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unidentified
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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss how congressional redistricting works, including the process and how political parties have used it over the year, is Sean Donahue, a political science professor from the University at Buffalo. | ||
| Sean, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Nice to join you this morning. | |
| We know we've seen the headlines recently. | ||
| Texas is looking at redrawing its congressional districts. | ||
| Other states may follow. | ||
| Explain how often congressional districts are typically redrawn. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, generally, congressional districts are redrawn in the year following the decennial census. | |
| This has been the case for about the last 60 years. | ||
| And the reason I say that rather than, you know, kind of go back to the founding is that there was a period of time in the country where you didn't have as much redistricting because until the 1960s, there was not a requirement that the districts be of the same size as far as population. | ||
| And you mentioned the census data in there. | ||
| What kind of information from the census is used and how important is that new information that comes out every 10 years? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, the census provides quite a bit of important data for redistricting because it not only tracks how many people live in a state and where they live within the state, but it also has racial and ethnic data that gives us information to be able to draw, let's say, majority, minority districts or see if potentially things with the Voting Rights Act are violated, you know, | |
| and other information that would be relevant for drawing districts. | ||
| Normally, redistricting wouldn't make the kind of headlines that we're seeing right now. | ||
| Why is it that Texas wanting to redraw its districts is getting the attention that it is? | ||
| How common is it for adjustments to be made outside of that typical 10-year time gap? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, it does happen, you know, outside of the year following the census. | |
| But usually, whenever you have redistricting that happens outside of that period of time, it often is more because you have some type of judicial ruling, let's say, that strikes down certain districts or maybe requires some type of redistricting. | ||
| What's more unusual that we're seeing right now is that this is a redistricting that's going on in Texas that is more by choice rather than something that's being required. | ||
| And also, you know, what you're seeing in Texas is that Republicans are seeking to redraw districts that they actually drew themselves four years ago. | ||
| So, you know, it's not that they're trying to replace, let's say, districts that were drawn by Democrats. | ||
| I mean, they're trying to replace the districts that they drew themselves just a few years ago. | ||
| And as we look at the actual process, how these districts are determined, explain how that works and who can be involved in those. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, it's something that is more determined at the state level. | |
| So the Constitution leaves this pretty well open because it says that states are going to be the ones that redraw districts. | ||
| Now, some states have created commissions of some type. | ||
| Sometimes you have independent commissions, bipartisan commissions, citizen commissions. | ||
| But in most states in the country, it is the state legislature that redraws districts. | ||
| And in addition to that, you have where governors have various veto thresholds. | ||
| But what we're seeing in Texas is that this is a process that the legislature and the governor are in charge of right now. | ||
| There can be, you mentioned some of them, but state legislatures can make the decision, advisory commissions, backup groups, or I'm sorry, backup commissions, political, politician commissions, and independent commissions. | ||
| There is a possible push for more independent commissions to be drawing these and getting away from some of the bipartisanship. | ||
| How has that shifted in recent years? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, what you have seen is that in the past, you know, 10 to 15 years, you have seen at least mostly in states where you have the initiative and referendum process, where you have seen a move to take away some of this power from state legislatures to draw districts. | |
| For instance, you saw this in this decade with the redistricting in Michigan. | ||
| But you've also seen states like Virginia and New York do this via the legislature and then where the constitutional amendment process requires that voters vote on these changes. | ||
| So those are states where you saw that the power was taken away partially from the legislature. | ||
| Texas is a state where they are, the process would go through the legislature. | ||
| This is something that they're trying to get done for midterm elections next in 2026. | ||
| How long does it typically take the beginning of the process to final implementation to put congressional district changes into effect? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, it can be done pretty quickly. | |
| You know, you just, you know, in states where it's the legislature that does the drawing, you know, you have various committees and things that where you're going where you would see where you would see some of these things go through hearings and such. | ||
| But basically what you just need in Texas is that, you know, to have the state house and the state senate pass identical versions and then send it to the governor for his signature. | ||
| And then upon that, you know, you would have, you definitely would have Democratic groups and other and other citizens in the state probably are going to file lawsuits. | ||
