Thread by @mcpli

With another cycle of redistricting just a couple of weeks away, no voting reform is more urgent or time sensitive than fixing the broken redistricting process. My op-ed 👇#fairmaps #S1 #HR1 #ForThePeople washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

In short, you can’t “out organize” gerrymandering. In 2012 in PA, Democrats got 51% of the congressional vote but won just 5 of 18 seats. The map was so gerrymandered that even if Ds won 56% of the vote, they would have won only 6 of 18 seats. #fairmaps 2/

Contrast that to the pre-2011 map. Then Democrats won 11 of 19 seats with 56% of the statewide vote. (Or put another way, 58% of seats for 56% of the vote compared with 33% of seats for the same 56% of the vote under the gerrymandered 2011 map). #fairmaps 3/

And Pennsylvania wasn’t alone. A similarly aggressive gerrymander in Ohio held Democrats to just 4 of 16 seats (25%) all last decade even though Democrats in Ohio get way more than 25% of the congressional vote. #fairmaps 4/

And it bears stressing that it will be fast-growing communities of color in states like Texas and Georgia that will bear the brunt of the gerrymandering that is just weeks away. #fairmaps 5/

People of color provided almost all of the country’s growth last decade (90% in Texas) and with most people of color in metro areas now living in suburbs rather than cities, the frayed protections of the VRA don’t have as much reach as they used to. #fairmaps 6/

There is little in current law that will prevent lawmakers in the South from dismantling districts in the suburbs of cities like Atlanta, Dallas Houston where emerging multiracial coalitions have either won power in recent years or come inches away from doing so. #fairmaps 7/

Indeed, with the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause, lawmakers can now justify discrimination against communities of color in the South on the basis of partisanship - we were just discriminating against Democrats & you, SCOTUS, said that’s okay. #fairmaps 8/

The For the People Act - or whatever compromise bill emerges in the Congress - is vital because it will ban partisan gerrymandering by statute & strengthen other protections for communities of color in redistricting. #fairmaps 9/

But time is **running critical short.** The Census Bureau will release the data states need to draw maps on August 16 (in two weeks!) and then it will be off to the races. Many states will redistrict in Sept & Oct. Most of the country will be done by Christmas. #fairmaps 10/

Every day that passes, the harder it becomes to pass the most robust reforms. #fairmaps 11/

And every day that passes increases the risk that Americans - and Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American communities in particular - will be stuck with discriminatory and aggressively gerrymandered maps for the decade. #fairmaps 12/