Mark Joseph Stern tells Slate that the conservative Supreme Court’s pending ruling on the Voting Rights Act “appears certain to hand an electoral bonanza to Republicans” by letting southern Republicans “gerrymander Black and brown communities into oblivion.”
“The resulting maps will hand white voters almost total control over these states’ congressional maps, producing a net gain of 15 to 19 GOP seats in the House of Representatives,” Stern wrote.
But in a twist, Stern said Democrats could end up robbing Republicans of their victories by doing the same thing to the same minority communities in blue states, including in places like New York.
“Currently, to comply with the VRA, [the New York] legislature has grouped many minority neighborhoods — so-called communities of interest — in districts together. But since nonwhite voters are disproportionately Democratic, that produces 'wasted votes': ballots cast in excess of what the Democrat needs to win,” said Stern. “If the legislature ‘unpacked’ these districts by dispersing minorities into areas now dominated by white Republicans, it could enact a map that gives Democrats 24 House seats and Republicans just two. That’s a five-seat pickup for Democrats.”
Similar opportunities await the party in New Jersey, said Stern, with that state’s House delegation split between nine Democrats and three Republicans.
“The state has about five majority-minority districts. If nonwhite voters were redistributed more ‘efficiently,’ Democrats could likely pick up one or two more seats. Illinois currently sends 14 Democrats and three Republicans to the House, but as data scientist Zachary Donnini has shown, unpacking the state’s five majority-minority districts could wipe out its three GOP representatives. Democrats would then hold all 17 seats," he said.
Additionally, in Maryland and Nevada, redrawing multiple VRA-compliant districts could knock off each state’s lone GOP congressman. Together, these gerrymanders could give Democrats 12 more seats in the House, compared to Republicans’ estimated 15-plus pickup in the South.
“That doesn’t even include California, which is on the brink of handing Democrats five more seats through a ballot measure,” said Stern, citing California Democrats’ plan to neutralize blatant Republican gerrymanders in Texas. But after the Roberts court dissolves the Voting Rights Act, California could enact “an even more aggressive gerrymander that awards Democrats several more seats.”
But there is an ugly side effect to this gerrymander-free-for-all.
“The number of competitive elections will dwindle, and nonwhite representation will almost certainly fall,” said Stern. “Majority-minority districts have long driven diversity in the House, as the VRA intended, and their decline would likely deny Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans the federal representation they deserve.”
Read the Slate report at this link.