohio Constitution that required them to attempt to match the statewide voting preferences of voters, according to the court's majority opinion, written by Justice Melody Stewart. 

Those preferences, according to Stewart's opinion, were 54% for Republican candidates and 46% for Democratic candidates over the past decade. [snip]

On Sept. 16, Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission approved maps that would allow the GOP to retain its veto-proof majority in the state Legislature over the objections of the commission's two Democrats.

According to Huffman, R-Lima, the maps could give Republicans a 62-37 advantage in the House and 23-10 advantage in the Senate. 

Credit where due, the deciding vote was by Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.  But give huge credit to the National Redistricting Action Fund, Marc Elias, and Ohio voters.

It's a BFD --

Hugely-consequential ruling -- perhaps the most significant of the redistricting cycle so far. Ohio Republicans basically ignored a constitutional amendment voters adopted in 2015 requiring more fairness in drawing maps. Ohio supreme court today is stepping in to enforce it. https://t.co/tXD2k01azu

— Sam Levine (@srl) January 12, 2022

 

 (Cartoon:  John Cole, NCPolicyWatch.com)

SCOTUS Rejects Republican Gerrymander Challenge In Virginia

Bad news for Republican gerrymandering in Virginia:

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the challenge to a lower court’s findings that some of Virginia’s legislative districts were racially gerrymandered, saying that House Republicans did not have legal standing to challenge the decision.

The decision could give an advantage to the state’s Democrats. All 140 seats in the legislature are on the ballot this fall, and the GOP holds two-seat majorities in both the House (51 to 49) and the Senate (21 to 19).

Democrats have been hoping that a wave of success in recent Virginia elections will propel them to control of the legislature for the first time since 1995.

The party that controls the General Assembly in 2021 will oversee the next statewide re­districting effort, following next year’s census — potentially cementing an advantage in future elections.  [snip]

It realigns a total of 26 House districts as it remedies the 11 under court order. Six Republican delegates would find themselves in districts with a majority of Democratic voters, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. (our emphasis)

The 5-4 decision presented an odd alignment, with Justice Ginsberg writing the majority opinion:

She was joined in an unusual alignment by Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Neil M. Gorsuch.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, saying he saw no support “for the proposition that Virginia law bars the House from defending, in its own right, the constitutionality of a districting plan.” He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Didn't see that one coming.

Each of the gerrymandering cases making their way to the Court is different, but the Virginia case might be less egregious than the others, but is no less significant.  This ruling (based only on legal standing) would also seem to make the outcome of those other state cases less predictable (disclaimer:  we're not lawyers; we only play them on this blog).

Voting Rights Include Fair And Proportional Representation

This adds to the case that the 2018 mid- terms represented a big blue wave at the Congressional level:

Democrats received more than 8 million more votes than Republicans during the 2018 midterms, according to NBC pic.twitter.com/IHpbcM73dR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 20, 2018

Steve Benen notes:

...[T]he Democratic lead in the U.S. House popular vote now stands at 7.8%, up from 7.7% yesterday, and it may yet inch higher. For comparison purposes, note that in 2010 – which was widely seen as a GOP “wave” cycle – Republicans won the U.S. House popular vote by 6.6%. In 1994, which was seen as a Republican “revolution,” the GOP won the U.S. House popular vote by 7.1%.

Unfortunately, decades of Republican gerrymandering in State legislative districts has led to results like this (click on image to enlarge):

The gain of over 300 State legislative seats was a great beginning for Democrats this year -- but only just that, a beginning.  Tellingly, in Michigan and several other states voters supported initiatives to end gerrymandering through independent redistricting commissions. 

At the Federal level, the courts are taking up cases to end gerrymandering of Congressional districts. The Brennan Center for Justice provides a snapshot of those efforts here.

