Today is the day
Redistricting sprint begins with major census data drop
Insert copy > "The Census Bureau will release redistricting data Thursday, the start of the heavily compressed map-drawing process that will set the contours of elections for the next decade.
U.S. Census Director Steven Dillingham urges Arizonans to participate in the nation's census population count Sept. 17, 2020, in Phoenix. | (Ross D. Franklin, Pool/AP Photo)
The Census Bureau's long-awaited release of redistricting data Thursday will unleash a torrent of new state political maps in the weeks and months to come, starting with the handful of states pressed against early fall deadlines to enact new district boundaries. . .
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BLOGGER NOTE: 10 years is a long time to wait to know what's changed when there are other data sources frequently updated almost in real time. It is more than likely that most states have done what Colorado did early on,
In Colorado, the state’s independent commission already released a draft map in late June using data that wasn’t from the decennial count. It will now update that map, which created a new district north of Denver, and commissioners will review new plans on Sept. 6.
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SOME POINTS TO NOTE:
> When the data drops on Thursday afternoon, it will come in what’s called a “legacy format” — meaning redistricting agencies will have to download large files and convert them so they can be easily read by mapping software. That could take days or weeks.
> No new Congressional seat for Arizona
> Strategists from both parties predict that some states will finalize maps as soon as September and that roughly half of the states will set their new lines by the end of the year. The rest will follow in the first few months of 2022.
> The dataset will also give an indication of whether the Census undercounted people of color in certain regions, and it will showwhether individual states need to add additional opportunity districts for Blacks and Latinos, as required by the Voting Rights Act. That officially sets the stage for a wave of lawsuits expected from both parties as redistricting moves forward.
> The state independent commissioners still have to answer philosophical questions that will greatly influence what the map ultimately looks like.
> They do get a chance to say what competitiveness should mean - Which communities of interest should be prioritized over others? Those kinds of decisions, essentially, are the ones that they can make value judgments about and should make value judgments about
> Democrats will pore over the data to examine whether they can successfully push for new majority-minority districts, . .Any additional Voting Rights Act-protected seats in those states would help grow Democrats’ footprint in potential states where new Latino-dominated districts could be drawn.
> The release on Thursday will also allow advocates to see how Americans were counted — and, crucially, if any population was missed, or “undercounted.”
> The legal battles during this redistricting cycle will look significantly different compared to the past decade. Crucially, the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that federal courts should have no role in deciding partisan gerrymandering claims ensures the state courts will take center stage in much of the coming lawsuits.
> But given the high-profile nature of redistricting, and the importance of what the map lines actually are heading into the midterms, strategists are hopeful that the courts will prioritize and streamline those cases.
“When a judge wants to move fast, they can,”
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