2021’s Redistricting Challenge Amid COVID-19, Demographic Change, and Politics

A Corporation-supported report by grantee the Brennan Center for Justice explores four factors that will influence redistricting outcomes in each state

By Carnegie Corporation of New York April 26, 2021

Census

Every 10 years, after the collection of census data, the United States goes through a process of redrawing legislative and congressional districts and electoral boundaries, a cycle known as redistricting. Redistricting matters because when Americans across the country go to the polls to vote for their congressional representatives and state legislature, their choices will depend on the district lines that have been drawn. Corporation grantee the Brennan Center for Justice believes rapid demographic change, a weakening of the legal framework that governs redistricting, and the COVID-19 pandemic will make the next redistricting process in 2021 and 2022, “the most challenging in recent history.”

The Brennan Center’s Corporation-supported report, The Redistricting Landscape, 2021–22, looks at the upcoming redistricting cycle through the lens of four factors that will influence outcomes in each state: who controls map drawing; changes in the legal rules governing redistricting over the last decade; pressures from population and demographic shifts over the same period; and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 Census.

“The biggest predictor of whether a state will draw fair maps is whether a single party controls the map drawing process,” writes the report’s author, Michael C. Li, who explains that there is a long history of single-party redistricting in the U.S. “Single-party control, whether by Democrats or Republicans, creates an almost irresistible temptation for the party in charge to make decisions behind closed doors. By contrast, maps drawn by commissions — even imperfect ones — have tended to be both more responsive to voter preferences and better at protecting communities of color.”

The report includes a list of 30 states with single-party redistricting control and a ranking of states at high risk of gerrymandering, meaning the manipulation of district lines to protect or change political power.

TOP: A Fair Maps Rally was held in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 26, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images)