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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/25/redistricting-black-latino-voters/
<h1 id=”main-content” class=”
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pb-sm” data-qa=”headline”>Black and Latino voters have been shortchanged in redistricting, advocates and some judges say
Even as Democrats have fared better than expected in new maps, Republicans have chopped up minority communities in some states
<section><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>Across the country, the White population has shrunk over the past decade as minority communities have swelled, according to the 2020 Census. Yet, the rapid growth of Latinos and Blacks is not reflected in any of the new maps passed so far, except California’s, which added five seats where Latinos make up the majority of adults. Black-majority districts decreased by five seats while majority-White districts grew by eight seats, according to a Washington Post analysis looking at the 28 states that have completed congressional maps.</p><p class=”g-pstyle0″>There are more majority-White districts in approved maps despite White population stagnation in those states</p>In the 28 states that had finalized congressional maps by Tuesday, there are more majority-White districts added than any other demographic majority. The number of majority-Black districts fell by half even though the Black population increased.
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<p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>Judges have intervened in two states where Republican state legislators were accused by voting rights advocates of disenfranchising Black voters. In Alabama on Monday night, a panel of federal judges struck down a new congressional map that packed Black voters into one of seven districts in a state where they account for 27 percent of the population. The judges ruled that the legislature must draw a second congressional district in which Black residents have “an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”</p><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>The decision, which is certain to be appealed, follows another redistricting win for Democrats this month, when the Ohio Supreme Court determined that the GOP-led legislature had unfairly drawn the lines to its partisan advantage.</p><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>In both instances, the decision to invalidate the maps and send state legislators back to the drawing board could yield Democrats several more seats ahead of the November midterm election, when control of Congress will turn on a handful of races.</p><p data-el=”text”>Before states began drawing their lineslast year, experts estimated that Republicans could gain enough seats in redistricting alone to overcome the current 10-seat advantage Democrats hold in the House. Yet, based on the 2020 presidential election results, Democrats have made gains, netting an additional five districts that Joe Biden would have won. To be sure, though, Democrats are not guaranteed wins in those seats in November. The party in the White House has historically lost ground in midterm elections.</p>
<p class=”g-pstyle0″>Districts where Biden and Trump ran close in 2020 are disappearing</p>As of Tuesday, 28 states have finalized new congressional maps. If these new maps would have been in place for the 2020 presidential election, only 19 districts would have been close, 18 fewer than under the actual 2020 maps.
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The more favorable outcome for Democrats is the result of several factors, including one ironic one: The extreme gerrymandering of a decade ago maximized Republican seats so much that it gave Republicans fewer options to draw themselves new seats this time. According to a 2017 analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans gained a net benefit of 16 to 17 seats in the three congressional elections after redistricting was completed in 2012.</p><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>The shifting demographics across the nation as minority communities grew and spread into the suburbs also complicated Republicans’ ability to draw new safe districts for their party. So instead, they largely shifted lines to protect incumbents, effectively erasing competitive districts to ensure that they will retain power in future years as the population becomes less White. The result is 14 more districts that President Donald Trump would have won by more than 15 percentage points, compared with two more that Biden would have won by the same margin.</p><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>“Most folks have already evaluated the partisan implications of the maps passed to date as not being overly bad for the Democrats, or at least not compared to expectations,” said Adam Podowitz-Thomas, senior legal strategist at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. “However, the bigger story that we are noting is the aggressive approach to the redistricting of racial minorities, where populations that historically resided in districts that provided an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice are losing their say, and that despite driving a disproportionate amount of population growth in many states, minority populations are not seeing their representational opportunities increase in tandem.”</p><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>The disparity is sharpest in Southern states such as Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana where Black people account for about one-third of the population but are packed into far fewer congressional districts.</p><p class=”font-copy font–article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md” data-el=”text”>“We are deeply concerned that Black votes are going to be severely underrepresented in many states,” said Michael Pernick, redistricting counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The numbers … are quite concerning. It is critical that voters of color, Black voters in these states, have the opportunity to participate and elect candidates of their choice.”</p><p data-el=”text”>In Alabama, the state’s Black voters are packed into the 7th Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Terri A. Sewell, an African American Democrat. The district shape resemblesa fist covering a large area along the Mississippi border with two fingers jutting out to capture the heavily Black cities of Birmingham and Montgomery in the center of the state.</p>
Black adults are majority in just one district in
rejected Alabama map<p class=”block description-block”>Whites would have been a majority share of the voting-age population in six of Alabama’s seven congressional districts, though the state is 27 percent Black.</p>
District Black White 7th 2nd 1st 3rd 6th 5th 4th
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