The redistricting wars

A redistricting war is currently playing out between red states and blue states following the call by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for a special session of the state legislature last month, in part to debate the possibility of mid-decade redistricting.

Typically, state legislatures (or their “independent” commissions) redraw maps every 10 years after census counts are taken. But in early July, Texas received a letter from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division regarding four Congressional districts they say “are vestiges of an unconstitutional racially based gerrymandering past, which must be abandoned, and must now be corrected by Texas.”

A week later, President Trump signaled he’d like to see Texas redraw its Congressional maps before the 2026 midterms.

Trump’s call and Abbott’s ordering of the special session prompted outrage from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic governors like New York’s Kathy Hochul and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, all of whom have accused Republicans of “cheating” ahead of a critical midterm election year where control of Congress is at stake.

Some Democrats in the Texas legislature have fled to those states in order to deny Texas Republicans the necessary quorum needed to pass legislation.

Because California has a voter-approved independent commission that is only supposed to redraw its maps every 10 years, Newsom has called for a special election in November in hopes of temporarily changing the rules so that they can play “payback” with Texas.

Hochul has said she’s tired of having her hands tied behind her back on this issue and is looking into “legal options” as her state has a similar voter-approved independent commission in place.

Despite these commissions, California is one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country. New York is another, with Democrats under Hochul’s watch pressing for gerrymanders after the 2020 Census in a process that ultimately played out in the courts for several years.

It is Illinois, however, that perhaps is the worst among them. The Princeton Gerrymander Project’s report card rating for the Democrat-controlled state on the Congressional maps that were enacted in 2021 was “F” across the board on the categories of “partisan fairness,” “competitiveness” and “geographic features.”

Left out of a lot of the reports about the redistricting wars is the fact that it was revealed in 2022 that 14 states had “significant” miscounts from the 2020 Census, with red states bearing the brunt of the errors.

NPR reported at the time that, “A follow-up survey the bureau conducted to measure the national tally’s accuracy found significant net undercount rates in six states: Arkansas (5.04%), Florida (3.48%), Illinois (1.97%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%) and Texas (1.92%).”

Most of those are, of course, red states. The states that were overcounted were mostly blue: “Delaware (5.45%), Hawaii (6.79%), Massachusetts (2.24%), Minnesota (3.84%), New York (3.44%), Ohio (1.49%), Rhode Island (5.05%) and Utah (2.59%).”

As Kristin Tate, an Independent Women’s Voice visiting fellow, noted at the time, “With the possible exception of Illinois not losing a seat, the likely effects of an accurate count would have overwhelmingly aided red states.”

So, yeah, it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for Democrats at present seeing that Republicans presumably were just supposed to sit back and wait until 2030 to (hopefully) rectify the issues that stemmed from the 2020 Census counts in their states.

Here in North Carolina, we’re very familiar with Democratic gerrymandering, and we’re also familiar with how Democrats have continued to try to control the process here through the courts, even in the aftermath of losing control of the General Assembly in 2010 after being in the majority for over 100 years.

So I’m not a purist on this issue. If Republicans in Texas or any other red state choose to play hardball on this issue, more power to them.

North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.