Author: 2021 will bring ‘unfettered festival of partisan gerrymandering’ after SCOTUS ruling

North Carolina courts could be on the cusp of changing the rules when it comes to partisan redistricting, but other states might not be so inclined following the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

David Daley, the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, spoke with Policy Watch on Wednesday about the future of democracy in America. He was not hopeful.

“I think what you’re going to see in 2021 is an absolute unfettered festival of partisan gerrymandering, the likes of which we’ve never seen before because the Supreme Court has essentially given a green light by saying you don’t have to worry,” he said.

The high court ruled at the end of June that partisan gerrymandering challenges were out of the reach of federal courts. It pointed to the states to decide how to control redistricting, which will likely lead to a patchwork of different laws across the country.

Daley has spent significant time researching and writing about gerrymandering. His book, Ratf**ked, examines the rise of the Republican Party through strategic gerrymandering efforts and explores how it’s affected democracy in America.

He said the Supreme Court ruling means that Republican gerrymanders from 2011 will continue to provide red seawalls that likely will continue to exist for another decade. It might change if Democrats can find a way to win back one of the chambers in areas like Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida, but they haven’t been able to do that over the past decade.

In states where one party controls the redistricting process, Daley speculated that voters will witness them “go all out to maximize the maps to their advantage” and they’ll have terabytes of voter data and the most sophisticated mapping software ever used to slice America up even more than they already have.

He said that Republicans have taken redistricting much more seriously than Democrats over the past 40 years. While Democrats spent the past decade trying to undo the red wave, Republicans were thinking about the next redistricting cycle and how the citizenship Census question could help the mapmaking process.

“It’s strategists like Tom Hofeller who were always able to peer around the corner and see what’s better next time, while Democrats seem to focus on catching up to the last fight,” he said. “That’s galaxy brain of redistricting.”

Hofeller died last year, but he was a renowned GOP mapmaker, including in North Carolina. His digital files are at the center of a state court battle after his daughter gave them to the plaintiffs in Common Cause v. Lewis following his death.

The files already unveiled his involvement in the formation of the citizenship question on the 2020 Census — which is still an ongoing legal fight — but court watchers have said those documents could contain a lot of more information about the inner workings of the Republican Party’s redistricting strategies.

Regardless of if the documents will eventually come to light, Daley said he expects redistricting fights to look a lot different in the future after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

He’s optimistic about North Carolina’s opportunity, though, to put limits on partisan gerrymandering. The trial in Common Cause v. Lewis will begin at 10 a.m. Monday. It’s expected the whole nation will be watching, but especially those from North Carolina who have been fighting for fair maps for years.

Tomas Lopez, Executive Director of Democracy NC, said his group will be watching and he’s hopeful the state courts recognize the claims before them.

“All of us who support fair maps are going to keep fighting for them, and that effort includes legislative solutions like Senate Bill 673’s Gold Standard Citizens Redistricting Commission,” he said. “As we wait for our state courts to have their say, this legislative proposal would finally and formally take the power to draw maps away from lawmakers, remove the incentive to rig maps regardless of who’s in power, and elevate citizen input over partisanship. For North Carolinians, these and other state-level redistricting reforms and anti-gerrymandering rulings can’t come quickly enough.”

SB 673 is one of a half a dozen bills pending at the legislature this session — none have been scheduled for a hearing.