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unidentified
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| 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. | ||
|
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. | ||
|
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 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 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 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 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 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. | ||
|
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. | ||
|
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 know, 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 bias or partisanship? | ||
| So please explain why any state, quote, needs to redistrict. | ||
| Why is this done? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, one of the reasons that states need to redistrict is that every 10 years we get the census. | |
| And outside of, let's say, a state like North Dakota or Delaware that only has one member of the U.S. House, you know, there are population shifts that happen within a state. | ||
| You have where the case, let's say, you know, in basically every census for the last 60 years, New York has lost seats, while states like Texas and Florida gained seats. | ||
| So you have to readjust the populations of the districts so that they are roughly equal. | ||
| Now, that's a little bit tricky of a thing to look at whenever you're talking about, you know, do you have a fair map or an unbiased map? | ||
| Because social scientists and lawyers have been trying to come up with, let's say, is there some type of a test where We can look at data, we can look at different things, maybe we look at shapes of districts to see if there's no bias or no, let's say, partisan gerrymandering going on. | ||
| Now, this is something that going back to the 1980s, the Supreme Court had a majority of the court said, you know what, we think that partisan gerrymandering can be a constitutional issue. | ||
| But the problem was you could never get five members of the Supreme Court to agree on anything as far as a test, as far as what could constitute an unconstitutional gerrymander. | ||
| And then after Justice Kennedy retired in 2019 in a case called Rucho versus Common Cause, the Supreme Court said that we're saying that this is a political question because we never have been able to come up with a test of what is partisan gerrymandering. | ||
| So that means that federal courts are not able to really weigh in here. | ||
| Now, state courts can, though that there's some limitation as far as weighing in on congressional maps from Moore versus Harper, a case involving something called independent legislative theory. | ||
| But, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, what are you looking at? | ||
| You know, are you wanting to have more competitive elections within a state? | ||
| Are you looking more, let's say, is there some type of proportionality between how the state generally votes and let's say how the members of the U.S. House delegation or a state legislative delegation is put together? | ||
| Because what makes it a little bit tricky is that in some states, voters are, for maybe one party or another, are very inefficiently distributed. | ||
| So, for example, you haven't had a Republican House member in Massachusetts in 20 years. | ||
| Is that because Democrats have really have made the district lines to their advantage? | ||
| Now, clearly some Republicans probably are going to say yes, but one of the big problems is that Democrats are distributed pretty efficiently around the state of Massachusetts. | ||
| You know, you have some states where Democrats are not well distributed, like in Wisconsin, not to the degree that you see in Massachusetts. | ||
| But it's something that's kind of a little bit harder to kind of look at. | ||
| You know, as far as in the two election cycles that we've seen in this round of redistricting, I would probably have to say that we've had a decent amount of competition in the maps, let's say, in Michigan and Pennsylvania. | ||
| One in Michigan drawn by a citizen commission in Pennsylvania drawn by a special master. | ||
| Susan is in Biloxi, Mississippi, calling on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I have two questions, or one I'm more interested in. | ||
| How many times in the past 60 years has a president of the United States called a governor of a state and demanded they redistrict? | ||
| Do you want me to hit that one first? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, I think that I think that there was a push by the Bush White House, though I can't say whether George W. Bush personally had called folks in Texas to try to get the state to redraw its lines about before the 2004 elections. | |
| But having a president getting directly involved is a little bit unusual. | ||
| Oh, we lost her. | ||
| We're not sure what her second question was, but we'll go to Rachel, who is calling from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rachel. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| You know, I listen to you guys a lot, and I'm really starting to get concerned. | ||
| When we read the Declaration of Independence, you know, if you don't mind a second, it says, you know, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them. | ||
| And when it gives a list here, you know, what we're talking about today, it's like combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged to our laws, given his assent to their pretended legislators, you know, and abolishing our free system. | ||
| It seems like everything that is listed in the Declaration of Independence is going on today. | ||
| And it concerns me. | ||
| I have children, and I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. | ||
| I'm just really concerned. | ||
| We'll go to James in Atlanta, Georgia, on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| My question is in line with the last two callers. | ||
