In November, Virginia Democrats won control of the state legislature, giving them unified control of government for the first time in more than 20 years. The political shift was due, at least in part, to Virginia voters casting their ballots under a new state house map that the federal courts put in place after striking down an earlier racial gerrymander. The Virginia legislature is now poised to pass meaningful redistricting reform to prevent the future manipulation of maps. By passing reform, Virginia would build on the momentum of the five states that reformed redistricting in 2018 and serve as an example in the South of how states can make their maps and mapping processes more fair.

North Carolinians will vote in 2020 using new legislative and congressional maps after the state courts threw out earlier plans as partisan gerrymanders and approved new district lines drawn by the legislature. In both cases, the newest maps are the third maps this decade. In separate suits, federal courts blocked the original maps, drawn in 2011, for racial gerrymandering, causing both legislative and congressional maps to be redrawn. Those redrawn maps were then challenged as partisan gerrymanders.

The partisan gerrymandering decisions in North Carolina, which relied on the state constitution’s “free elections” provision, come after a January 2018 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court striking down that state’s congressional map as a partisan gerrymander relying on a similar provision in the Pennsylvania constitution.

After North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map was struck down by a state court as a partisan gerrymander, North Carolina lawmakers redrew the map. The new map, which will be used in 2020, is expected to have at least five Democratic districts out of 13, compared with just three under the earlier map. Under the new map, NC-1, NC-2, NC-4, NC-6, and NC-12 all now are strongly Democratic districts

• A new Brennan Center guide, A Better Way to Draw Districts, explains the nuts and bolts of creating an independent, equitable, and successful redistricting commission. The guide includes a full model bill that can be adapted for advocacy across the country.
• Michael Li and Yurij Rudensky’s article in the Howard Law Journal, “Rethinking the Redistricting Toolbox,” lays out the legal landscape that communities of color will face in the upcoming redistricting cycle.
• Citizens and lawmakers in North Carolina are readying for their last opportunity to pass reforms before the 2021 redistricting cycle starts. Yurij Rudensky explains why North Carolina is a prime candidate for redistricting reform.
• Citizen stakeholders in four states have filed ballot initiatives to reform those states’ redistricting processes. Reform proposals in Arkansas, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Oregon have the potential to bring fair maps to these states ahead of the 2021 redistricting cycle.
• The Intercept’s series “Rigging the Vote” delves into the files of the late Republican redistricting consultant, Thomas Hofeller. New revelations from Hofeller’s files reveal a decade-long strategy to suppress the political power of people of color across the country.
• Nebraska recently became the first state to start sharing driver’s license records with the Census Bureau as a part of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to collect citizenship data. Kelly Percival explains how confidentiality laws that protect data collected by the Census Bureau will prevent the Bureau from sharing any personally identifiable records.