Redistricting May Be Democracy’s Sisyphean Task

There is a lot of ground — and maps — to cover this week in the wild world of redistricting. 

First off, New York’s highest court paused a court order requiring New York's independent redistricting commission to reconvene and draw new congressional districts. The court will hold oral argument on Nov. 15 to determine if the commission must draw a new map. Learn more about New York’s redistricting saga here.

In Alabama, pro-voting plaintiffs submitted reply briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, responding to Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen’s request to pause a lower court ruling in Allen v. Milligan. Later in the week, the state submitted its reply brief to the pro-voting parties in the congressional redistricting case before the Supreme Court, arguing that Alabama has been "maligned as engaging in 'open rebellion'" by the courts when the state enacted a new map with only one majority-Black district.

• Two weeks ago, a federal three-judge panel blocked Alabama's new congressional map because it does not have two majority-Black districts as required by a federal court order. Allen appealed this decision and asked the Supreme Court to pause the decision blocking the map while the appeal is ongoing. 

Meanwhile, Louisiana Republicans asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block a lower court from holding a hearing about enacting a new congressional map. The district court previously ordered the state to redraw its map to contain two majority-Black districts.

To the northeast, the Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral argument in a lawsuit challenging Kentucky’s new state House and congressional maps. The court will decide if Kentucky courts can review partisan gerrymandering claims under the state's current laws.

What Are We to Do With Ohio?

On Wednesday, during the Ohio Redistricting Commission’s (ORC) first meeting since it was reconstituted, the ORC voted 4-2 along party lines to use legislative maps proposed by Republican commission members, who also serve in the Legislature, as the ORC’s working draft, which will be subject to public review. The maps would maintain the Republican stranglehold on the Legislature, due to egregious partisan gerrymandering. 

• The seven-member commission is composed of Gov. Mike DeWine (R), Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) and other partisan lawmakers. Republicans have a 5-2 majority.

Before this sixth round of map drawing, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down the Republican commissioners’ legislative maps five separate times for being partisan gerrymanders in favor of Republicans, but Republicans’ delay tactics forced Ohioans to vote under illegal maps in 2022. 

The Republicans’ Senate proposal contains 23 Republican seats, compared to just 10 Democratic seats. The partisan discrepancy was no different in the Republicans’ House map, which contains 62 Republican districts and 37 Democratic districts. Currently, Democrats hold just 32 House seats and seven Senate seats, compared to 67 and 26 Republican seats, respectively.

The GOP-backed proposals come a day after Democrats on the commission released their own legislative maps, which the ORC voted down on Wednesday, also along party lines. Introduced by Antonio and Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D), the maps would have drastically leveled the playing field of the currently gerrymandered Legislature as Democrats would have held 43 House seats and 14 Senate seats, while Republicans would have held 56 and 19 seats, respectively.

LaRose previously said that the commission should have maps approved by Sept. 22, but that timeline has been thrown into doubt after last week’s delays and DeWine’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis. Mid-October is now more likely. 

Read more about Ohio’s long journey to fair maps here.

All of this comes as citizens fight to regain access to the electoral process via ballot measures.

• On Tuesday, the state’s Supreme Court ordered a small tweak to the GOP rewrite of ballot language for an abortion rights amendment that will be before voters in November and if passed, would enshrine the right to reproductive freedom in the Ohio Constitution. Reproductive rights groups argue that the ballot language, written by Republican officials including LaRose, is still misleading. The court allowed most of the Republican-controlled ballot board’s language to remain in place. 

  • Previously, the language stated that the proposed amendment would “[p]rohibit the citizens of the State of Ohio from directly or indirectly burdening, penalizing, or prohibiting abortion before an unborn child is determined to be viable unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means.”                         
  • The court agreed that the phrase “citizens of the state” — instead of “the state” — is misleading since it “suggests that amendment could restrict certain activities of private citizens, such as protesting outside an abortion clinic” and ordered a slight change.                                                                                  
• For a second time, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) rejected ballot language for a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would create a citizen-led, independent redistricting commission in the state. Citizens Not Politicians, the pro-voting group that submitted the language, vowed to collect new signatures in order to refile the language again.

New York Celebrates National Voter Registration Day a Day Late But Not a Dollar Short

On Wednesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed a package of 10 bills into law that expand voting rights and promote democracy in the state. Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris (D), who championed the bills in the Senate, argued that “it should be a fundamental principle of democracy that the more people vote, the better it is.”

Thanks to the Early Mail Voter Act, New York is now the 36th state to allow all voters the option to vote by mail. The package of bills will allow New Yorkers to same-day register on the first day of early voting, crackdown on faithless electors by requiring presidential electors to vote for the candidates nominated by their party and require schools to adopt policies to educate prospective voters before they turn 18.

• Hours after being signed into law, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and other Republicans sued over the New York Early Mail Voter Act. The GOP argues that the law, which allows all voters to vote by mail during the early voting period, violates the New York Constitution.

