Author: Issie Lapowsky / Source: WIRED
Both Republicans and Democrats woke up Wednesday morning claiming victory in Tuesday’s midterms. Democrats patted themselves on the back for taking back the House of Representatives and for flipping seven governorships from red to blue. And in a press conference, President Donald Trump praised his party, and himself, for gaining ground in the Senate.
Americans remain sharply divided at the ballot box, from which political party they support to initiatives on issues like climate change. But they consistently voted against one thing on Tuesday: gerrymandering. In Michigan, Missouri, and Colorado, voters overwhelmingly passed ballot initiatives to put an end to this practice; as of Wednesday evening, another in Utah held onto a slight lead. They join another initiative passed in Ohio earlier this year.
These initiatives either set up independent redistricting commissions or vastly limit the ability of a single party to unilaterally draw the lines. That could dramatically change the electoral map when districts are redrawn in 2021 and, if it works as planned, could create more districts where voters get to choose their representatives—not the other way around.
“It’s a huge win for the reformers,” says Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in redistricting.
Electoral maps across the country have overwhelmingly favored Republicans since 2011, when congressional district boundaries were last drawn nationally. That year, Republicans controlled the majority of governorships and state legislatures in America, giving them full control of the redistricting process in most of those states.
Eager to secure their power, they designed maps that packed Democrats into a small number of districts and distributed the remaining Democrats sparsely over the rest, so that Republicans would win those districts easily. They called the plan REDMAP. While some of the maps have been modified by courts, those maps will remain in use until after the next census, in 2020. With that milestone fast approaching, Democrats have been working to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.“Democrats today are in a much better position to fight for fair maps than we were in 2011,” wrote Patrick Rodenbush, communications director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an anti-gerrymandering PAC headed up by former attorney general Eric Holder. The NDRC backed the initiatives in all four states on Tuesday as well as the one in Ohio earlier this year.
The ballot initiatives…
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