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How Democrats plan to fight the Supreme Court’s racist ruling



After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday to allow
Republicans to eliminate as many as a dozen Black Democratic members of
Congress with partisan and racist gerrymanders, Democratic elected officials
across the country were quick to announce that they will not simply sit back
and take it.

The governors of New York and Illinois—states where Democrats hold
legislative trifectas—announced that they will take steps to redraw their maps
to combat the GOP’s gerrymanders.



For example in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that she is
“working with the Legislature to change New York’s redistricting process so we
can fight back against Washington’s attempts to rig our democracy.”

Currently, New York uses an independent commission to draw its congressional
maps, and would need to pass a ballot measure to amend that process—similar to
what Democrats in California and Virginia did. If successful, Democrats could
extract at least four more seats out of the Empire State, according to an
analysis by the Downballot.





 



 



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“The Supreme Court has been chipping away at our elections for years. It is
clearly carrying out Donald Trump’s will with this decision. New York has
always led the fight for voting rights and we’ll lead again,” Hochul wrote in a
post on X.

And in Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker told reporters that he and the
Democratic-controlled Legislature are looking at ways to respond in kind to the
GOP’s attempt to draw their way to a House majority. Currently, Republicans
hold three of Illinois’ 17 House seats, and could conceivably come up with a
map that includes 0 GOP lawmakers.

“We’re not going to stand for it in Illinois,” Pritzker said. “We’re going to
push back. We have options for pushing back. And that is under discussion with
the legislature even today.”

Indeed, Illinois Democratic state Senate President Don Harmon announced that
the legislature is scrapping plans to vote to codify the Voting Rights
Amendment in the state, as doing so could hamstring them from being able to
draw their maps in a way that combats the GOP’s gerrymanders.

“We want to spend a little bit of time unpacking the Supreme Court decision to
make sure we get it right and protect the voting rights of Illinois residents,”
Harmon said. “It’s much better and much more important to get this correct than
to do it quickly. The worst thing that would happen is if we rushed and there
were unintended consequences that undermine people’s voting rights.”

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed the Democratic plan to
fight fire with fire.

“I’d take 52 seats from California and 17 seats from Illinois,” Alabama
Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, who may lose her seat due to Republican
gerrymandering in her state, said Wednesday at a news conference on Capitol
Hill.



Ultimately, this is a race to the bottom.

But if Democrats don’t follow Republicans to the gates of Hell, then it gives
Republicans carte blanche to draw their way to a permanent majority—something
Republicans are already crowing about doing.

“If Republicans are going to redraw North Carolina, if they’re going to
redraw Texas, if they’re going to redraw and gerrymander every one of their
states, then unfortunately we have to provide balance to that until we get to
the day when we can all finally agree to put this behind us and pass
nonpartisan gerrymandering federally,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY)
said on Wednesday.



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