6

Michigan's gerrymandered electoral map drawn up after the 2010 redistricting was just found unconstitutional, joining Pennsylvania. There is also a current supreme court case regarding the gerrymandered maps of North Carolina and Maryland.

What states will have different maps from those used in the 2016 elections? And which ones may be redrawn pending ongoing litigation?

Looks like as of 5/3/2019 Ohio joins the list

3
  • Doesn't the US census get factored into redrawing electoral maps? If so, wouldn't the answer be all of them? Apr 26, 2019 at 20:29
  • 2
    @DenisdeBernardy But the US census results from 2020 won’t be used to draw the maps for the November 2020 election. The census will begin in April 2020, but the redistricting results won’t be sent to the states until March 2021. Apr 26, 2019 at 21:53
  • It seems to me you're asking two different questions. And your 2nd question isn't terribly good, because legal precedents may lead to cases that aren't currently "pending ongoing litigation". According to an opinion in the Atlantic "After 2021, such cases could include Republican-controlled Florida and Georgia, as well as states under possible Democratic control, such as Minnesota and Virginia." theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/…
    – Fizz
    Apr 29, 2019 at 13:26

1 Answer 1

4

The states which will have different electoral maps in 2020 than they did in 2016 are North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, this is thanks to the 2017 Supreme Court decision which found that the gerrymander violated equal protection. In Pennsylvania, this is as a result of a 2018 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, later upheld by the Supreme Court.

Below is a map I've cobbled together from the 2016 and 2020 election maps from Wikipedia. The lines in blue are from 2016, and the lines in red are the districts for use in 2020, allowing us to clearly see any changes.

enter image description here Adapted from Kurykh, Mr. Matté / CC BY-SA & Kingofthedead / Public domain

To go through the other states which have been mentioned; these were fairly doomed after the July 2019 decision on Maryland's gerrymandered districts. From page 30 of the ruling:

We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts. Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.

Subsequently, the Supreme Court ruled that Michigan's 2016 congressional districts were to be used in the 2020 election, and similarly, Ohio's.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .