How GOP gerrymandering could reshape political maps for 2022 and beyond

Voting rights advocates sound alarms over the once-a-decade redistricting process, and legal scholars warn ‘midnight is approaching’ without federal intervention, Alex Woodward reports

Thursday 25 November 2021 00:39 GMT
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<p>Georgia state Senator Elena Parent speaks in opposition to the state’s newly drawn congressional maps that Republicans helped move to Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for approval.</p>

Georgia state Senator Elena Parent speaks in opposition to the state’s newly drawn congressional maps that Republicans helped move to Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for approval.

A year before US voters cast ballots in midterm elections that could determine the balance of power in Congress, Republican lawmakers in several states are already likely to gain at least five seats in the House of Representatives through the process of redrawing their political maps alone.

The latest wave of redistricting – the once-a-decade process of redrawing each states’ political boundaries after the release of new Census data – is underway, and GOP state lawmakers have produced some of the most incongruous, disproportionate maps since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, raising the spectre of gerrymandering with increasingly little oversight.

New maps could erode competitive elections, consolidate power in already-GOP-dominant state legislatures, and allow Republicans to take control of the House in 2022.

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