• Not afraid of being redundant, the New York Republican Party and other conservatives also filed a lawsuit over the state's 2021 mail-in voting law at the end of August. The law allows pre-canvassing of absentee ballots and prevents legal challenges to already cast absentee ballots. The groups allege that the law violates the state constitution and ask for it to be blocked for the 2024 elections. Doubling down on litigation and challenging a two-year old law is an impressive commitment to attacking access to the ballot box, especially when the RNC is actively encouraging Republicans to embrace mail-in voting.

You Get a Vote! You Get a Vote! You All Get Votes!

In addition to the expansion of democracy in the Empire State, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) announced the start of automatic voter registration in the commonwealth this week. Eligible Pennsylvanians renewing or getting a new ID at a department of motor vehicles will now be automatically registered to vote unless they opt out. 

• In a legal win for voters, a federal judge struck down parts of Arizona voter suppression law House Bill 2492 that created strict proof of citizenship requirements to vote. Other provisions of the law will be challenged at trial in November.

• Voting and civil rights attorney Allison Riggs was sworn in as a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. This is especially welcome news as Republican legislators in the Tar Heel state continue to enact restrictive voting legislation, like Senate Bill 747.

• In California, a Santa Monica neighborhood is harnessing the state’s Voting Rights Act to advocate for itself. Read more about the fight here. 

On Tuesday, in an attempt to bring the progress we love to celebrate to every American, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) led every House Democrat in reintroducing the landmark John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore critical voter protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Is It Democracy If Millions Are Locked Out?

As we celebrate the democratic progress across the country this week, it is critical to remember that progress is often not felt equally. According to the Sentencing Project’s 2022 report Locked Out, there are an estimated 4.6 million people prevented from participating in the electoral process. That’s 2% of the nation’s voting-age population. 

These Americans are often kept from exercising their fundamental right to vote due to post-Reconstruction era laws that sought to maintain white supremacy in the lawmaking process. This barrier — commonly referred to as felony disenfranchisement — is the denial of voting rights on the basis of a felony conviction.

As discussed in last week’s podcast, a recent decision in Mississippi from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the state’s Jim Crow-era “cruel and unusual” felony disenfranchisement law may restore the right to vote to thousands. Organizations like the Mississippi Center for Justice and Mississippi Votes are fighting to see that restoration come to fruition. 

There is litigation in five states, including Mississippi, that is seeking to force a reckoning with these racist laws and, as a result of the lawsuits, over two million people could regain the right to vote.

What’s a State To Do When It Leaves ERIC?

On Monday, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced the Alabama Voter Integrity Database, an in-state database that will be used to help maintain voter registration rolls after the state left the bipartisan Election Information Registration Center (ERIC). 

Also this week, Ohio announced it will share voter information with Florida, Virginia and West Virginia in an effort to maintain voter rolls after the four Republican-led states left the data group due to right-wing conspiracy theories. In total, nine states have left ERIC since early 2022 and all are developing varying solutions to a self-created void ahead of 2024.

More News

• In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), the Republican National Committee, the Georgia Republican Party and national Republican committees appealed a district court decision blocking parts of Georgia voter suppression law Senate Bill 202.

• After Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Senate voted to remove Meagan Wolfe as leader of the state’s elections commission, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) filed a lawsuit arguing that the Senate lacks the power to unseat Wolfe.

  • Hoping to avoid the state’s Supreme Court and its new liberal majority, Wisconsin’s Republican-led Assembly passed a bill to create a "nonpartisan" redistricting process that would still give lawmakers final say over maps. Democratic legislators and Gov. Tony Evers (D) slammed the proposal, which now goes to the state Senate.

• In Minnesota, a conservative group filed a lawsuit challenging a provision of the state’s Democracy for the People Act that makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly spread false information about an election. The group argues the law violates the First and 14th Amendments.

OPINION: A Blue Texas Is In Reach

By Maria Teresa Kumar, the president and CEO of Voto Latino. Read more ➡️

We are reading reporting from the local news outlet, Alabama Political Reporter, which revealed an apparent connection between Alabama officials involved in the drawing of the state's noncompliant maps and a far-right dark money group. 

The news builds on a previous report by the outlet that claimed that Alabama lawmakers had connections suggesting that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was open to rehearing Allen v. Milligan on its merits. 

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month! Did you know Latinos now outnumber non-Hispanic whites in Texas and that the Latino population is disproportionately young? Learn more from Democracy Docket guest author Maria Teresa Kumar about what that means for the future of politics in Texas.

On this week’s episode of Defending Democracy, Marc and Paige speak with Rep. Greta Neubauer, the Assembly Minority Leader in Wisconsin, about all things Badger State. From the looming unprecedented impeachment of a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to the attempted removal of the state’s top election official, there’s a lot to cover! Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.