BREAKING: House Dems just passed the most important democracy reform bill since the 1965 Voting Rights Act!
#HR1 enacts sweeping new voting protections, bans congressional gerrymandering, & adopts public campaign financing. See the major provisions here: dailykos.com/stories/2021/3…
These reforms are critical for protecting our democracy from an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party that uses gerrymandering & voter suppression to entrench white minority rule. The Senate absolutely must curtail the filibuster & pass #HR1dailykos.com/story/2021/2/2…
If Senate Democrats don't curtail the filibuster to pass #HR1, Dems can kiss their House majority goodbye in 2022 since Republicans will be able to draw 2-3 times as many congressional districts as Dems unless #HR1 becomes law & bans House gerrymandering dailykos.com/story/2020/11/…
Republican state legislators across the U.S. have introduced an unprecedented number of bills to enact new voting restrictions as a reaction to GOP losses in the 2020 elections.
Dems curbing the filibuster to pass #HR1 in the Senate is paramount for protecting the right to vote
NEW: Democrats in Congress must pass major new election reforms to save democracy from an increasingly radical GOP. Dems have a historic chance to pass the biggest expansion of voting access since the Voting Rights Act, a ban on gerrymandering, & more dailykos.com/stories/2021/2…
In reaction to 2020 Dem wins, Republicans are advancing new voting restrictions in AZ, GA, FL, IA, TX, & more states.
Only congressional action is guaranteed to block these voter suppression measures & protect voting access. Dems must pass #HR1 & the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
Following the 2020 elections, Republicans are poised to dominate redistricting by drawing 2-3 times as many House districts as Dems, leading to another decade of biased maps.
NEW: We calculated 3 decades of the Senate "popular vote" & how many people each party represented. The results are astonishing: The GOP hasn't won more votes or represented more people than Dems since the 1990s but has run the Senate > half the time since dailykos.com/stories/2021/2…
GOP minority rule is a defining feature of what's wrong with American politics, & no institution has it worse than the Senate. Dems represent tens of millions more people & won millions more votes but won the same number of seats as GOP in 2020. Minority rule could return in 2022
From 2000-2006 & 2014-2020, Senate GOP owed its majorities to minority rule. The results are far-reaching: A majority of 5 SCOTUS justices were confirmed by GOP senates elected with less support than Dems. Those justices have since undermined voting rights & upheld gerrymandering
.@DKElections presents the 2020 presidential results by congressional district! As shown on these maps, Biden won 224 districts to Trump's 211. The median seat was #IL14, which Biden won by 50-48, meaning Trump could've lost the popular vote by 2% & still won a majority of seats
The 2016 presidential results for the congressional districts in use in 2020 saw Trump win the median seat by 2% despite losing overall by 2%, meaning the GOP had a 4% advantage over the popular vote. That advantage fell in half in 2020, but GOP gerrymandering remains a threat
Republicans are poised to draw 2-3 times as many congressional districts as Dems after 2020, & SCOTUS could make GOP gerrymandering worse within states. GOP gerrymandering will remain a major problem in the 2020s & beyond if congressional Dems don't ban it dailykos.com/story/2020/11/…
In state after state, Republicans are moving to restrict ballot initiatives after they’ve been used to enact progressive policies & pro-democracy reforms. This is part of the same broader effort to restrict voting access so that only Republicans are able to govern
Arizona voting advocates had tried to use a ballot initiative in 2020 to adopt automatic & same-day voter registration, expanded public financing, & more. The pandemic & AZ's GOP-packed Supreme Court stopped them from getting enough signatures, but they could try again this cycle
Arizona is hardly the only state where the GOP has restricted ballot initiatives or is trying to after voters passed democracy reforms/progressive initiatives. The same thing happened in AR, FL, ID, ME, MI, MO, ND, SD, & UT in just the last several years dailykos.com/stories/2019/7…
This will wreak havoc with redistricting timelines. Many states have constitutionally mandated deadlines for drawing new districts before then & are likely to face litigation over them. Some could even see legislatures lose control over the process to courts & backup commissions
⬇️ The delay means we’re more likely to see redistricting blitzkriegs where partisan mapmakers wait until the last minute to release proposed maps before passing them, giving the public little time to mobilize against flawed or outright bad maps
This could mean that the release of population data at the census block level, which is what is used in redistricting itself, may not be released until after April 30. That could cause serious problems for states whose constitutions mandate redistricting deadlines weeks afterward
It appears highly likely that New Jersey will use its current legislative maps for 2021 & won't redistrict their legislature until 2023. Virginia may end up doing the same for November. Several other states with early summer deadlines for redistricting could be thrown into chaos
The census delaying the release of redistricting data this year is a good reason why states should change their redistricting deadlines to make them more flexible in similar future situations, but amending state constitutions is a lengthy process, & it's too late to do so by 2022