2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Missouri

[GALeftist]

Partisan tensions flare on Missouri redistricting panels

Partisan tensions have been flaring on a pair of commissions in charge of redrawing Missouri's state House and Senate districts, with Democrats and Republicans at odds over their interactions with the public.

The disagreements have raised questions about whether the panels will be able to find consensus by a Dec. 23 deadline to adopt tentative maps.

Three months after the Census Bureau released new population data, officials in about half the states already have passed new voting maps for their U.S. House or state legislative districts. In Missouri, however, there's not much to show.

Missouri's eight U.S. House districts will be redrawn by state lawmakers, who can't act until their session starts in January. The separate bipartisan commissions responsible for reshaping the state's 163 House districts and 34 Senate districts have been marred by partisan squabbling over whether to post draft maps online and continue accepting public comment.

So far, Missouri’s redistricting effort appears to be “yet another process that has fallen victim to political polarization,” said Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Missouri.

If Kansas City gets cut I am going to send a sternly worded letter in the mail to every Missouri voter who stopped reading Amendment 3 after seeing the bit about banning gifts from lobbyists.

[GALeftist]

Seems like a fair map! MO-01 needs more people so it's pretty much inevitable that MO-02 moved right. Nevertheless, could be competitive starting in 2024 or 2026.

[GALeftist]

Goes without saying, but this map is very fair and I hope national Democratic groups are making phone calls to Democrats in the Missouri Senate to make sure they show up and vote for this map if it comes to that.

Also, it would be pretty funny if losing MO-02 in 2018 and 2020 ended up benefitting Democrats in the long term. Without Wagner in office, there might not be many voices in the MOGOP advocating against slicing up St. Louis County!

[GALeftist]

https://twitter.com/redistrict/status/1478237130556166147?s=21

According to the article, based Democratic sleeper agent Mike Parson has costed the MO House GOP their 2/3 majority by not scheduling special elections for vacancies, a majority which would not be necessary had he called a special session. One can only marvel at the difference between this cycle and 2011, Parson has probably done more for fair maps than Nixon did.

The math will tell you that if we want to pass the map, we will need Democratic votes ... I believe we will get bipartisan support."

[GALeftist]

What is even the point of this? This map is pretty good, MO Democrats should honestly just take what they can get here.

[GALeftist]

If Missouri Democrats screw up a guaranteed fair map two cycles in a row I will be very unhappy.

[GALeftist]

So I'm loathe to ask at this point but any updates?

[GALeftist]

I feel like this is probably not the best strategy if leadership already doesn't like you

[GALeftist]

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article258220283.html

Republican Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, chairman of the Senate's redistricting committee, said passing a 7-1 GOP map wouldn't reflect the political makeup of the state. He equated it to cheating in baseball, adding: “We're not beating the Democrats with our best pitch, we're taking the bat away from them.”

Lol, as if this is going to convince the Conservative Caucus to stop filibustering.

Republican leadership in MO is so adorable. They're concerned about fairness. Democrats took the bat away in Illinois and New York, gaining at least 5 seats in the process, with no regard for reflecting the political makeup of the state. And no court will strike them down for "partisan fairness" reasons. It seems only Kansas and Tennessee GOPs have the absolute depravity Dem redistricters have. And we'll see if those even survive. So far, the courts have sent a pretty clear message: one party is allowed to gerrymander without consequences, and one isn't.

Uhh… Texas?

There's a lawsuit pending there, isn't there? Although I'm not sure how that would work at this point because their primary is next month.

Maybe Republicans get away with some gerrymandering, but this happened last decade too. FL, NC, VA, and PA all got struck down. By 2020, R's were down to TX (which had some dummymanders) and OH that actually served as effective gerrymanders for them. That's why the 2020 House Results matched so closely with actual vote share. And this decade, Dems may actually have an advantage (meaning, R's may need to win by 1-2 points to win the House).

Last decade, Democrats were able to gerrymander

- (Edit, forgot about this one): Maryland, which has been a gerrymandered hellscape since time immemorial
- Illinois, where they overextended in the south and ended up making a fair map
- Arkansas, which immediately backfired
- Massachusetts, which lol
- West Virginia, which even bigger lol

What are you mad about, exactly? Was the horrible unfairness of West Virginian congressional districts just too bitter a pill to swallow last decade? Does the partisan hackery of West Virginian courts in allowing them to stand inspire a rage which can only be quenched by a 7:1 MO map? The reason why court action was asymmetric last decade was because the landscape was asymmetric. Obviously.

Additionally, the preferred solution of people like you is that gerrymandering does not violate federal law and ought to be left to the states. The inescapable logical conclusion of this is that redistricting will be governed solely by state law, including state executive, legislative, and judicial branches. By its very nature, state law is inconsistent from state to state, as are the philosophies of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Therefore, any situation where redistricting is governed by state rather than federal law will have asymmetric outcomes, both because there are different laws and different entities enforcing them. This is the whole point of having it be governed by state law. Anyone who argues against a federal solution to gerrymandering is arguing for this outcome.

This really gets at a tendency I find extremely annoying with Republican hackery with respect to redistricting specifically. Usually, it's very easy for me to understand conservative perspectives, no matter how much I disagree. For example, it makes sense to me that, if someone axiomatically believes that the Bible is the inerrant divine revelation of God's will, they'd try to bring state policy in line with whatever policy they believe the Bible advocates. That's perfectly consistent. What is not consistent is fighting tooth and nail for states to decide on redistricting, then turning around and crying when Democratic states decide on redistricting. What it is is an artifact of the true motivator for these individuals, which is partisan Republican advantage and nothing else, clashing with a (conscious or subconscious) desire to at least maintain the veneer of consistency. Obviously, a hypothetical actor concerned about Republican advantage exclusively would push for the most favorable maps possible in every state. (In practice, this usually means Republican gerrymanders in most states and fair maps in Democratic states – sound like anyone we know?) In the real world, though, if one was to advocate for this unabashedly, it opens you up to the obvious retort, "well, your preferred outcome is no more objectively ethical than anyone else's, plus it's transparently unequal, so I'd argue mine is better." Therefore, these actors create a bunch of absurd justifications to make their preferences appear less subjective. They insist that any possible reforms are rigged since they know fair maps nationwide would be worse on net for Republicans than the status quo; they take very broad readings of Maryland's redistricting law while completely ignoring Florida's; they say in one breath that states ought to control redistricting even if that benefits one party or the other and how dare the states control redistricting in a way that disadvantages the Republicans!

So, to wrap up this already excessively long spiel, ElectionsGuy and others like you, everyone can see what your true priorities are here. I'd encourage you to be honest with us and with yourselves by simply saying that you prefer Republican-favoring maps. No one will think less of you for doing so; I personally would appreciate the transparency.

[GALeftist]

You also had Maryland and AZ in 2011 which you didn't mention . Just 17 more but still worth mentioning for the facts.

Knew I was forgetting some. Yes, MD was a gerrymander and AZ was undeniably D tilted, but still, the point stands. Even including those there were what, maybe 3 consequential gerrymanders, generously? It seems altogether unsurprising that Republican maps were struck down more frequently.

[GALeftist]

Please just put aside your differences and make the ugly splotch in the middle of 538 go away guys

[GALeftist]

This is one for the books. At this point I'm just rooting for the chaos of a federal intervention.

[GALeftist]

[GALeftist]

What is Biden's plan to address 8-0posting in the Missouri thread