Leading Off
● New York: Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed a law that aims to ban gerrymandering in elections for county legislatures across the state. The new law requires that mapmakers follow several nonpartisan criteria, including that districts be compact and that they "not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties."
The law applies to the 23 of New York's 62 counties that have their own county charters and therefore use a county legislature system, which covers nearly half of the state's population (the rest are either small upstate counties where town supervisors serve as the county's lawmakers or the five boroughs that make up New York City, whose City Council already has nonpartisan redistricting requirements in place). We have published a spreadsheet showing which counties will be affected along with statistics showing which party controls county government and how each county voted in recent statewide elections.
Of particular note, the new law could have a considerable impact on three major urban and suburban counties that consistently lean Democratic in statewide elections and have elected Democratic office-holders countywide but have Republican legislative majorities in part due to gerrymandering. Those counties include Nassau, a populous Long Island suburb just east of New York City, along with Monroe and Onondaga in Upstate New York, which are home to Rochester and Syracuse, respectively. Collectively, those three counties are home to 2.6 million residents or roughly one-eighth of the state's population.
Redistricting
● Alabama: A joint committee in Alabama's Republican-run legislature advanced new congressional and legislative gerrymanders, which would maintain the GOP's large majorities and continue to limit representation for Black voters, in a series of party-line votes on Tuesday ahead of a special session that began on Thursday. The maps were not posted on the legislature's site until after the vote; they were made public beforehand only because state Rep. Chris England, who is also chair of the state Democratic Party, posted copies on Twitter.
Campaign Action
The GOP's congressional map would retain six Republican seats and one majority-Black Democratic district, the 7th, though since the state's population is about two-sevenths African American, it could easily sustain a second Black district. It's a certainty, however, that Republicans would not draw such a district, and it's unlikely that the extremely conservative federal judiciary would find that the Voting Rights Act requires them to do so in a lawsuit filed last month seeking to compel such a district.
● Arizona: Arizona's independent redistricting commission has unanimously voted to adopt draft maps for Congress and the state legislature (both the state Senate and House use the same district lines), setting off a 30-day period for public comments. Commissioners plan to give final approval to new maps by Dec. 22 after incorporating public feedback over the next several weeks. You can find data files for the new maps here, and we have also uploaded the congressional map to Dave's Redistricting App, which has partisan and racial statistics.
The new congressional map in particular scrambles both the district numbers and the partisan composition of several districts when compared to the current map (one of several criteria requires commissioners to consider competitiveness). Three Democrats and two Republicans would see their districts become considerably more competitive. While the map preserves the current two Latino-majority seats held by Democratic Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ruben Gallego, it would make it harder for Native American voters, who are a solidly Democratic constituency, to elect their prefered candidates in a district currently held by Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran.
We also took a more detailed look at how the new map will affect several districts and incumbents in our other newsletter, the Daily Digest.
● Iowa, Illinois: Both chambers of Iowa's Republican-controlled legislature have almost-unanimously voted to approve the new congressional and legislative maps proposed by the state's nonpartisan redistricting agency, sending them to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds for her signature. Although a number of counties would be moved to different congressional districts, the new map roughly maintains the status quo in terms of political lean by having one solidly GOP district in western Iowa and three red-leaning swing districts in the rest of the state, one of which is currently held by Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne in the Des Moines area.
Meanwhile in Illinois, Democratic legislators have unveiled and quickly passed a new version of a congressional gerrymander that aims to turn the existing 13-5 Democratic majority into a 14-3 Democratic advantage, sending it to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker for his expected signature. Democrats radically reconfigured the districts of every GOP incumbent, which prompted GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger to announce his retirement on Friday. They also added a second predominantly Latino seat with the new safely blue 3rd District in the Chicago area, which resulted in mapmakers drawing a new Democratic-leaning 6th District that combined much of Democratic Reps. Sean Casten's and Marie Newman's existing districts, setting up a member-on-member matchup after both incumbents said they would run there.
We'll have a more thorough look at both of these new states' districts in the Monday edition of our other newsletter, the Morning Digest, but in the meantime you can view interactive versions of the congressional maps in Dave's Redistricting App for both Iowa and Illinois, which has partisan and demographic statistics available.
● Massachusetts: Massachusetts' Democratic-run state Senate has passed new legislative maps, about a week after the state House did the same thing. The plans now go to Republican Gov. Charlie Baker for his signature. While Baker could veto the maps, they passed both chambers almost unanimously. Lawmakers have yet to introduce any congressional redistricting proposals.
