Gerrymandering/Redistricting

There’s an old political adage that says, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” Redistricting reform could be California's next big contribution to our political culture.

The legal teams taking two gerrymandering cases to the Supreme Court will preview their strategies and path to victory at third annual Common Cause redistricting conference. Voting rights experts agree momentum is in their favor as they aim to revolutionize redistricting before the 2020 Census.

House watchers suggest that the 116th Congress might also have a chance at denting public corruption. House Resolution 1, the first bill introduced this year, is a sweeping proposal aimed at money in politics, voting reforms and ethics. Those issues have broad bipartisan support in many states and localities, according to Aaron Scherb, legislative affairs director at government watchdog Common Cause. “I think a lot of the reforms at the national level will help advance the ball for when there is a more favorable political climate after 2020,” he says. 

In 2017, the Supreme Court heard a case that began in Wisconsin that some thought might lead to the declaration of gerrymandering as unconstitutional. It didn’t. Now there’s fear among redistricting-reform advocates that the new makeup of the Court will do pretty much the opposite and take a case that would declare the independent commissions unconstitutional. said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director of Common Cause, said that if that happened, it would lead to a revolution. “I’m calling us to arms,” she joked. Others believe that it could have a boomerang effect, forcing Congress to address the issue nationally—the same thought process that had people believing that Congress would update the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court struck down a key section of it in 2013.

“When lawmakers draw their own lines, they lose all of their philosophical ideals and they become ugly monsters that are willing to cut out competitors, punish people from the other party and try to draw the most protective district for themselves so they don’t have to face serious competition for the next 10 years,” said Kathay Feng, national redistricting director at the good government group Common Cause, which championed the creation of California’s commission.

Common Cause, the watchdog group that supports limits on partisan line-drawing, is leading the challenge to the North Carolina districts. “Whether it is Democrats or Republicans manipulating the election maps, gerrymanders cheat voters out of true representation,” Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn said in a statement. “The Supreme Court has the opportunity to set a clear standard that will restore a meaningful vote to millions of Americans disenfranchised by gerrymanders in Maryland, North Carolina and across the country.”