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Will Maryland remap itself before Supreme Court acts?

The race is on to see whether a new, more politically competitive congressional map is adopted by the Maryland legislature before the Supreme Court decides if the current map is unconstitutional.

Last week, an independent commission created by GOP Gov. Larry Hogan unanimously embraced a plan to reconfigure two House districts encompassing some Washington suburbs. Even while leaving the rest of the state's sometimes incomprehensibly contorted boundaries intact, a cartographer (redistricting writer Stephen Wolf of the liberal Daily Kos politics website) figured out a visibly clean way to give Republicans a reasonable shot at electing a second House member from the state.


He refigured the 6th district to cover the entire panhandle and stretch as far southeast as Germantown, with most of the rest of Montgomery County south and east of Gaithersburg falling in a new 8th district far more compact and contiguous than as currently drawn.

After a period of public comment, Hogan is on course to send the map to Annapolis on March 22. The solidly Democratic General Assembly would then have until its annual session concludes April 8 to accept or reject it. But two weeks before that deadline, on March 26, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a potential landmark case asking whether the existing map is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander because its contours virtually guarantee that only one of the eight House members from the state is a Republican – even though the GOP reliably wins 40 percent of the vote statewide.

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That case is paired with a challenge to the map for North Carolina, where the GOP has held a 12-3 advantage in the congressional delegation all decade even though the total statewide vote for congressional candidates is split almost 50-50 each time. The court is being asked to decide if such maps can ever be drawn with such clear partisan intent as to become unconstitutional.

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The Power of Outrage and Keeping Everyone Guessing

Question marks on a stack of small blocks.

Getty Images / Sakchai Vongsasiripat

The Power of Outrage and Keeping Everyone Guessing

Donald Trump loves to keep us guessing. This is exactly what we’re all doing as his second term in the White House begins. It’s one way he controls the narrative.

Trump’s off the cuff, unfiltered, controversial statements infuriate opponents and delight his supporters. The rest of us are left trying to figure out the difference between the shenanigans and when he’s actually serious.

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To help heal divides, we must cut “the media” some slack

Newspaper headline cuttings.

Getty Images / Sean Gladwell

To help heal divides, we must cut “the media” some slack

A few days ago, Donald Trump was inaugurated. In his second term, just as in his first, he’ll likely spark passionate disagreements about news media: what is “fake news” and what isn’t, which media sources should be trusted and which should be doubted.

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Meet the Faces of Democracy: Tommy Gong

Tommy Gong is the deputy county clerk-recorder for Contra Costa County, San Francisco Bay Area—home to over 700,000 registered voters.

Photo Courtesy of Issue One

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Tommy Gong

Californian Tommy Gong is the deputy county clerk-recorder for Contra Costa County which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and home to over 700,000 registered voters. He has been an election administrator for over two decades, having served in other California counties including San Luis Obispo and Stanislaus.

Gong, who is not affiliated with any political party, has received wide recognition throughout his tenure as an election official. He led efforts to coordinate communication tactics to increase public trust in election processes across the Bay Area by forming the Coalition of Bay Area Election Officials. This initiative received awards from the National Association of Election Officials and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

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