Not going to happen…
Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson (D) said he will not move forward with a mid-cycle redistricting push in his state, firmly quashing Democrats’ hopes to coalesce their power in the state.
In a “Dear Colleagues” letter dated Tuesday, the Democratic leader outlined the reasons he is bucking many of his fellow Democrats who have pushed him to pursue the redistricting effort, citing concerns about the likelihood of success, as well as long-term consequences on democracy.
“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” he wrote in the letter, obtained by Politico.
In his letter, Ferguson added that redistricting battles taking place in states across the country are “at the core” of the “fight for democracy,” and he put blame directly on President Trump for pressuring Republican-led states, beginning with Texas, “to rig the election results against Democrats.”
“In state after state, leaders are considering redrawing congressional maps in the middle of the decade to disenfranchise minority party voters: not because the census changed – not because population shifted — but because political winds did,” he wrote.
Maryland has eight congressional seats, only one of which is currently held by a Republican, even though, Ferguson noted, 31.5 percent of the state’s registered voters are Republican.
Ferguson said redrawing the map could present risky and costly legal challenges and it’s unclear how the state’s Supreme Court would ultimately rule and whether they would take party affiliation into consideration.
“Simply put, it is too risky and jeopardizes Maryland’s ability to fight against the radical Trump Administration,” he continued in the letter. “At a time where every seat in Congress matters, the potential for ceding yet another one to Republicans here in Maryland is simply too great.”
The top Democrat also expressed concern about the long-term damage redistricting could have on democratic institutions.
He said he’s spoken to his counterparts in states across the country and it’s become clear to him that several GOP-run states are “resisting pressure to redistrict and are mostly able to do so because Maryland and other Democratic states are not redistricting either.”
Gov. Wes Moore has said he’s actively looking at redistricting, and state House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D) also said she’s “eager” and “willing” to consider the possibility. (RELATED: Governor Signals Plan To Redistrict Lone GOP Rep. Out Of His Seat To Make State ‘More Fair’)
“I want to make sure that we have fair lines and fair seats,” said Moore.
Rep. Andy Harris is the only Republican of Maryland’s ten members of Congress. The Daily Wire reported in 2024, President Donald Trump received over a third of Maryland’s vote. He lost the state to former Vice President Kamala Harris, who won 63% of the state’s vote.
Moore said his plan to potentially gerrymander Harris out of the first district is about fighting against “situations where politicians are choosing voters.”
“We need to be able to have fair maps, and we also need to make sure that if the president of the United States is putting his finger on the scale to try to manipulate elections because he knows that his policies cannot win in a ballot box, then it behooves each and every one of us to be able to keep all options on the table to ensure that the voters’ voices can actually be heard,” Moore said.
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Nancy, the appropriate word is “quash,” not “squash.”
Victory Hooray
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting practices, laws, or procedures that deny or limit citizens’ right to vote based on race, color, or membership in a language minority group. It is a permanent, nationwide provision that can be enforced against states, counties, cities, and other governmental bodies that administer elections. A 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 clarified that redistricting plans could be challenged based on a “discriminatory effect,” not only on the intent of discrimination. This critical change opened the door for race to be a factor in redistricting to remedy the dilution of minority votes. The Supreme Court on Wednesday the 10th of October appeared ready to strike down a 2024 congressional map that a group of voters has challenged as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering – that is, according to them, it sorts voters based on race in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The determination will probably be made that the 1892 amendment to the voting rights act is unconstitutional and that it violates the voting right act itself, ANY use of race to determine redistricting is unconstitutional that it violated the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment as it places either race or ethnicity above others and as such is then patently racial discrimination, pro or con is irrelevant. Many states are preparing for that to be the finding by the USSC. The thought or concept that race determine ones philosophy is idiotic and moronic.