| But that would go into effect for the 2026 midterm elections, which you would actually, you know, you would need to do it a little bit sooner than you might think, even though the election is in November for the general election, because Texas has fairly early primaries and you have to consider people signing up, filing deadlines and such. | ||
| Our guest is Sean Donahue. | ||
| He is a political science professor at the University at Buffalo. | ||
| He's joining us for our discussion, explaining how redistricting works, how the process works, and how political parties have used it over the years. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can call in. | ||
| Starting now, lines are broken down. | ||
| Republicans, you can call in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Sean, I wanted to ask you about a commentary piece that is in the Washington Times today. | ||
| The headline, I know you can't see it, but it's gerrymandering is destructive no matter who does it. | ||
| But this is a quote from it. | ||
| It says, right now, 13 House Democrats represent districts. | ||
| Mr. Trump won in 2024, while three House Republicans represent districts carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris. | ||
| As recently as 2000, there were 86 districts where voters voted for one party for a president and a different one for one of their members of Congress. | ||
| While split tickets and split districts make politics more challenging, they tend to make governing easier as those elected in such districts need to find a way to appeal to a broader constituency. | ||
| When we hear redistricting, we often also hear the word gerrymandering going along with it. | ||
| Remind our audience about gerrymandering and the impact it can have, as well as if there are any upsides to it. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I mean, some critics of gerrymandering say that it's essentially that instead of the voters choosing their representatives, it's the representatives choosing their voters. | |
| Because, you know, if you just think about this, let's say you're doing redistricting during the 1980s. | ||
| You know, I've heard stories where, you know, you would have rooms with large maps all over the floor. | ||
| You know, you would have, you know, spreadsheets of data, which now the thing is, is that the average everyday person can do redistricting on their own laptop or probably even phone. | ||
| So another thing that we have to consider, too, is that, you know, we're also wrapping things up with that we have an increasingly amount of polarization in the country. | ||
| So, you know, we think about, let's say, the seven swing states from the 2024 election. | ||
| Well, you know, outside of those seven swing states, you know, if you think of your red states and your blue states, there are no Democratic U.S. Senators now because Democrats lost their seats in West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana in the red states. | ||
| And as far as Republicans in the blue states, the only person left there is Susan Collins in Maine. | ||
| So I think that it's something where, yes, gerrymandering might be playing a role there. | ||
| But, you know, we're also seeing the same thing within Senate races, which the thing is, is that you can't really gerrymander Senate races because it's a statewide election. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We will start with Evelyn, who's calling from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Evelyn. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi, Evelyn. | ||
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unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| I was wondering how many blue states already have gerrymandering and why the Democrats are so against it when they do it all the time. | ||
| Well, usually what you see as far as gerrymandering and parties criticizing it is that when it's their party that seems like that they're the victim of the other side trying to engage in partisan gerrymandering, that they're the ones complaining about it and vice versa. | ||
| You know, one thing that we saw, you know, in the last round of redistricting, you know, about 10 to 15 years ago after the 2010 census, is that Republicans just had a lot more opportunities to gerrymander than Democrats did. | ||
| What we have seen in the more recent round of redistricting is Democrats had slightly more opportunities than Republicans had a little bit less because you had where you had court-drawn maps in, say, Pennsylvania, an independent commission in Michigan. | ||
| But yes, I mean, if you look at different states around, the state that is most often criticized for Democrats engaging in gerrymandering clearly is Illinois, where out of 17 House seats, you have where Democrats control 14 and Republicans control three. | ||
| So what Democrats, if you look at the map in Illinois did, is that you have a big concentrated amount of Democratic votes in the Chicagoland area, while the suburbs start to get bluer and then more purple, and then you get more red areas as you go out into other parts of Illinois. | ||
| So what Democrats did is that they tried to unpack some of the concentration of Democrats in the Chicagoland area out into some of the redder areas. | ||
| While in Texas, what you see is that Republicans have all this area in the rural areas and exurbs in Texas, that they're trying to unpack some of that by cracking some of the Democratic support in some of the major metropolitan areas in Texas like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. | ||
| Sean, we had a question come in on X from Aztec says, has there been any state that has redistricted without the case? | ||
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unidentified
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This is the committee's second hearing since Democrats have moved to block a vote on the floor by refusing to attend the special legislative session. | |
| The committee is expected to hear public testimony after invited witnesses were absent from yesterday's hearing. | ||
| You're watching live coverage on C-SPAN. |