Gerrymandering and Redistricting: How It Will Shape the New Congressional Map

This is common across America and, in general, not necessarily a good thing.

Next year, we are likely to have the fewest number of competitive congressional races ever. It’s not only due to gerrymandering, but gerrymandering clearly is a culprit.

In 2019, the Supreme Court decided it wasn’t up to courts to police partisan gerrymandering.

So Maryland Democrats eliminated one of the only two GOP-held congressional districts after the 2010 census, and North Carolina Republicans followed a similar path in the Tar Heel State.

President Joe Biden won Maryland by over 30 points, yet Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is arguably the most popular state chief executive in the country, despite Republicans making up only a third of voters in the state.

With the Supreme Court’s blessing, the Democrat-controlled statehouse decided to hypocritically get rid of the other Republican congressional district in the Old Line State.

It’s not just Maryland.

Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of 10 Republican congressmen who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riots (and thus a conservative Democrats point to as “one of the good guys”), still doesn’t count when it’s about progressive power.

The Land of Lincoln’s Democrat legislators recently eliminated Kinzinger’s district, and the 43-year-old erstwhile star is retiring from politics.

In corrupt California, the latest maps give Democrats 76% of the state’s congressional seats with just 59% of the statewide votes. We don’t hear leftists whining about that discrepancy.

After leftists threw tantrums, the Biden Department of Justice sued — you guessed it — Texas, arguing that its Republican-drawn maps are an illegal “racial” gerrymander. Texas claimed it simply was drawing partisan lines, like other states.

Finally, in North Carolina, the state’s Supreme Court just ordered the state to delay all its primaries for two months and freeze candidate filings while lower courts decide whether Republicans’ partisan gerrymandering violated the state’s constitution.

Related: Mitch McConnell Just Keeps on Winning, Winning, and Winning

As of now, 10 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington state — have ceded primary line drawing authority to supposedly independent commissions, although the Virginia and Washington state commissions missed their deadlines and therefore judges stepped in.

National update: on the current trajectory, there will actually be a few *more* Biden-won congressional districts after redistricting than there are now (224/435).

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 22, 2021

Gerrymandering helps protect incumbents, and more extreme partisanship feeds ignoble tribal tendencies, leaving Congress less incentive to do its job and more time to compile cable news clips.

Then instead of legislation, Congress defers to the courts or, perhaps worse, to the president. That causes the executive branch to push their agenda via executive orders or the administrative state. None of that is what the Founders envisioned as good for America.