Name: The increasing sophistication of partisan gerrymandering
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The increasing sophistication of partisan gerrymandering

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1:30 AM on Mar 20, 2021 CDTA decade ago, sweeping Republican 2010 midterm election triumphs enabled GOP governors and legislatures to enact redistricting plans designed to give their party a U.S. House majority for the next decade.They mostly succeeded. But in 2018, demographic changes and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity among suburban voters helped Democrats regain their House majority, and they narrowly held it in 2020.Now, after fending off concerted Democratic state-level campaign efforts last year, GOP lawmakers are working to produce a similar result, again using a playbook that relies on their control of certain key states and the continuing decline in Rust Belt population.Since the GOP ended last year’s election just four seats short of a House majority and will continue to benefit from population shifts, it may not be hard. Along with the normal midterm reaction against the party in power, it means Democrats may have difficulty holding the House in 2022.But along with their advantages, Republican drafters face a new set of challenges: a delay in the U.S. census numbers that determine state allocations, increased state adoption of nonpartisan redistricting panels, and a pending congressional proposal that could prevent states from continuing the longstanding practice of partisan redistricting.To be fair, it’s something both parties have employed to their benefit. The late California Democratic congressman, Phil Burton, was a master of the art known as gerrymandering (from Elbridge Gerry, the 19th century Massachusetts governor who first used it). And in 1991, when Democrats still controlled the Texas Legislature, they created three majority minority districts and protected several white congressional incumbents despite the state’s increasingly Republican complexion.But two factors have made redistricting far more sophisticated — computers and increased partisanship. It’s much easier now than it once was to predict the electoral impact of the way district lines are drawn.In 2010, Republicans built in their national majority by giving themselves a margin of 32 seats in five highly competitive states: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Subsequent court-ordered redistricting wiped out the GOP advantages in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, leaving the GOP with a margin of 16 seats in the five states, not quite enough to offset those 2018 and 2020 Democratic suburban gains around the country.But in the current round, Republicans will again benefit from the continuing shift of population from the North and East to the South and West. Though the final numbers have not been set, Texas will probably gain three seats and Florida two, almost certainly enabling the GOP to wipe out the current Democratic margin just by reallocating the 435 House seats.Beyond that, Republicans still control the legislatures of all five states that provided their big advantage a decade ago. But three — North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania — have Democratic governors. And voters in both Michigan and Ohio passed proposals aimed at curbing the partisan aspect of redistricting. Finally, because Democrats took total control of the New York legislature, they can offset some GOP gains by doing there what they accuse the GOP of doing elsewhere, just as the Democratic margin in California (42-11) more than offsets the Republican advantage in Texas (23-13).In many states, including Texas, current legislative sessions were scheduled to enact both congressional and legislative redistricting plans for the next decade. But that’s been delayed because the Trump administration failed to complete the 2020 census in time, in part because the former president sought — unsuccessfully, it turned out — to exclude unauthorized immigrants though the Constitution requires representation for “the whole number of persons.”The Census Bureau said recently it won’t have final figures for reallocating House seats until Sept. 30, requiring special legislative sessions in many states, including Texas. In turn, that raises the prospect some won’t finish the redistricting process before the 2022 election cycle starts, especially since many plans may face court challenges. The Texas filing deadline for the March 1, 2022, primary is Dec. 13, 2021. Court challenges to the 2010 Texas Legislature’s pro-GOP redistricting weren’t finally settled until 2018.A potentially bigger threat to GOP control of congressional redistricting is the Democratic proposal to ban partisan reapportionment and require all states to use independent commissions with equal numbers from both parties. It’s one of the major provisions of a bill that would also set national election standards, which the House passed earlier this month.Similar legislation passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2019 but was blocked by the Senate’s Republican majority. This year’s version probably won’t attract many, if any, GOP senators, meaning it’s unlikely to get the 60 votes required to bring measures to a vote, since the Democratic majority is composed of 50 senators and Vice President Kamala Harris.That bill is one of the main reasons many Democrats want to scrap the Senate filibuster rule’s 60-vote requirement for legislation; it’s already been dropped for judicial and executive branch nominations. But at least two Democratic senators oppose the change, making it unlikely in the current Congress.That means that, in the end, Congress won’t prevent partisan gerrymandering, giving Republicans a more or less free ride to give themselves the redistricting advantage that will make it hard for Democrats to extend their control of the House.Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him via email at .Editorial and commentary from op-ed columnists, the editorial board and contributing writers from The Dallas Morning News, delivered three days a week.By signing up you agree to our

1:30 AM on Mar 20, 2021 CDTA decade ago, sweeping Republican 2010 midterm election triumphs enabled GOP governors and legislatures to enact redistricting plans designed to give their party a U.S. House majority for the next decade.They mostly succeeded. But in 2018, demographic changes and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity among suburban voters helped Democrats regain their House majority, and they narrowly held it in 2020.Now, after fending off concerted Democratic state-level campaign efforts last year, GOP lawmakers are working to produce a similar result, again using a playbook that...

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