New maps set to aid parties at state level

Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in four battleground states that are set to secure the party’s control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the GOP against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections.

In Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have either created supermajorities capable of overriding a governor’s veto or whittled down competitive districts so significantly that Republicans’ advantage is virtually impenetrable — leaving voters in narrowly divided states powerless to change the leadership of their legislatures.

Although much of the attention on this year’s redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted.

And statehouses have taken on towering importance: With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the country’s policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.

This redistricting cycle, the first one in a decade, builds on a political trend that accelerated in 2011, when Republicans in swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan drew highly gerrymandered state legislative maps.

Since those maps were enacted, Republicans have held both houses of state government in all three places for the entire decade. They never lost control of a single chamber, even as Democrats won some of the states’ races for president, governor and Senate.

All three of those northern states are likely to see some shift back toward parity this year, with a new independent commission drawing Michigan’s maps, and Democratic governors in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will probably force the process to be completed by the courts.

Gerrymandering is a tool used by both parties in swing states as well as less competitive ones. Democrats in deep-blue states like Illinois are moving to increase their advantage in legislatures, and Republicans in deep-red states like Utah and Idaho are doing the same.

But in politically contested states where Republicans hold full control, legislators are carefully crafting a GOP future. They are armed with sharper technology, weakened federal voting statutes and the knowledge that legal challenges to their maps may not be resolved in time for the next elections.

Texas, North Carolina and Ohio have signed into law new maps with a significant Republican advantage. Georgia is moving quickly to join them.

State legislative districts are by nature much smaller in population than congressional districts, meaning they are often more geographically compact.

As Democratic voters have crowded into cities and commuter suburbs, and voters in rural and exurban areas have grown increasingly Republican, GOP mapmakers say that they risk running afoul of other redistricting criteria if they split up those densely populated Democratic areas across multiple state legislative districts.

Democrats note that Republicans are still cracking apart liberal communities — especially in suburbs near Akron and Cleveland in Ohio and in predominantly Black counties in northern and central North Carolina — in a way that helps the GOP and cuts against a geographical argument.

Republicans have taken two approaches to ensure durable majorities in state legislatures. The tactics in Texas and Georgia are more subtle, while Republicans in Ohio and North Carolina have taken more brazen steps.

In Texas and Georgia, the party has largely eliminated competitive districts and made both Republican and Democratic seats safer, a move that tends to ward off criticism from at least some incumbents in the minority party.

The Ohio and North Carolina legislative maps were met with immediate lawsuits, and North Carolina legislators were sued even before the maps were finalized. But the legal process for redistricting can take years, meaning that extremely gerrymandered maps can remain in place for multiple election cycles while challenges trudge along in the courts.