Republicans Retain a Marginal Advantage in Redistricting

One of the many big surprises in this month's surprising election was the Democrats' failure to overturn Republican majorities in state legislatures. Various Democratic committees budgeted $88 million to flip majorities in big states such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina. Total gains: zero.

That's a bad return on lavish investments in money and psychic energy. Liberals have been bemoaning partisan redistricting as a betrayal of democracy, as politicians removing choice from the people.

Such rhetoric is overheated and ahistorical. Those who have followed redistricting since the Supreme Court's equal population decisions in 1964, as I have, know that redistricting can give a party a marginal and temporary advantage -- but that the voters have the final say.

I remember few lamentations about the evils of redistricting in the cycles following the 1960, 1970 and 1980 censuses, when Democrats mostly controlled state legislatures and when Phillip Burton, who held what is now Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco seat, was crafting clever plans.

Partisan redistricting, plus skillful young politicians first elected in the Watergate years and crafty conservatives from the South, enabled Democrats to control the House for 40 straight years. High-minded liberals had no problems with redistricting then.

That started to change in the 1990s, as Watergate babies and Dixiecrats retired, died or were defeated and Newt Gingrich's Republicans won a House majority in 1994. Redistricting was a partisan wash after the 1990 census, and Republicans had a clear advantage in the 2000 and 2010 census cycles. That helped them hold House majorities for 20 of the past 26 years and control 59 of the nation's 99 state legislative chambers.

Yet the Republicans' partisan advantage is not as overwhelming as it seems. Some eight states give some role in redistricting to supposedly nonpartisan independent commissions. Democrats have proved adept at gaming their proceedings. Voters have imposed restrictions on redistricters, and in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Democratic governors can veto Republican legislatures' plans.

Technically, after this month's elections, Republicans control redistricting in states with 188 congressional districts, and Democrats control it in states with only 47. But redistricters' leverage is limited in the 35 states with fewer than 10 congressional districts.

The most important thing to understand about redistricting is that the equal-population standard set by the Supreme Court in 1964 limits the advantage any party or faction can gain over the 10-year period between censuses.

If you create too many 53 percent districts, you may end up losing most of them if your party's percentage of the population there falls 5 points. That happened to Michigan Republicans in the 2010s, just as it did to California Democrats in the 1960s.

The other problem for partisan redistricters is that political alignments can change over a decade. As parties gain among one segment of the electorate (as Democrats have with high-credential voters and Republicans among blue-collar whites), districts that favored one party at the beginning of a decade swing toward the other before it ends. The affluent Houston and Dallas seats, which were the most Republican congressional districts in the nation in the 1980s, elected Democrats in 2018 and 2020.

Such changes are the rule rather than the exception. Neither party has won House majorities in all five congressional elections following the censuses of 1990, 2000 or 2010.

Next month, the Census Bureau will release the 2020 census totals that trigger the statutory formula reapportioning the 435 House seats among the states. Texas and Florida, which account for about one-third of the nation's population growth since 2010, are expected to gain multiple seats, and five other states are expected to gain one each. New York, Illinois and (for the first time ever) California are among the 10 states expected to lose one each.

Then redistricters get to work in the states. RealClearPolitics analyst Sean Trende writes that with "non-aggressive" redistricting, Republicans could gain six seats, and Democrats could lose six seats -- a small number though enough to cost the Democrats their apparent 222-213 majority.

Partisan redistricters may get more aggressive, as Republicans did in the 2010 cycle after Illinois Democrats created multiple "bacon strip" districts extending from Chicago wards out through suburbs and into the countryside.

That could raise Republican net gains up to a dozen. But that's about as many as they gained in this nonredistricting year.

One factor helping Republicans over the past two decades has been demography. Democratic voters -- blacks, Hispanics, gentry liberals -- tend to be clustered geographically, in central cities, sympathetic suburbs and university towns. Republican voters are spread around more evenly.

