On this week’s Beyond the Bubble podcast, election law guru Rick Hasen says gerrymandering decisions will empower states under single-party control to make much longer-lasting maps. Politifact’s Louis Jacobson unpacks June’s biggest lies.<\/b>
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WASHINGTON \u2014 States controlled by one party may now be able to rig their election maps to favor one side long after they lose control the majority of voters, according to election law experts.
Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told Beyond the Bubble that maps created by a single party could now even sustain some \u201cwave elections,\u201d thanks to campaign technology that\u2019s made it easier to identify where a party\u2019s voters live.
Partisan gerrymandering \u2014 a practice used by both parties to draw districts reflecting their political views\u2014 got a big nod of approval from the Supreme Court this month.
Justices ruled on cases challenging election maps in North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, declining to call any of them an unlawful use of power by state leaders.
\u201cIt\u2019s now possible to draw a gerrymander that can last the entire decade,\u201d said Hasen, author of Election Law Blog, on the court\u2019s decisions.
( Check out last week\u2019s Beyond the Bubble episode: The politics of family separation at the border)
Cases in North Carolina and Wisconsin alleged that the maps were drawn to benefit one political party over the other. The Texas case suggested voters were put into specific districts based on their race, with the intention of creating a small number of very Democrat-leaning districts.
\u201cThe court is making it very hard to win these cases, and the effect is going to be that minority voters are going to have much less protection than they had before,\u201d said Hasen. \u201cThat of course has partisan consequences because we know, especially in the American South, that there\u2019s a huge overlap between race and party.\u201d
States defending the practice called the decisions a victory for states\u2019 rights.
Hasen said states under a single party\u2019s control that want to fight the process are turning to ballot initiatives \u2014 something Texas doesn\u2019t allow\u2014 but that California and Arizona are exploring.
„There\u2019s an initiative process where you can get around the legislature and impose reform… this is probably going to be on the ballot in Michigan,“ said Hasen.
As for the courts, „Right now it looks like [they’re] going to duck the issue at least for the foreseeable future,\u201d said Hasen. \u201cAt least until one of these cases makes itself back to the Supreme Court, and then, we don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll have the same justices on the court.\u201d
McClatchy\u2019s Beyond the Bubble show is produced by Jordan-Marie Smith and Davin Coburn. Alex Roarty, a national political correspondent for McClatchy, and Andrea Drusch, Washington correspondent for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, recorded this episode at McClatchy\u2019s Washington Bureau, June 26,2018.<\/p>\n

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