Democrats face a daunting future of severe Republican gerrymandering that could flip control of the House in 2022 and suppress diverse younger generations’ political influence for years to come, according to a new study released today. Those findings underscore the stakes in Democrats’ efforts to pass national legislation combatting such electoral manipulation.
The four big states to watch are Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, where the GOP enjoys complete control over the redistricting process, says Michael Li, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and the author of the new report on how congressional redistricting could unfold following the 2020 census. “Those four states, which are seat-rich and where Republicans control the process, could decide who controls the next Congress,” he told me.
Over the longer term, Republican states could impose gerrymanders that prevent the nation’s growing nonwhite population from building political power commensurate with its numbers—even though voters of color accounted for about four in five newly eligible voters in the past decade, the study found. CONTINUED
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
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