Voting rights -- including the rights of voters to be fairly and proportionally represented -- will be an ongoing battle as the Republican Party seeks to maintain reactionary (white) power in an increasingly hostile political and demographic environment.  In the past, Democrats have been accused of being asleep at the switch in these partisan redistricting battles.  But with the 2020 Census looming and new Democratic control of a number of key Statehouses (including key Secretary of State wins), we have an opportunity to begin to level the playing field, and we know what we need to do and how important it is that we do it.

BONUS:  Good question --

About 60 million people turned out to vote for Democrats for the House this year. That is a **crazy** number. (Republicans got 45m votes in the 2010 wave.)

And this was sort of missed. Why so many stories about Trump voters in truck stops and not so many about "the resistance"?

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 18, 2018

BONUS II:  Here's your answer. Sic transit gloria, America.

Republican-Gerrymandered North Carolina Districts Ruled Unconstitutional (Again)

The Republican cheats lose another round:

A panel of three federal judges held Monday that North Carolina’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans over Democrats and said it may require new districts before the November elections, possibly affecting control of the House. 

The judges acknowledged that primary elections have already produced candidates for the 2018 elections but said they were reluctant to let voting take place in congressional districts that courts twice have found violate constitutional standards. [snip] 

“We continue to lament that North Carolina voters now have been deprived of a constitutional congressional districting plan — and, therefore, constitutional representation in Congress — for six years and three election cycles,” [Judge James A.] Wynn wrote. “To the extent allowing the General Assembly another opportunity to draw a remedial plan would further delay electing representatives under a constitutional districting plan, that delay weighs heavily against giving the General Assembly another such opportunity.” 

He proposed several unusual ideas: appointing a special master to draw new districts, holding general elections without party primaries or even turning the November elections into a primary and holding the general election sometime before the new Congress convenes in January.

It would be hard not to conclude, as Federal courts now have for the second time, that the election- rigging gnomes in the North Carolina Republican/ New Confederate Party have been up to no good, and would continue their unconstitutional map drawing if given the opportunity.  After all, the helpful morons had already come out and admitted it:

“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” said Rep. David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly, addressing fellow legislators when they passed the plan in 2016. “So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.” 

He added: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”  (our emphasis)

That's very white of you, Rep. Lewis!

Since printing of ballots has been halted by an injunction, any of the options outlined by the court is feasible.  The vote- riggers have until Friday to show the court why they should get a third try. (Spoiler alert:  the chances of that happening are "slim" and "are you effing kidding me?") The likely outcome is expected to be having a Special Master draw up new district boundaries by September 17, choosing from a number of already- existing maps that would pass constitutional muster.

Monday Reading

As always, please read the full articles!

Greg Sargent has a must- read that asserts that the "Nunes memo" is a fiasco that is going to have damaging repercussions to un- indicted co- conspirator Donald "Rump" Trump:

It is still very possible that President Trump could use the Nunes memo as a pretext to try to quash or constrain special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe. Trump tweeted over the weekend that the memo “totally vindicates” his claim that the investigation is a “witch hunt,” which is an absurd lie in every possible respect, but it shows he’s still mulling a move on Mueller. 

But the performance of congressional Republicans on the Sunday shows — and a weekend’s worth of legal analysis taking apart the Nunes effort — together suggest another possibility. The Nunes memo affair may be shaping up as a much bigger fiasco than we even know — so bad, in fact, that it could ultimately undermine Trump’s position even more dramatically than we could have expected.

He concludes,

In the end, Trump could still use the Nunes memo to hamstring Mueller by firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and replacing him with a loyalist to oversee the probe. But this would now have to happen either after the Schiff rebuttal served to reinforce the investigation’s legitimacy, or after Trump suppressed the Schiff rebuttal even though it could further undermine his own rationale for taking such a dramatic step. Trump is shameless enough to do this in either scenario. But it could now be harder for congressional Republicans to go along with it. This would not be the case if not for Nunes’s antics — which Trump backed.

We can only hope.