But maybe this is changing. This year, Donald Trump ran better than previous Republicans among Hispanics and blacks, and Joe Biden ran better than previous Democrats in affluent highly educated suburbs. Partisan redistricters will want to take these trends into account, but how long will the trends last, and how far will they extend? The perfect partisan redistricter requires a knowledge of the future as well as the past.

The article puzzlingly omits a very important part of this process: the lawsuits, often before very fickle and partisan judges, state and federal.

In past, this has resulted in some very bad decisions, usually favoring Democrats. One telling disparity is racial adjustment.

That is, one federal judge decided one states’ redistricting was unfair because its black voters were not concentrated in one place, so the district had to take a convoluted form to capture black voters so they at least had a chance to get a black representative.

But a different federal judge, in a different state, took *kind* of the opposite approach. That one to three state districts had almost all of the black voters, almost guaranteeing them between one and three black representatives.

But had all the districts in the state been racially diverse, black voters would at least have a chance to get black representatives in *more* than one to three districts, even though they would remain a minority in all districts.

To make matters worse, until President Trump, there were a group of states that had for years been under Just Us Department “consent decrees”, so they couldn’t change anything involving elections without the agreement of the Just Us Department.

So what happens if the Just Us Department and the fickle federal judges disagree?

BARONE: One big surprise in the 2020 election was the Democrats' failure to overturn Republican majorities in state legislatures.
Democrats budgeted $88 million to flip majorities in big states such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina. Total gains: zero.

It's disconcerting that Barone omits the biggest 2020 glitch ...... the Democrats redistricting debacle.
Is Barone trying to shield Obama, and his go-fer Holder's, resounding belly flop WRT redistricting?

In Massive Blow To Obama and Holder, Republicans Handily Won Virtually Almost Every House Race
Huge Loss for Obama's dream: a permanent Dem majority
Thegatewaypundit.com ^ | November 20 2020 | Mike LaChance / FR Posted by SmokingJoe

.....one aspect of the 2020 race is being overlooked even though it’s huge. Not only did Republicans make considerable gains in the House, that no one expected, they won most of the races that will entail redistricting. This is like a double loss for Democrats Every 10 years, after the census, congressional and state legislature districts are redrawn to account for population changes. This gives whoever is drawing the maps the power to maximize the number of districts that favor their party — a tactic known as gerrymandering. And as we wrote last month, the 2020 election represented the last chance for voters to weigh in on who would draw those maps.

Both parties went into the election with a chance to draw more congressional districts than the other, but the end result was just about the best-case scenario for Republicans. As the map below shows, Republicans are set to control the redistricting of 188 congressional seats — or 43 percent of the entire House of Representatives. By contrast, Democrats will control the redistricting of, at most, 73 seats, or 17 percent.

How did Republicans pull that off? By winning almost every 2020 election in which control of redistricting was at stake… (Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...

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latimes.com
CIRCA 2019 Obama and Holder take on partisan gerrymandering with redistricting
SOURCE https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-08-27/obama-partisan-gerrymandering-redistricting-u-initiative Aug 27, 2019 — In one of his first public political actions since he left the White House, Obama unveiled Redistricting U on Twitter as an in-person training arm ...All On The Line, launched earlier this year, is a combination of Obama's "Organizing For Action" and former Attorney General Eric Holder's "National Redistricting Action Fund."

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cnn.com
CIRCA 2019 Ex-President Barack Obama announced a new initiative that will help volunteers influence redistricting efforts in states across the country.

"Redistricting U," an extension of his "All On The Line" campaign, will send trainers to provide free training and tools to volunteers about their state redistricting process, gather feedback on ways to improve their communities and teach them how to be leaders in the fair map movement, according to the initiative's website.

All On The Line, launched earlier this year, is a combination of "Obama's Organizing For Action" and former Attorney General "Eric Holder's National Redistricting Action Fund."

Obama said he has always believed "training is at the heart of organizing." "It's why I made it a priority in my 2008 campaign and throughout our larger movement for change in the years since," Obama said in a statement on the group's website. He added, "The movement for fair maps will determine the course of progress on every issue we care about for the next decade. And we can't wait to begin organizing when the redistricting process starts in 2021. We need to build this movement from the ground up -- right now." This is the latest effort by Obama to push for voting reform and fight against gerrymandering. The Obamas have long pushed for increased voter participation and fought against partisan gerrymandering.

