Civil rights voting rights

Newsweek -  States are supposed to redraw congressional maps once a decade to reflect population shifts and ensure the representation of communities within a given jurisdiction. Last year, though, President Trump asked Texas officials to create a rare new mid-decade map that would benefit Republicans in this year’s midterm election cycle. California came back with a new map that favored Democrats. A host of other states, both red and blue, followed. Now Wednesday’s [Supreme Court] decision has prompted Louisiana and other states to consider new maps immediately. 

The last round of nationwide redistricting in 2021, when both Republicans and Democrats sought to protect their electoral advantages, resulted in far fewer contested races. “Roughly 90 percent of races are now decided not by general-election voters in November but by the partisans who tend to vote in primaries months earlier,” Nick reports. Wednesday’s decision reinforces that trend.

Critics of the decision see a potentially devastating result in the South, reports Rick Rojas, who covers the region. They told Rick that new voting maps there “will not only endanger Black incumbents, some of whom have held office for decades, but also threaten a rising generation of Black Democrats.”

....And the decision could reach beyond Congress, into local governments — into state legislative districts, county boards and city councils. “None of us working on Capitol Hill would have gotten there without that foot in the door,” Representative Shomari Figures of Alabama told Rick.

The Guardian - After the US supreme court essentially struck down another major provision of the Voting Rights Act, advocates and Democratic lawmakers have renewed a push in the states to enact their own versions of the landmark civil rights bill to protect voters.

....Nine blue and purple states now have a version of a state voting rights act, a statute that works to protect voters in the state in the absence of federal protections. Eleven other states, including several in the south, have seen bills introduced to create their own versions.

Most of the state-level statutes have similar provisions, including some kind of prohibition on voter suppression, vote dilution, and voter intimidation and a requirement for pre-clearance of voting changes.