How every blue state can counter new GOP gerrymanders

For many, fighting fire with fire won't be easy, but it's always possible

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been one of the most vocal advocates of an aggressive Democratic response to mid-decade Republican gerrymandering (credit: Gavin Newsom Facebook)

As Republicans in Texas and elsewhere prepare to further gerrymander their states' already skewed congressional maps, many Democrats are eager to respond accordingly by drawing new maps of their own.

The number of states where Democrats can immediately fight fire with fire is small, but in others, longer-term planning can unshackle the redistricting process so that Democrats can better ensure the national playing field is a level one.

In this piece, we examine how every blue state and several purple ones might craft new "counter-gerrymanders" to combat GOP efforts to rig the lines outside of the normal once-a-decade redistricting cycle.

To do so, Democrats need, at a minimum, three things: political control of state government; geographic opportunity to transform districts from red to blue; and legal authority to draw new lines.

The states that Democrats control

We can start by looking at the 15 states where Democrats currently control state government—that is, they hold the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature.

Right off the bat, though, we can dismiss nearly half of them. In Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Rhode Island, Democrats already hold every seat in the House—24 in all. While it's possible a few more marginal districts could be shored up, there are simply no more Republican seats to target.

That leaves eight other states. But in many of these, Democrats still lack the necessary ingredients, at least for now.

In California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, redistricting is not the province of state lawmakers. Rather, it's handled by commissions enshrined in their respective state constitutions, and constitutions are, typically, difficult to amend, especially on an abbreviated timeline. Difficult, but not impossible. We'll return to this idea below.

Where the opportunities lie

Just three states, then, remain: Illinois, Maryland, and Oregon. The options for Democrats, however, are still limited in a few different ways.