2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/MattFriedmanNJ/status/1446145958866300929

[Virginiá]

Do partisan Democrats even support universal fair redistricting? Given the anger about AZ and CO and the enthusiasm for the Hochulmander, I'm skeptical. It seems like Torie is the only Red av really decrying Democratic gerrymandering, and most of the rest just wanted fair maps when they thought the GOP would gain from redistricting and are just fine with gerrymandering when it goes the other way.

A big part of that is because the people who follow this on the Dem side know that it's only for that state, so thinking Democrats get burned in a state they control while Republicans are taking seat after seat in states they control creates a feeling of losing the battle. With the fact that national reform is further away than ever, there is a belief that Democrats have to gerrymander in the states they control to offset Republican gerrymandering. Really hard not to be sympathetic to that, particularly for a Democrat who came of age before 2010 and saw the effect partisan gerrymandering had on elections. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with believing it has to be national reform or bust, given the results so far at the state level.

If a national gerrymandering ban / commission bill had passed and every state was doing the same thing more or less, this wouldn't feel like such a zero-sum game with high stakes.

[Virginiá]

I get that for Illinois, where there are no laws being abused or defied. That is not the case in NJ and NY, where the legal process was gamed and abused, and the law defied (the NY CD map being utterly outrageous). Where the Pub were in control, and constrained by law, putting aside DeSantis, they respected the law in Florida (with a friendly court to boot), and did pretty well in Ohio. And then there is NC where a Dem court thinks the state copying and pasting of the federal equal protection clause outlaws Pubmanders, which is an abuse of judicial power imo.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie, I necessarily don't like the pressure redistricting has put on state courts to essentially conjure up legal theories or flat out go full-hack and just side with their party no matter what. That is not a good way for the judicial system to operate. We shouldn't cheer on hack judges whose rulings are influenced by partisan politics.

Not that many of us haven't done that at times, but when you really think about it outside of the sports-like mentality of elections and redistricting, it's terrible for society.

[Virginiá]

NJs map is probably cleaner than CA, more fair  and actually more transparent in its relative honesty by John Wallace than Sara Sadhwani.

Atleast NJ has received proper media criticism.

I'm not going to merge this with the CA discussion I recently split off since it at least has a connection to NJ redistricting, but everyone, please confine any California or non-NJ talk to the appropriate thread (which is not this one).