Melissa Harris-Perry: Redistricting is underway in many states as lawmakers are drawing a new political line for state and congressional seats. A collaboration between the Princeton Electoral Innovation Lab and RepresentUs started handing out redistricting report cards to keep a check on bad actors as they draw new political maps.

Participant: Have you gentlemen seen your mid-term grades yet?

Melissa Harris-Perry: The final congressional map in Texas earned a big old F, for pretty clearly trying to advantage Republican lawmakers.

Participant: A fine example you set.

Melissa Harris-Perry: North Carolina passed the new congressional map just last week. Their grade, also an F for the same reasons, F.

Participant: An F?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's take a look at Ohio where state Republicans have submitted a draft for their congressional map. Another F.

Participant: Well, how'd I do?

Melissa Harris-Perry: How'd you do? Offhand I'd say you failed.

Participant: Failed?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Gerrymandering political maps is just one part of this conversation. In 2021 alone, at least 19 states enacted 33 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote. Some estimates are even higher, and these laws largely impact voters of color. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have restored voting protections at the Supreme Court weekend in 2013's Shelby versus Holder. This is the third voting rights bill Republicans have rejected this year. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor after the vote.

Senator Chuck Schumer: Just because Republicans will not join us doesn't mean Democrats will stop fighting. This is too important. We will continue to fight for voting rights and find an alternative path forward.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Here with me is Ari Berman, senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights. Ari, it's always great to talk with you

Ari Berman: Hey Melissa. Great to talk to you again as always. Thank you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. We're just three months into map-making. How's it going?

Ari Berman: It's going pretty much as we expected, which is very, very badly. This redistricting cycle is very fraught for two big reasons. It's the first redistricting cycle in more than 50 years, where states with a long history of discrimination, like North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, do not have to approve their redistricting maps with the federal government under the Voting Rights Act. It's also the first redistricting cycle in which the Supreme Court has said that they will not review partisan gerrymandering in federal court. I think these two decisions together have really emboldened lawmakers, particularly Republicans, to go as far as they can in drawing extreme maps.

Melissa Harris-Perry: They're not going to consider partisan gerrymandering but racial gerrymandering is still unconstitutional. Is that right?

Ari Berman: That is right. That's really where the gutting of the Voting Rights Act comes into effect because the Voting Rights Act prevented places like Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia from enacting discriminatory maps. It still prevents them from enacting those discriminatory maps but beforehand they would have had to get those maps approved, meaning they couldn't go into effect if they were discriminatory. Now they can pass discriminatory maps but you can only challenge them after the fact in very lengthy litigation.

I think that Republicans are basically saying, "We're going to take our chances. You might strike down these districts in 2028 when this works its way through the courts, but in the meantime, we're going to pick up a bunch of seats whether we do it through partisan gerrymandering or whether through racial gerrymandering. We don't think these maps are going to be struck down at all, but if they are struck down, they're not going to be struck down immediately."

Melissa Harris-Perry: It puts the logus of having to actually take the first step pay for all the litigation on organizations like NAACP LDF, local organizations. I am assuming that in places like Texas and North Carolina, they are watching closely and probably ready to start filing.

Ari Berman: They are. They are watching closely, and there's already been lawsuits filed against the state legislative and congressional maps in places like North Carolina and Texas. It's going to be difficult to win those cases, but also what voting rights advocates are most concerned about is what's happening at the local level. Remember there's redistricting happening on the local levels as well for city council and county commissions and all of those kinds of things. That's where there aren't enough lawyers to monitor every single county doing their local district in Texas or Georgia or North Carolina.

We're already hearing a lot of examples of Black members, Latino members who held their seats for 30 years on the county commission and are now having them redrawn and dismantled at the local level. That's the kind of thing that the Voting Rights Act stopped as well. There are going to be some people that fall through the cracks here. There are going to be some discriminatory actions that would have been blocked under the Voting Rights Act that are allowed to go through and may be challenged only after lengthy litigation or may not be challenged at all if groups don't have enough resources to litigate all these cases.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For ordinary citizens, sometimes, the language of redistricting sounds very innocuous like, "Oh we're going to move to large districts, or we're going to move a couple of these districts into other ones." It doesn't sound off the top the way that that could have these deeply problematic outcomes for particularly representatives of color.

Ari Berman: Exactly. Even someone like myself, I get a map, I don't know what that map means. I don't know the local geography of every county in Texas or North Carolina. I'm learning a lot more than I did.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm shocked to hear that, Ari. I actually thought you might.

