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You are here: Home / Archives for Redistricting

Democrats Could Pick Up Two Seats Under New Map

November 15, 2019 at 6:36 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“North Carolina Democrats could gain two congressional seats under a redistricting proposal promoted by Republican legislative leaders Thursday — but some of them say it is not enough,” the Washington Post reports.

“The new map is one of nearly two dozen proposals offered in recent days by state lawmakers, who began redrawing the lines of the state’s 13 congressional districts after a state court ruled earlier this month that the GOP illegally gerrymandered the lines for partisan gain.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

North Carolina Judges Order New Election Maps

October 28, 2019 at 7:42 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“North Carolina’s 2020 congressional elections must happen under new maps, a panel of judges ruled Monday evening, saying that the current Republican-drawn maps are unfair to many voters,” the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

“The legislature must now redraw the state’s 13 U.S. House districts. The judge — two Democrats and one Republican from different parts of North Carolina — wrote that the maps show signs of ‘extreme partisan gerrymandering’ which ‘is contrary to the fundamental right of North Carolina citizens to have elections conducted freely and honestly to ascertain, fairly and truthfully, the will of the people.'”

“Monday’s ruling, a preliminary injunction, said the state may not hold any elections for Congress using the current maps passed in 2016.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

Racial Gerrymandering Expert Worked In Other States

October 1, 2019 at 10:12 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The reach of late Republican gerrymandering mastermind Thomas Hofeller may be longer than previously known,” The Intercept reports.

“While Hofeller was known for drawing maps to give Republicans an advantage and to limit the impact of voters of color in North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, and Virginia, the new documents reveal he also participated in the 2010 redistricting cycle in Alabama, Florida, and West Virginia.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

Secret Files Show Efforts to Racial Gerrymander Districts

September 6, 2019 at 4:40 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Newly acquired e-mails and records reveal that Republican Party operative Thomas Hofeller may have unconstitutionally used race data to draw congressional districts in 2016, the New Yorker reports.

“Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race.”

“Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.”

Filed Under: Race, Redistricting

GOP Fears Democrats Will Dominate Redistricting

September 5, 2019 at 6:31 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “Democrats were caught napping before the last round of redistricting in 2010 — and it cost them control of Congress for nearly a decade. Now Republicans are warning the same thing could happen to them.”

“Senior Republicans concede they’re at risk of losing dozens of state-level elections that will determine who wields power over the post-2020 congressional map — and potentially which party controls the chamber for the following 10 years. While Republicans are establishing a massive national infrastructure devoted to reelecting President Donald Trump and winning congressional majorities, party officials say the state legislative races are being overlooked.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

Judges Strike Down North Carolina State Legislature Maps

September 3, 2019 at 4:32 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

State judges ruled that North Carolina’s political maps for the state legislature are unconstitutional and must be redrawn before the 2020 elections, the Raleigh News & Observer reports.

Rick Hasen: “This is a huge development that will put the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly in a tough position. Because this is decided as a matter of state constitutional law, it would be very hard to find a federal issue to take this to the United States Supreme Court for reversal.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

Harris Says Immigration Raids Will Distort Census

August 11, 2019 at 9:16 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Sen. Kamala Harris decried recent immigration raids as part of the Trump administration’s “campaign of terror” that will distort the upcoming 2020 census, Politico reports.

Said Harris: “This administration has directed DHS to conduct these raids as part of what I believe is this administration’s campaign of terror, which is to make whole, whole populations of people afraid to go to work.”

Filed Under: Immigration, Redistricting

A Font Made From Gerrymandered Congressional Districts

August 2, 2019 at 9:40 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The Week: “The creator of the Ugly Gerry typeface doesn’t identify themself on the Ugly Gerry website or Twitter feed. But they did blatantly call out the congressmembers representing those districts in tweets of each letter, and call on readers to ‘use the font to tell Congress how happy you are that your vote doesn’t matter.'”

Filed Under: Redistricting

GOP Sues to Stop Michigan Redistricting Commission

July 30, 2019 at 11:02 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Republicans are suing to stop Michigan’s new citizen redistricting commission before it begins, alleging the voter-approved amendment is ‘blatantly unconstitutional’ and discriminates against participants based on political service or family ties,” the Detroit News reports.

“The amendment to the Michigan Constitution prohibits participation by anyone who in the last six years was a partisan candidate, elected official, political appointee, lobbyist, campaign consultant and officer or member of the governing body of a political party. It also excludes a parent, child or spouse of any of those individuals.”

Filed Under: Redistricting Tagged With: Michigan

GOP Could Bypass Governor to Gerrymander Wisconsin

July 29, 2019 at 11:37 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Wisconsin Examiner: “Now Democrats and fair-maps advocates are worried that Republicans might make an end-run around Evers by means of a joint resolution, passing a new map through the Assembly and Senate. Because joint resolutions do not require the governor’s signature, the map could go into effect without any input from the governor.”