● Ohio: Republican state House Speaker Bob Cupp, who is a member of Ohio's GOP-dominated redistricting commission, confirmed that the commission would not meet its Oct. 31 deadline to draw a new congressional map, punting the task back to the legislature. Lawmakers had already missed a Sept. 30 deadline to come up with their own map, a failure that kicked the task to the commission, which has now passed the redistricting hot potato right back where it came from.
Why all the hijinks? Had legislators drawn a map in time, they'd have needed to muster the support of half of the members of each party in order for it to pass. The seven-member commission, which has five Republicans and two Democrats, likewise would have needed bipartisan agreement to adopt a map. But now that the task has reverted to lawmakers once more, they can then pass a map that's good for a full 10 years with the backing of just one-third of Democrats—or they can approve one without any Democratic support that will last for four years.
There's a good chance that the latter option is exactly where we're headed, because that would allow Republicans to fine-tune their gerrymanders after just two elections rather than hoping they hold up for five. In fact, that's precisely what transpired last month during the legislative redistricting process, which is handled exclusively by the commission but operates with similar rules: Republicans needed Democratic buy-in to pass a 10-year map but instead chose to ram through a four-year map without any bipartisan support.
Even if Republicans don't go it alone on the congressional map, the mere fact that they can gives them leverage over Democrats to pressure them into accepting a slightly more modest but still durable 10-year gerrymander. Skeptical observers warned at the time that the constitutional amendments passed during the last decade that created the redistricting commission were only a sham reform. The GOP's actions over the last few months have proved those warnings prescient.
● Texas: After Texas Republicans recently enacted a new congressional gerrymander, a second federal lawsuit has been filed by Latino voter advocates with the support of a prominent Democratic law firm arguing that the new map illegally discriminates against Latino and Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs note that 95% of Texas' population growth came from people of color, but the new map drew no new districts where Black or Latino voters can be expected to elect their preferred candidates. It also weakened two existing Latino districts, the 15th and 23rd along the border with Mexico.
A previous federal lawsuit was filed last week shortly before Republican Gov. Greg Abbott even signed the map into law; that suit also challenges the GOP's new gerrymanders of the legislature and Texas' state Board of Education. However, given the ways in which the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has successively dismantled the Voting Rights Act and separate constitutional protections against intentionally discriminatory gerrymanders, both lawsuits may face a hostile reception in federal court.
Voter Suppression
● Texas: A federal district court has rejected Texas Republicans' motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Vote.org challenging a law that Republicans passed earlier this year to require a physical "wet" signature for voter registration applications submitted electronically or via fax, which makes any form of online registration impractical. The suit argues that the law violates the Constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Texas is one of just a handful of states that lacks a broadly available form of online voter registration, and Republicans have repeatedly fought efforts to expand limited forms of online registration in recent years.
Electoral System Reform
● Alaska: Alaska's state Supreme Court will hear an appeal from several conservative plaintiffs of a lower court ruling earlier this year that upheld the constitutionality of a law voters passed via a 2020 ballot measure to adopt a "top-four" primary with a ranked-choice general election. The court is set to hear arguments on Jan. 18 and will reportedly issue a decision soon thereafter in order to ensure there's enough time to implement its ruling for next year's elections.
Under the newly adopted law, the top four vote-getters regardless of party will advance to the general election, where voters will be able to rank their choices using instant-runoff voting. The law will also institute ranked-choice voting in presidential elections, though traditional party primaries will remain in effect for those races. The law further sets up new financial disclosure requirements for state-level candidates.
The plaintiffs challenging the law include members of the Republican, Libertarian, and right-wing Alaskan Independence Party. They contend that the new law violates their freedom of association by getting rid of party primaries and allowing candidates to choose which party label appears with their name on the ballot. However, Alaskan Independence Party chairman Bob Bird previously expressed skepticism about the plaintiffs' chances of success.
Secretary of State Elections
● Washington: Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman announced Tuesday that she would resign on Nov. 19 to join the Biden administration to oversee election security. As the only Republican to hold such a post in a strongly blue state, Wyman has been one of the rare members of the GOP who've spoken out against Trump's lies about mail voting and his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. However, she also disappointed voting rights advocates by testifying against the For the People Act in 2019, a major bill to expand voting rights and ban congressional gerrymandering.
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee will now be charged with appointing her successor, who will be up for election in November 2022 for the final two years of Wyman’s term. Inslee has the chance to put a Democrat in the secretary of state’s office for the first time since the 1964 elections. There’s no guarantee he’ll take advantage of the opportunity, but while Inslee refused to rule out appointing a Republican placeholder, he also said he wouldn't appoint a Republican solely because the outgoing secretary is one, disagreeing "with the Republican Party where they think that somehow the Republican Party owns a particular office."