• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Redistricting>
  3. gerrymandering>

Partisan maps hurt children, liberal group says in pushing for a campaign issue

Sara Swann
https://twitter.com/saramswann?lang=en
May 28, 2020
Education images
Mukhina1/Getty Images

Legislative lines drawn by politicians focused on preserving their power get criticized mainly for skewing election outcomes and disenfranchising voters. But they are also having a lasting impact on the education and health care of the next generation.

That's the conclusion of a report released Thursday by a prominent progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress, which maintains that partisan gerrymandering a decade ago by Republicans in four battleground states has limited the availability of child care, education and other family support programs.

The study — which echoes similar CAP reports in recent months arguing that more gun control measures and Medicaid expansions would have been enacted in recent years but for aggressive GOP mapmaking — is part of the wave of efforts to make partisan gerrymandering an election issue this year.


Liberal advocacy groups are pushing hard, and spending generously, to elect enough Democrats to legislatures in purple states that they control more of the next nationwide redistricting, which starts next year after census results are finalized. The GOP dominated the process a decade ago. Good-government groups, meanwhile, are pressing ballot measures to make more states assign the job to independent commissions that would put a premium on compact districts and electoral competition.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Putting an end to partisan gerrymandering would provide "a better, more secure future for America's children and their families," CAP says.

The report maintains that, in the past two years, the North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin legislatures shortchanged health care, education, day care and other social safety net programs for the young even though they enjoyed solid public support — concluding this could not have happened without maps that over-inflated the sizes of GOP majorities in each state capital.

In three of the states (not Wisconsin) the GOP has secured state House and Senate majorities in several recent elections where Democratic legislative candidates won the cumulative statewide vote.

All four have Democratic governors who were unable in 2018 and 2019 to win approval for budgets expanding early childhood education and child care services. Last year, for example, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed a Michigan budget with an additional $84 million to cover preschool education for poor and middle-income families — but the GOP legislature pared the increase to just $5 million.

The coronavirus pandemic has also put "an incredible strain on state budgets," the report says, which could further scale back the funding available for these programs.

"Fixing gerrymandering is not a cure-all for the struggles of children and families, but it would help to ensure that legislators reflect the wider public when they discuss these issues and craft policy solutions," the report says.

The most popular method for combating gerrymandering has been through independent redistricting commissions. Fourteen states will use such a system to redraw their legislative maps in 2021, and eight will do so for their congressional maps. Virginia voters will decide in November whether their state will join that roster next year, and a longshot bid for a similar vote in Arkansas remains alive.

Conversely, Missourians will vote on whether to undo a redistricting reform initiative they approved just two years ago.

At the same time, the more partisan push on redistricting intensified on Thursday when the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, the political action operation run by Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, announced it would invest another $300,000 in the campaigns of 67 legislative candidates in North Carolina and Texas — on top of $150,000 spent this winter.

Turning the state capitals blue in Austin and Raleigh is within a long reach for the party, and that alone would allow the Democrats to draw 51 more congressional districts in 2021 than they did in 2011.

From Your Site Articles
  • CAP report: gerrymandering prevented gun control laws - The Fulcrum ›
  • Report: How gerrymandering has limited Medicaid coverage - The ... ›
  • Gerrymandered Pennsylvanians seek redress of grievances - The Fulcrum ›
  • CAP's final report on gerrymandering cites harsh voting laws - The Fulcrum ›
  • Arkansas redistricting reform blocked from November ballot - The Fulcrum ›
  • Does anyone care about the poor? - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • The Impact of Partisan Gerrymandering - Center for American ... ›
  • How gerrymandering keeps Congress from passing gun control laws ›
  • Gerrymandering, or how drawing irregular lines can impact an election ›
gerrymandering

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno

Re-imagining Title IX: An opportunity to flex our civic muscles

Lisa Kay Solomon

'Independent state legislature theory' is unconstitutional

Daniel O. Jamison

How afraid are we?

Debilyn Molineaux

Politicians certifying election results is risky and unnecessary

Kevin Johnson
latest News

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Amanda Becker, The 19th
9h

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Our Staff
10h

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

David Meyers
23 June

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Our Staff
23 June

Podcast: Past, present, future

Our Staff
23 June

Video: America's vulnerable elections

Our Staff
22 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Bridge Alliance intern Sachi Bajaj speaks at the June 12 Civvy Awards.

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Leadership
abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Campaign Finance
Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Media
Abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors at the Supreme Court

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Big Picture
Virginia primary voter

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Voting