Ari Berman: This is a very inaccessible process for most people. Most people are not paying attention to politics in general in 2021. Most people are not paying attention to redistricting or they don't realize since these maps are going to go into effect for the next decade. The decisions made now are going to affect people for the next decade. Also, in a lot of these smaller rural counties, it took 30, 40 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to elect the first Black or Latino or Asian or Native American members of a county commission or of a city council. Once you erase those kinds of things, it's not going to be very easy to get those kinds of gains back.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Then it has this long-term effect, if you can't hold the statehouse seat, then you can't hold the state Senate seat, then you can't run for Congress. Then you're never eligible for those higher levels.

Ari Berman: Exactly. Not only that, but local representation really matters to people. People often know their city council member, their county commission member, a lot more than their member of Congress or their governor. That actually affects them more in their day-to-day lives.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's start with Texas, big state, deeply diverse. Are the districts going to represent this new Texas diversity, especially since they got a whole nother seat?

Ari Berman: No. That's really a trend that we're seeing across the South, Melissa, which is there's this huge population gains, almost entirely from people of color. From Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, multi-racial people, but those gains aren't translating into political power. Texas actually increased the number of majority-white districts and decreased the number of Black and Latino and Asian districts, both for its congressional maps and for its state legislative maps, even though 95% of population growth in the state came from communities of color.

We're seeing, through the gerrymandering process, basically attempts to completely nullify and just flat out ignore the demographic changes that are happening in the South and preventing those demographic changes from leading to shifts in political power.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Also in the South, here in North Carolina where I live, there's this wild district that keeps getting redrawn, seems like every six months. Can you talk to us a little bit about what is going on in Carolina?

Ari Berman: Well, North Carolina, as you know, was really the epicenter of gerrymandering in the last redistricting cycle. They passed two different congressional maps that were both struck down in court, one for racial gerrymandering and one for partisan gerrymandering. They're basically doing the same thing that the courts told them not to do in the last cycle, which is they are drawing districts in which Republicans will hold 10 or 11 congressional districts out of 14 total. They're basically going to hold over 70% of seats in a state that's basically 50/50 divided. They're doing that by targeting communities of color.

There could be fewer Black members of Congress, according to their congressional plan. There could be one-third fewer Black state senators, one-fifth fewer Black state reps. You're talking about a very diverse state that is getting more diverse but white power is being entrenched and overrepresented based on the maps that Republicans are drawing in North Carolina.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Some are suggesting that this angst about North Carolina is related to the outsized and critically important role that Georgia played in the last presidential and congressional elections. What is going on with Georgia redistricting as well?

Ari Berman: They're finalizing their redistricting maps right now. They haven't introduced their congressional maps, but at least for their state legislative maps through their state Senate maps, we're seeing the same thing, which is that Georgia is another state, gained almost a million people in the last decade, 100% of that growth from communities of color. In the state senate plan they drew, they didn't draw a single new majority-minority district. Basically, they drew districts so that white Republicans are going to remain in control for the entire decade.

Even though Georgia is a 50/50 state, basically, Trump won more than half the districts there by more than 15 points. They're not even remotely competitive. The maps got an F from the Princeton gerrymandering project as you mentioned in your opener. Again, what we are seeing throughout all of these places, whether it's North Carolina, or Georgia, or Texas, these states are becoming increasingly competitive and increasingly diverse. Because of gerrymandering, they're not competitive and they're not diverse, at least in terms of the makeup of the state legislature and the congressional maps.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, there's one aspect of the federal legislature that is permanently gerrymandered, and that's the US Senate where every state gets two senators, no matter how many people or what their makeup is. Talk to us about how the filibuster connected to the Senate is affecting the capacity to get this voting rights bill through.

Ari Berman: Your right. The Senate is the most gerrymandered institution in American democracy. What it means is that, through the filibuster, 41 Senators, representing just 21% of the country, can block legislation that's supported by a huge majority of Americans. We've seen that over and over with these voting rights bills. These voting rights bills are very, very popular, supported by 70% of Americans, but a very small minority of senators from very small rural, overwhelmingly white states can block legislation that would restore voting access for millions of Americans.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ari, it does feel like these are-- I know, whenever I'm talking to you, it's always like bad news day to talk to Ari, but these are the really critical rules-of-the-game questions that we just are going to have to answer for the health of our democracy. Ari Berman is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, covering voting rights, and author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Ari, as always, thanks for joining us.

Ari Berman: Thanks so much, Melissa.

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