Red states are getting their gerrymanders. Blue states not so much.
At one point it appeared that Democratic politicians had wised up and were fighting fire with fire. Now the courts have weighed in and Blue state courts say gerrymandering is bad while red state courts are saying it’s fine, at least for this election:
Josh Marshall has a subscription only post on the subject. Here are the first paragraphs:
Two very different scenes played out in Ohio and New York on Wednesday, and they illustrate in a nutshell how the difference in state laws can affect whether a state’s majority party can get away with illegal gerrymandering.
In both states, the highest courts found that the majority party broke state anti-gerrymandering laws. In Ohio, the gerrymandered maps were pushed by Republicans; in New York, they were pushed by Democrats.
And in both states, the majority party then sought to nonetheless use their illegally gerrymandered maps in upcoming elections — specifically by citing the lack of time left to draw new ones before primaries.
In New York, a state judge has named a court-appointed “special master” — an independent mapmaker who will draw districts without partisan favor — to draw congressional and state senate maps.
But in Ohio, crucially, the law doesn’t allow state judges to take this step for state legislative maps.
Here’s how Politico described the New York decision:
A federal judge Wednesday denied Democrats a request for an emergency injunction to have New York use Democratic-drawn district lines for congressional elections.
Then the judge proceeded to relentlessly mock every aspect of their request.
The case stems from the surprise court decision last week to throw out the Democratic-drawn lines for House seats in New York that had left the party poised to pick up at least three seats in November.
“In the 102 years since my father, then a Ukrainian refugee, came into this country, if there were two things that he drilled into my head, they were … free, open, rational elections [and] respect for the courts,” said Southern District of New York Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Democrat. “The relief that I’m being asked to give today impinges, to some degree, on the public perception of both. And I’m not going to do that.”
A federal judge Wednesday denied Democrats a request for an emergency injunction to have New York use Democratic-drawn district lines for congressional elections.
Then the judge proceeded to relentlessly mock every aspect of their request.
The case stems from the surprise court decision last week to throw out the Democratic-drawn lines for House seats in New York that had left the party poised to pick up at least three seats in November.
“In the 102 years since my father, then a Ukrainian refugee, came into this country, if there were two things that he drilled into my head, they were … free, open, rational elections [and] respect for the courts,” said Southern District of New York Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Democrat. “The relief that I’m being asked to give today impinges, to some degree, on the public perception of both. And I’m not going to do that.”
What a relief. He’ll be able to congratulate himself while the country implodes.
Meanwhile, in Ohio the GOP legislature has basically made it impossible for the court to do anything but accept the unconstitutional maps by passing a law that says they are the only entity that can draw them. So that’s that. No muss no fuss.
In various ways, in a number of cases, Democratic legislatures took the initiative and decided to gerrymander in order to raise the possibility that they could hang on the congress. Courts in those states have tended to be less amenable to that. Meanwhile, in red states, they’ve made sure that the courts are impotent to stop them. Curses, foiled again.