Free Republic

Congratulations to Democrats who on Tuesday significantly increased their odds of picking up at least four House seats next November—thanks to New York’s Court of Appeals. A progressive 4-3 majority on the state’s high court bowed to the left and threw out the current court-ordered House map that was the most politically competitive in decades. The Legislature’s House map gave Democrats an edge in 22 of 26 seats, or 85%—significantly more than Joe Biden’s 61% vote share in 2020. We’ve long argued that proportional representation shouldn’t be required in map-making, but the Legislature’s disfigured districts were an egregious gerrymander that...

A new Republican majority on the state Supreme Court is making its preferences known. I’m not certain North Carolina has become the most anti-democratic state in the union. But over the past dozen years, we’ve surely joined the hunt. Our General Assembly has enacted, according to reviewing judges, among the largest, most pervasive racial gerrymanders ever presented to a federal court. Lawmakers used “surgical precision” to deny Black Tar Heels the right to vote. They created the most bald-faced and unrepentant political gerrymanders seen in modern America. They’ve effectively overturned municipal elections when they didn’t like the outcome. And they...

n June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a unanimous U.S. District Court decision that partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Although Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that the practice leads to results that “reasonably seem unjust,” he maintained that partisan gerrymandering is a “political question,” beyond the reach of federal courts. Each state, Roberts indicated, should manage its own redistricting process. Four justices dissented. In an emotional statement, which she read from the bench, Elena Kagan warned, “Left unchecked as the court does today, gerrymanderers like these may...

Democrats created a heavily gerrymandered congressional map in New York which was designed to help them pick up a few seats and thereby help preserve their majority in the House. But last month the NY Court of Appeals ruled the heavily gerrymandered map violated the state constitution in part because it was clearly drawn with partisan intent. Democrats argued that there wasn’t time to do anything about the maps so, even though they were unconstitutional, they would have to be used anyway. The court disagreed and handed the creation of new maps over to a special master, an elections expert...

The Democrats pushed too far and now they are left to turn on one another for political survival. That’s the landscape in New York where an ugly civil war has erupted thanks to the party’s epic failure in gerrymandering congressional districts for partisan gain that were overturned by the courts and order redrawn by a special master. “I thought it was disrespectful. We’ve served together a long time. He’s running in my district,” Upper East Side congresswoman Carolyn Maloney told The Post of her longtime fellow House member Jerrold Nadler’s sudden announcement that he’d be challenging for her long-held seat...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- For the second time this week, the Ohio Supreme Court has thrown out a Republican-drawn political map as an illegal gerrymander. In a 4-3 decision on Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered state lawmakers to draw a new congressional map, saying the one signed by Gov. Mike DeWine in November violates the state’s new anti-gerrymandering rules, approved by voters in 2018. Justices sided with voting-rights groups and a group led by former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder who had sued, saying the map disproportionately favored Republicans while “unduly” splitting three Democratic counties -- Hamilton, Summit and Cuyahoga...

Every decade, states redraw congressional district lines (and other seats as well) to account for changes in population, as per the Constitution. Often the party in power redraws the lines to retain and expand its power in a process called “gerrymandering.” “Gerrymandering distorts our democracy, and Democrats will enact measures to end partisan gerrymandering in federal elections,” according to the Democratic National Committee’s party platform...... “When you have a system that says we’re going to have purity in California and skulduggery in Texas, you end up with an unrepresentative chamber,” said to the Times. “We want to live in a...

"The new House map is more than half finished. And in many states where maps haven’t been finalized, the broad outlines are already visible. Taken together, the emerging picture is far more favorable for Democrats than most anticipated"

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit against his own state, claiming that its Democratic-controlled legislature violated the Voting Rights Act with its newly drawn congressional districts. "On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it is suing Texas over its new redistricting plan, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965," Hogan's office said in a press release Thursday. "Today, Governor Hogan called on the Biden administration to immediately add the State of Maryland to that lawsuit." While Hogan vetoed the legislature's new map, Democrats hold a supermajority in both...

Maryland Democrats are considering a radical overhaul of congressional district lines that would give them a chance to win all eight of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, putting the lone Republican representative at risk. Two of the four draft maps released by the General Assembly’s Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission spell trouble for Rep. Andy Harris (R), who represents a district that covers the Eastern Shore. Those proposals would add hundreds of thousands of voters from Anne Arundel County, home of Annapolis, in with voters from the less populous counties on the Eastern Shore. The two halves...