2020 Redistricting map.

2 examples of redistricting which bears a serious review

IN THE RACE FOR HOUSE SEATS EVERYONE RUNNING UNDER THE DEMON-O-CRAT LABEL VOTED FOR THESE TWO ISSUES
ABORTION FUNDING SUPPORT AND THIS

FORCE Schools To Let Male Athletes Compete In Girls’ Sports...Any Dem congressman who didn’t support this got kicked out by holding their primary in remapped districts.This effort by those in control of the demo party shpould have been used to demonstrate where that party is coming from. Why weren’t those votes an issue in this 2020 campaign by the Republicans ? Not just where this occurred but nationally?

.. Democratic candidate for America’s Vice President California and likely presidential replacement Sen. Kamala Harris sponsored a Senate bill that would that would force funding public schools to allow biologically male athletes who identify as transgender on girls’ sports teams.

In March 2019, Harris cosponsored the Equality Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . Among other things, the bill would force public schools to expand female athletic teams to include biological males who identify as transgender girls
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3873820/posts
.Also did this http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3877896/posts and this http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3880192/posts

.. HERE’S HOW THEY TREATED CONSERVATIVE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS WHO DONT SUPPORT FUNDING STUFF LIKE THIS

.. And why there is no such thing as a Conservative Dem in Congress An example is Illinois 3rd district
..
Todays Democrats weren’t happy with this father then son votes against abortion and the son’s being the only congressional democrat to vote NO on allowing men to to call themselves a women and compete with women in college sports. To stop this the demoncrats decided to remap the areas which supported them for their 2020 primary.

The ward (the 23rd) and the congressional district formerly the 5th which they changed into being the 3rd Illinois congressional by taking ward areas which had areas dominated by hispanic fore names and placed them into the Louis Gutierez district.

In the reshaped 3rd Congressional district primary Daniel Lipinski lost because of this redistricting. Of a district which had previously included adjacent Chicago city wards to his 23rd. which was “re-mapped in 2012 after former alderman and ward committeeman now congressman William O Lipinski annouced his retirement and wanted his son for his congressional replacement .

The remap was replacing ward boundaries of the 14th known as the stockyards which had experienced extensive demographic changes. They chopped up and placed sections of streets and blocks that were not only in the 23rd but the of adjacent 12th and 15th wards and made them the 14th ward

Now because Chicago alderman oversee routing of such things as garbage collections and getting city services . Some have complained of seeing rodents since as well as complained of poor road maintenance on their block. Because with this remap if your residence was in one ward your neighbor across the street or a block down is might be in another ward

.. The 5th was a district in the 1950’s which was a part of the third largest school district in the country run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Those city wards were primarily composed of dozens of traditional value family oriented Catholic/Christian communities centered around their churches and their schools. Hence opposed to funding such things as abortion and LGBT activities rather for issues that dealt exclusively with city issues such as a subway L service and the Stevenson Expressway.

These Wards once were reliable supporters of Dan’s father, William O Lipinski. But after the 2012 redistricting the number of precincts in the 23rd were cut back to 39 and even their ward headquarters location was stuck in another ward.

And where many wards had areas with Hispanic last names those areas were redistricted and assigned to the Louis Gutieriez’s district. In areas where buildings were abandoned affected by the no money down home mortgages or had changed because of this. The ward such as the 14th known as Back of The Yards because of the former stock yards which has since relocated was remapped to include portions of other wards mainly the 23rd which Those results actually tear up the concept of a neighborhood and pit people against each other by using division.

In some of those wards areas of city blocks which were zoned exclusively for single family dwellings residents suddenly found their neighborhood having houses torn down and being replaced with multiple apartments with the units not required to furnish parking facilities and many renters were illegals. Much of which fit the plans for the suburbs
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3881650/posts
http://www.theusmat.com/mdwbea.htm

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