Democrats Have One Brutal Path to Survival if the Supreme Court Kills the Voting Rights Act

"The Supreme Court's evident commitment to eviscerating what remains of the Voting Rights Act appears certain to hand an electoral bonanza to Republicans. If the Republican-appointed justices end federal protections for minority representation, as they sounded eager to do during Wednesday's arguments in Callais v. Louisiana, Southern states can quickly gerrymander Black and brown communities into oblivion. The resulting maps will hand white voters almost total control over these states' congressional maps,"

"Republicans' near-permanent House majority, however, is not inevitable-even if SCOTUS does deliver a death blow to minority voting rights. That's because the court's decision would also allow blue states to draw more efficient Democratic gerrymanders, redrawing current majority-minority districts to maximize the party's electoral advantage. Freed from the VRA's constraints, states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois could move more Democratic voters out of deep-blue districts into red and purple districts, eliminating more than a dozen Republican seats in the House."

"Such a strategy would require painful trade-offs: Congress could become even less diverse, since racial minorities in blue states would have fewer opportunities to elect the representatives of their choice. And the number of truly competitive House elections would shrink even more, further eroding democratic accountability. The neteffect, though, would be a substantial boost for the Democratic Party that could offset many of the gains that Republicans are poised to reap. The result may not be a Republican-dominated House so much as a Congress with"

A Supreme Court decision to curtail the Voting Rights Act would enable Southern states to gerrymander Black and brown communities, likely producing a net gain of 15 to 19 GOP House seats. Simultaneously, blue states could exploit the same legal change to redraw majority-minority districts into more efficient Democratic maps, shifting Democratic voters into red and purple districts and eliminating many Republican seats. That strategy would reduce minority representation and competitive elections, weakening democratic accountability. The overall effect could substantially boost Democrats and counterbalance Republican gains, altering but not ensuring a Republican-dominated House.

Read at Slate Magazine