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Alex Mooney over Rep. David McKinley in a primary contest pitting the two Republican West Virginia lawmakers against one another. Following a loss in population after the 2020 census, West Virginia will lose a seat from its House delegation, consolidating large portions of the districts currently represented by Mooney and McKinley. Both will seek reelection. McKinley was one of the 13 House Republicans who recently voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as one of the 35 Republicans to vote in favor of an independent Jan. 6 commission, both to the chagrin of...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A lawsuit filed Tuesday as lawmakers get set to draw Alabama's new congressional map is challenging the state's current congressional districts, saying they are “racially gerrymandered” and limit Black voters’ influence in all but one congressional district. Alabama currently has one majority-minority district represented by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, the lone Democrat and only Black member of Alabama’s congressional district. The lawsuit argues Alabama should have a congressional map that would “afford African Americans an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in at least two districts.”.... “Alabama’s current Congressional redistricting plan, enacted in 2011 is...

HARRISBURG — A key Pennsylvania lawmaker committed Monday to transparency measures aimed at making the decennial redrawing of the state’s congressional map a more open process than in the past. State Rep. Seth Grove (R., York) said his committee will hold at least eight public meetings across Pennsylvania and accept suggestions for the map through a new website. Those are central tenets of legislation introduced in recent years by state Rep. Wendi Thomas (R., Bucks) and backed by good-government groups including the Committee of Seventy and Fair Districts PA. “This new process will prevent extreme partisan gerrymandering and promote accountability...

HARRISBURG — A group of Pennsylvania Democrats is asking a state court to make preparations to take over congressional map-making duties, betting the divided government in Harrisburg won’t come to an agreement in time for the 2022 elections. The lawsuit, filed Monday by 16 Democratic voters represented by an arm of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, asks the Commonwealth Court to prevent the state’s current congressional map from being used in the 2022 elections and to put in place a schedule the judges must follow if they have to step in. The legal challenge comes just one day after the...

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) released a scathing letter to House Judiciary chief Jerry Nadler denouncing the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis. "The humanitarian and security crisis on our southern border is the direct result of President Biden's abrupt reversal of President Trump's successful immigration policy," Jordan's letter begins. "The Judiciary Committee... cannot ignore this crisis. "Because Democrats refuse to act, we write to notify you that Committee Republicans intend to travel to the southern border in the coming weeks to hear directly from individuals affected by the Biden border crisis." Explaining why Republicans will be traveling to the...

Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the House Judiciary Committee ranking member, recounted some of the aspects of a hearing and Big Tech, where he questioned how the First Amendment applied in certain circumstances. Jordan explained much of what Democrats were doing in the beginning stages of this Congress had bypassed the committee process. “They’ve been taking bills around the Judiciary Committee straight to the floor, almost every piece of legislation that’s passed in the last three weeks, we had jurisdiction over but the full committee is yet to have a hearing,” he said. “We’ve said why not have a hearing...

Former President Barack Obama will headline a fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) at Alex Soros’s New York City home on Monday evening.....Also expected to attend the NDRC event are the group’s founder and chairman, former Attorney General 'Eric Holder', and former Virginia governor and CNN contributor 'Terry McAuliffe'. Earlier this year, Obama’s political advocacy group, Organizing for Action (OFA), folded itself into Holder’s group and launched a campaign called “All On The Line” aimed at promoting redistricting reform.

As many as 1 in 5 seats in the House of Representatives may be competitive next year as population shifts and partisan realignment conspire to create one of the most widespread battlefields in generations. Democrats will find themselves on defense in dozens of districts the party captured in 2018, including 31 districts President Trump won in 2016. Already, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 36 members for its Frontline program, which protects endangered incumbents. Republicans, too, will have to defend districts in unexpected areas, seats that Democrats narrowly lost in 2018. Districts that have not been targets for years...

All five conservatives in the majority, all four liberals in dissent.To me, this is a case where it’s easy to see the virtue in both sides’ arguments. On the one hand, why should unelected, unaccountable jurists micromanage how the people’s representatives draw district lines for elections? The Constitution assigns that task to state legislatures, with Congress empowered to check a particular state legislature if it goes too far in favoring one party or the other. This is a democratic function to the core, in other words, specifically charged to political entities that are directly accountable to voters. There are...

Voters and other plaintiffs in North Carolina and Maryland filed suits challenging their States’ congressional districting maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. The North Carolina plaintiffs claimed that the State’s districting plan discriminated against Democrats, while the Maryland plaintiffs claimed that their State’s plan discriminated against Republicans. The plaintiffs alleged violations of the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Elections Clause, and Article I, §2. The District Courts in both cases ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and the defendants appealed directly to this Court. Held: Partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of...