Tea party director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Mick "Dick" Mulvaney is back in the news. Following his actions to protect the payday loan shysters, he's continuing to do his best to further castrate the bureau and help his buds in the financial industry:

Mick Mulvaney, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has pulled back from a full-scale probe of how Equifax Inc failed to protect the personal data of millions of consumers, according to people familiar with the matter.  

Equifax (EFX.N) said in September that hackers stole personal data it had collected on some 143 million Americans. Richard Cordray, then the CFPB director, authorized an investigation that month, said former officials familiar with the probe. [snip] 

Three sources say, though, Mulvaney, the new CFPB chief, has not ordered subpoenas against Equifax or sought sworn testimony from executives, routine steps when launching a full-scale probe. Meanwhile the CFPB has shelved plans for on-the-ground tests of how Equifax protects data, an idea backed by Cordray. 

The CFPB also recently rebuffed bank regulators at the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency when they offered to help with on-site exams of credit bureaus, said two sources familiar with the matter.  (our emphasis)

The U.S. Supreme Court just rejected an attempt by Pennsylvania Republicans when it refused to block the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court's order to scrap the Republican- gerrymandered congressional map and replace it with a fair one by February 15:

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt Republican gerrymandering a crippling blow when it refused to block a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that struck down the GOP’s congressional map for illegally discriminating against Democratic voters. The state court had ordered the Republican-controlled legislature to draw and pass a new map by Feb. 15, but GOP leaders have refused to cooperate with the ruling after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf promised to veto any new gerrymander. As a result, the state court itself will likely draw new nonpartisan districts, which could lead to major Democratic gains this fall—anywhere from one to as many as six seats.​ [snip] 

At the same time, because the state Supreme Court’s case is based on Pennsylvania law, this case can’t set a legal precedent for other states. However, the standard that the judges have established could influence federal courts that are hearing challenges to other partisan gerrymanders in pending cases in Maryland, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. This ruling could also encourage reformers to challenge maps elsewhere under their own state constitutions. 

Ultimately, this decision is a monumental victory against one of the worst Republican gerrymanders in the country, and it’s a massive game-changer for Democratic chances of gaining a House majority in November.

Significantly and surprisingly, ultra- right Justice Samuel Alito was the one who denied the stay. Things are looking up.

Finally, as customary, we would draw your attention to the link round- up put together by Infidel for an afternoon's worth of exploration.

Republican Gerrymandering Quantified

The Associated Press conducted a study of U.S. House and State legislative races in 2016 and found, just as Donald "Rump" Trump said, the election was being rigged (but not in the way the dimbulb was suggesting):

The analysis found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones. Among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress, there were nearly three times as many with Republican-tilted U.S. House districts. 

Traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Virginia were among those with significant Republican advantages in their U.S. or state House races. All had districts drawn by Republicans after the last Census in 2010. 

The AP analysis also found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have been expected based on the average vote share in congressional districts across the country. That helped provide the GOP with a comfortable majority that stood at 241-194 over Democrats after the 2016 elections — a 10 percentage point margin in seats, even though Republican candidates received just 1 percentage point more total votes nationwide. (our emphasis)

Not that this comes as a news flash, of course. Sam Wang identified the effort known as "Redmap" back in 2012:

Through artful drawing of district boundaries, it is possible to put large groups of voters on the losing side of every election. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington-based political group dedicated to electing state officeholders, recently issued a progress report on Redmap, its multiyear plan to influence redistricting. The $30 million strategy consists of two steps for tilting the playing field: take over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redraw state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages. The plan was highly successful.

The Supreme Court is considering a case (Gill v. Whitford) of egregious partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin, and other cases are awaiting Supreme Court review.  While the outcome of these cases may not affect the 2018 or 2020 elections, they will certainly determine how aggressively Republicans will try to use 2020 census data to rig future State and U.S. House elections wherever they can.  Along with voter suppression actions, that's pretty much their last line of defense against popular democracy.