David Daley, author of the book 'Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy,' joins Cheddar News to discuss redistricting battles taking place across the U.S. 

Between Bells

Redistricting Ahead of the 2022 Midterms

and it swivels back on cheddar news guys, I'm baker machado in new york. The north Carolina. Supreme Court became the latest state to strike down republican drawn district lines. The court ordered the legislature to draw new boundaries. This would give democrats a better chance at winning seats in that state in Congress. But this comes after the Supreme Court yesterday sided with republicans regarding a heavily gerrymandered district that would disenfranchise black voters in Alabama. So joining us now to discuss is David, daily writer and author of the book, unrefined how Americans are battling back to save democracy. David. Such a pleasure to have you here. Let's start with North Carolina because the original Republican drawing maps really effectively had Republicans gaining control of 10 of the 14 House seats in Congress. Even though we know North Carolina is more of a purple 50 50 sort of split here. So what are your thoughts on this ruling here? From the north Carolina Supreme Court? That's absolutely right. What the North Carolina Supreme Court did was it used the state constitution, which has a protection of fair elections. And as a result, they found that the Republican map which effectively locked in 10, perhaps even 11 of the congressional seats and really made sure that no seat in the state was going to be competitive for the next decade. And the court stepped in and said that is not right. You can't have a fair election when the results have been predetermined by map makers years ahead of time and there's going to be probably a 77 or an 86 map in north Carolina. That is a net gain probably for the Democrats of 3-4 seats. Okay, so let's then. Okay, so that's in North Carolina, which is obviously a huge win for Democrats. They're given the fact that just heading into the redistricting cycle. I mean, let alone historical trends of them potentially holding onto the house. We're gonna be hard enough republicans, likely we're just gonna win 5 to 7 seats just on gerrymandering alone. But the big news came yesterday from the Supreme Court in a you know, basically a 54 split decision here essentially siding with republicans in Alabama about this heavily gerrymandered district that basically concentrates all the black voters in Alabama into one district here. Just how much of a setback is that one? That's a brutal setback for voting rights. It's a brutal setback for racial equity and fair representation. Alabama is 27% black, but The state's maps are drawn so that all of those black voters effectively are in one of the seven districts. So that's almost exactly 14%. So in many ways this was a textbook section to claim under the Voting Rights Act that it is possible to draw another black district. So Alabama was supposed to do so in order to be in compliance with the voting rights act, a lower federal court um unanimously. And that court had two judges appointed by donald trump on it. Um and they found that Alabama had to go ahead and draw a second district that a black candidate could win the U. S. Supreme Court yesterday. Not only put that on pause, but they made it clear that they were going to review that section of the voting rights act over the course of the next year. So in many ways it goes from a victory for democrats and for black voters across the south to the potential of losing section two protections under the voting Rights act in racial gerrymandering cases moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, we're still trying to figure out what's going to happen in states like texas student florida, Those two states gaining congressional seats, but the republican led legislature is there and the republican led governors, they're likely going to gerrymander those districts too heavily in favor of republicans there. What are your thoughts on those two states? Are you in terms of where things might go, Texas, Florida and Georgia are really the states where Republicans are going to be able to make the most games when it comes to redistricting. They will likely come out of Texas with a gain of three seats out of Georgia with at least 1-2. And Florida is really up in the air. They are still fighting right now. The governor DeSantis and the legislature are arguing over just how ruthless this gerrymander ought to be and democrats just last week. I did a pretty ruthless gerrymander of new york in which they gained three or four seats there. And what I can imagine now is that republicans are going to look at that and say, well, we have to catch up here, we have to continue to gain seats and florida maybe the last big chance to do. So There's only five seats that separate the two parties in Congress right now. So every single one of these seats heading into the midterms matters an awful lot. I'm glad you mentioned New York because you're right, that's sort of the flip argument here, because that is probably the most heavily gerrymandered district. That was just basically signed off by our governor Kathy, how local, because now Democrats would control 22 of the 26 congressional districts, which is just incredible. You know, Mark Elliot, who is kind of leading the democratic effort in a lot of these courts when it comes to these republican states couldn't republicans basically use the same sort of, you know, legal arguments for new york as to why that's heavily gerrymandered. They could. Um except here's the problem, new york is not one of the states that has a free and fair elections clause in its state constitution. So the kind of case that they were able to win in north Carolina, you can't really bring in new york effectively. Um and you can't make a partisan gerrymandering claim anymore in the federal courts because john roberts, um and his fellow conservatives closed the federal courts to to those claims in the 2019 case, out of out of north Carolina rubio versus common cause. Um So what republicans are going to say in new york is that well, voters passed and A constitutional amendment in 2014 and the legislature didn't follow it appropriately. That is going to be a much tougher case to make Republicans would have had an easier path here uh if the federal courts were still open to these claims. Yeah, all really, really interesting. It has been interesting though, for Democrats, they have had quite a few breaks go their way with a lot of this stands, the Supreme Court case that happened yesterday with Alabama. David Daley, Great to have you here. David, writer and author of the book, Unring a americans, are battling back to save democracy.