Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The worst gerrymandered state no longer?

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court decision likely means Louisiana voters will elect a second Black member of their congressional delegation.

Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images

On May 15 the Supreme Court directed Louisiana to move forward with two majority-Black districts. The ruling allows the state to use a new congressional map for the 2024 elections.

The Supreme Court ruling overturns a lower federal court decision that barred the state from using the new map on the grounds that state legislators had relied too heavily on race when the lines were drawn earlier in the year. This ruling was unsigned, which is the custom in emergency applications to the Supreme Court. The action was taken after state Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill urged the Supreme Court to act quickly since the Louisiana secretary of state indicated that May 15 was the deadline to prepare for the 2024 elections.


“This year, [Black voters] will have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice in two of the state’s six congressional districts as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires,” Marina Jenkns, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, said after the ruling was issued. “What unfolded in Louisiana underscores that anti-democratic forces will continue to do all they can to gerrymander, and we must remain vigilant, but today they have again been stopped. Tomorrow, the fight to protect the Voting Rights Act will continue.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The ruling is particularly impactful given the slim, four-seat majority the Republicans have in the House of Representatives and the likelihood that the additional Black district will elect a Democrat.

Gerrymandering reform has long been a top priority of the democracy reform movement. While this Supreme Court ruling is not a legislative reform, it is consistent with the goals of the movement. Reformers have long argued that the redrawing of congressional lines to satisfy partisan goals must stop in order to have more competitive congressional elections. According to polls, 81 percent of Americans said they’d like to end partisan gerrymandering and stop the manipulation of congressional district lines that it brings.

Reformers are working on a variety of proposals to ensure that redistricting commissions are truly independent and free of political influence. This could be done if the commissions included members of several parties and represented independent votes and if enforceable standards were established for district maps.

Most Americans oppose partisan gerrymandering, but half do not know whether the practice occurs in their states.

The Fulcrum will continue its coverage on this critical issue to keep the public informed. We previously reported:

Two-thirds of Americans told pollsters for The Economist and YouGov that states drawing legislative districts to favor one party is a “major problem” with just 23 percent saying it’s a “minor problem.” But 50 percent said they do not know whether districts are drawn by the legislature or an independent commission in their own state.

We will continue to identify the worst gerrymandering districts and to keep our readers informed of pending and adjudicated court rulings.

While the districts certainly may have changed in the latest round mapmaking, the depth of the problem has not. Both Democrats and Republicans continue to design maps to ensure that their party maintains power.

Every 10 years, states draw new congressional and state legislative district lines. Often, mapmakers engage in gerrymandering — drawing lines in a way that artificially advantages one person, party or group over another. The anti-corruption group RepresentUs explains the ensuing problem:

“Instead of voters choosing politicians, it’s the other way around – politicians are choosing their voters. They do it by gerrymandering voting districts to guarantee their own re-election. That’s corruption at the core of our political process.”

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who launched a anti-gerrymanding organization that primarily helps Democrats, had this to say:

“This is an unequivocal victory for Black Louisianians, who have fought tenaciously for the equal representation they deserve as American citizens. The state, consistent with the law, will now have a second Black opportunity district in its congressional map this fall. It is also a clear message to those who intend to gerrymander in order to increase their illegitimate power at the expense of voters of color: you will be stopped.”

Read More

People voting

Jessie Harris (left,) a registered independent, casts a ballot at during South Carolina's Republican primary on Feb. 24.

Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Our election system is failing independent voters

Gruber is senior vice president of Open Primaries and co-founder of Let Us Vote.

With the race to Election Day entering the homestretch, the Harris and Trump campaigns are in a full out sprint to reach independent voters, knowing full well that independents have been the deciding vote in every presidential contest since the Obama era. And like clockwork every election season, debates are arising about who independent voters are, whether they matter and even whether they actually exist at all.

Lost, perhaps intentionally, in these debates is one undebatable truth: Our electoral system treats the millions of Americans registered as independent voters as second-class citizens by law.

Keep ReadingShow less
ballot

The ballot used in Alaska's 2022 special election.

What is ranked-choice voting anyway?

Landry is the facilitator of the League of Women Voters of Colorado’s Alternative Voting Methods Task Force. An earlier version of this article was published in the LWV of Boulder County’s June 2023 Voter newsletter.

The term “ranked-choice voting” is so bandied about these days that it tends to take up all the oxygen in any discussion on better voting methods. The RCV label was created in 2002 by the city of San Francisco. People who want to promote evolution beyond our flawed plurality voting are often excited to jump on the RCV bandwagon.

However, many people, including RCV advocates, are unaware that it is actually an umbrella term, and ranked-choice voting in fact exists in multiple forms. Some people refer to any alternative voting method as RCV — even approval voting and STAR Voting, which don’t rank candidates! This article only discusses voting methods that do rank candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
People voting
Paul J. Richards/Getty Images

Make safe states matter

Richie is co-founder and senior advisor of FairVote.

It’s time for “safe state” voters to be more than nervous spectators and symbolic participants in presidential elections.

The latest poll averages confirm that the 2024 presidential election will again hinge on seven swing states. Just as in 2020, expect more than 95 percent of major party candidate campaign spending and events to focus on these states. Volunteers will travel there, rather than engage with their neighbors in states that will easily go to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. The decisions of a few thousand swing state voters will dwarf the importance of those of tens of millions of safe-state Americans.

But our swing-state myopia creates an opportunity. Deprived of the responsibility to influence which candidate will win, safe state voters can embrace the freedom to vote exactly the way they want, including for third-party and independent candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
Map of the United States

The National EduDemocracy Landscape Map provides a comprehensive overview of where states are approaching democracy reforms within education.

The democracy movement ignores education races at its peril

Dr. Mascareñaz is a leader in the Cornerstone Project, a co-founder of The Open System Institute and chair of the Colorado Community College System State Board.

One of my clearest, earliest memories of talking about politics with my grandfather, who helped the IRS build its earliest computer systems in the 1960s, was asking him how he was voting. He said, “Everyone wants to make it about up here,” he said as gestured high above his head before pointing to the ground. “But the truth is that it’s all down here.” This was Thomas Mascareñaz’s version of “all politics is local” and, to me, essential guidance for a life of community building.

As a leader in The Cornerstone Project and a co-founder of The Open System Institute I've spent lots of time thinking and working at the intersections of education and civic engagement. I've seen firsthand how the democratic process unfolds at all levels — national, statewide, municipal and, crucially, in our schools. It is from this vantage point that I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the democracy reform movement will not succeed unless it acts decisively in the field of education.

Keep ReadingShow less