| So I understand gerrymandering and it generally happens after a census. | ||
| Is it true that that's what the issue is in this instance, that it's out of sequence and out of line with when gerrymandering would generally occur and it's at the behest of a president? | ||
| Doesn't that meet a standard of inappropriate gerrymandering? | ||
| Well, I think that one thing that we have to, two things we have to kind of disentangle from each other is that every 10 years you have to do redistricting. | ||
| Gerrymandering is something that, you know, that one side or another is going to say, is going to charge, let's say, the other side with. | ||
| And, you know, you can have partisan gerrymandering and also racial gerrymandering. | ||
| I mean, that's something that the Supreme Court has considered. | ||
| But the one thing is, is that unless a state has within its, let's say, state constitution or state laws that prohibit mid-decade redistricting, while it is uncommon that it would happen outside of, let's say, some judicial intervention, it is not prohibited. | ||
| You know, that's something that we saw that the Supreme Court weighed in on after the 2004 mid-decade redistricting in Texas. | ||
| And Sean, when did Texas last redraw their congressional maps compared to now? | ||
|
unidentified
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They would have redrawn their maps prior to the 2022 election. | |
| So the current map was used in 2022 and 2024. | ||
| And if and when this new map is put into place, it would be put into place for 2026, 28, and 30. | ||
| Absent, they're absent, again, having a new redistricting, which is possible, or some type of judicial intervention striking down some of the new districts. | ||
| Let's hear from Zemay calling from Maryland on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Zemay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| In line with Susan of Mississippi and the gentleman from Georgia, my comment is this. | ||
| Professor Donahue, you're answering these questions as though everything is normal in our federal government. | ||
| You have a president that has demanded that Texas redraw their lines because he knows his policies and everything he's doing is not working. | ||
| So he's afraid of losing the midterms. | ||
| So please answer the question as though what we're experiencing is that we have an idiot in the White House and the GOP in the House and the Senate are nothing but sycophants and idiots as well. | ||
| Well, one thing that I would tell you is that in the last three elections, the margin in the House has been five seats or less. | ||
| Currently, it's three seats whenever you fill all the vacancies in the House. | ||
| So I think that one of the things that the current president is probably looking at is that whenever Democrats controlled the House during the second two years of his first term, things did not go well. | ||
| And I think that he is probably thinking that if his party can pick up seats in Texas and Ohio, Missouri, and you can keep the control of the House of Representatives in Republican hands, that that would be pretty advantageous to him. | ||
| I mean, I think that the push for so much of this mid-decade redistricting clearly is kind of new. | ||
| You know, and it's kind of set off a little bit of a tit for tat where Democrats are saying, you know, we're going to redraw districts in California and maybe some other states. | ||
| Where they are definitely at the disadvantage is that there are more states with Republicans in control of the redistricting process without any commissions or anything than you have Democratic states that have free reign as far as redistricting in their states. | ||
| Because for instance, in New York, thanks to former Governor Cuomo, Democrats gave up this power. | ||
| And you have Governor Hochl is looking at maybe trying to give the legislature back some of this power. | ||
| But the earliest that that could happen would be 2028. | ||
| Donnie is in Louisville, Kentucky, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Donnie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, the reason I was coming, I just wanted to know, the Democrats always said that redistricting in Texas was illegal. | ||
| And if they say it's illegal, why didn't they just stay and vote and take it to court, just like the Republicans did when Chicago did it? | ||
| I mean, Illinois, New York, and I think Massachusetts, when they did it, they took them to court. | ||
| And I think when the courts made them go back and redo some of the maps. | ||
| So rather run off and waste your vote and do it the way you're supposed to do it. | ||
| Why did they leave? | ||
| Well, one thing is, is that Democrats have in Texas have basically been pretty powerless for the last 20 years. | ||
| Now, you can file lawsuits and things against redistricting maps. | ||
| And, you know, Texas has had issues with some of its maps going back to the 1970s. | ||
| But you did not have in Illinois or Massachusetts where courts struck down any of the maps that were drawn by Democrats. | ||
| So basically, basically the only kind of tool Democrats have left in Texas is that the Texas Constitution requires two-thirds of members be present to constitute quorum. | ||
| So quorum breaks are something that have been in the history of the Texas legislature. | ||
| You know, actually going back to actually in the 1980s where there were a group of Democrats whenever, you know, it was a heavily Democratic dominated legislature that were acting against some of the more conservative Democrats at the time. | ||
| Now, I mean, Democrats could file a lawsuit against the new map in Texas, but they would have very little chance of having much happen within the Texas courts. | ||
| And Texas is within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the most conservative or among the most conservative federal court areas in the country. | ||
| And the other thing is, is that without Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. | ||
| You can watch the rest of this on our website, c-span.org. |