Filed Under: Redistricting Tagged With: Wisconsin

How Talking About Census Question Helps Trump

July 8, 2019 at 7:00 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The Trump administration has few realistic options to get a citizenship question onto next year’s census, but by keeping the issue in the public eye it could still trigger an undercount of residents in Democratic-leaning areas,” Reuters reports.

“Constant media coverage linking citizenship and census forms could scare undocumented immigrants away from responding and rally U.S. President Donald Trump’s base to participate, they said. That, in turn, would help redraw voting districts across the country in favor of his Republican party, encouraging the president to pursue a legal battle that he has little chance of winning.”

Washington Post: The Trump administration has changed its story on the census citizenship question at least 10 times in four months.

Filed Under: Redistricting

Trump Just Undercut His Case on Census Question

July 5, 2019 at 2:35 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Trump just explained why he thinks we need a citizenship question on the census. But in doing so, he seems to have said the quiet part out loud — and conceivably could have undercut the Justice Department’s legal case,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Trump: “No. 1, you need it for Congress — you need it for Congress for districting. You need it for appropriations — where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons.”

“Take note of that first one. Not only was a redistricting rationale not mentioned by the administration in its failed legal defense of the question; it was actually something that the other side argued was the administration’s true motivation. The plaintiffs in the case — and many who oppose the citizenship question — have argued that this is a thinly veiled attempt by Republicans to gain a potential game-changing tool in redistricting.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

The Power to Draw Maps Is Also at Stake In 2020

July 5, 2019 at 8:43 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “While much of the country’s attention is focused on presidential politics, the gerrymandering ruling last week instantly raised the stakes for the nation’s state legislative races, which are often overlooked by voters, but can shape the course of policy from abortion rights to education.”

“Yet this cycle of legislative elections carries added significance: In most states, the political party that wins control of the legislature gains the power to draw once-a-decade maps setting district boundaries for state and congressional elections after a new census count. Acutely aware of that prize, which offers a chance to tilt political power further in one party’s favor, Republicans and Democrats are starting campaigns early, knocking on doors and rallying donors with the pitch that a tiny statehouse election in suburban Dallas or coastal Virginia could have national reverberations.”

Vox: Inside the battle to flip America’s state legislatures blue in 2020.

Filed Under: Redistricting

Administration Reverses Course on Census Question

July 3, 2019 at 11:23 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The Justice Department said Wednesday that the government is looking for a way to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, just one day after it said it would drop that effort and was printing the form without it,” the Washington Post reports

}The course reversal came just hours after President Trump said he was ‘absolutely moving forward’ with adding the question, in a tweet that seemed to catch government lawyers off guard as they were summoned by two federal judges to explain the administration’s change of heart.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

U.S. to Drop Citizenship Question from Census

July 2, 2019 at 5:02 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The Trump administration said Tuesday that it would be printing forms for the 2020 census without a question asking about citizenship, abandoning its quest to add the query after being blocked last week by the Supreme Court,” the New York Times reports.

“The decision is a victory for critics who said the question was part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans.”

Kevin Drum: “It seems like we don’t get good news very often these days. It’s nice to finally hear some.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

The Supreme Court’s Green Light to Gerrymandering

June 28, 2019 at 5:50 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rick Hasen: “The Supreme Court decision on Thursday in Rucho v. Common Cause purports to take federal courts out of the business of policingpartisan gerrymanders and leave the issue for states to handle.”

“But the decision will instead push federal courts further into the political thicket, and, in states with substantial minority voter populations, force courts to make logically impossible determinations about whether racial reasons or partisan motives predominate when a party gerrymanders for political advantage. It didn’t have to be this way.”

Filed Under: Judiciary, Redistricting

As Bad as Citizens United

June 27, 2019 at 3:12 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Former Reps. Steve Israel (D-NY) and Zach Wamp (R-TN) write in The Atlantic:

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution doesn’t bar even extreme partisan gerrymandering is the worst election-related decision since Citizens United, which in 2010 opened the floodgates for corporate money in campaigns. The Court just stacked the deck in favor of parties over voters—and laid the groundwork for yet more polarization.”

Filed Under: Judiciary, Redistricting

Trump Asks If Census Can Be Delayed

June 27, 2019 at 2:01 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Trump said Thursday that he is seeking to delay the constitutionally mandated census to give administration officials more time to come up with a better explanation for why it should include a citizenship question,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump’s announcement, in a tweet sent from Japan, came hours after the Supreme Court put on hold his administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, saying it had provided a ‘contrived’ reason for wanting the information.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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