Maryland Minorities Seek Greater Voting Power in Congress
As minorities are claiming a bigger share of the population nationwide, they are also seeking greater voting power in Congress by pushing to redraw legislative maps.
It is a trend WSJ recently covered here.
The once-a-decade redrawing of electoral maps can give rise to heated political and legal disputes.
Such is the case in Maryland, where the state’s growing African American community is debating whether — and how — it should push for greater representation in Congress, according to this piece in the Washington Post.
At issue is the fact that blacks hold two of Maryland’s eight congressional seats but now up make more than 30% of the state’s population.
At a hearing today in Maryland, the Post reports, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice are planning to propose a dramatic plan to redraw Maryland’s congressional map to put together a district whose voters might elect a third black Maryland member of Congress.
The Fannie Lou Hamer PAC, which is named after a Mississippi voting rights activist who died in 1977, is even threatening to take the state to court if districts are not redrawn to mirror the voting power of Maryland’s minorities, the Post reports.
But the risk is that if congressional seats are redistricted that could imperil some powerful Maryland incumbents in Congress.
“We all understand that our population in the state is not currently in the same proportion as it is in elected office,” Aisha N. Braveboy, co-chairwoman of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, told the Post.
But, she said, “If you have very strange or oddly shaped districts drawn for the purpose of creating a majority African American or Hispanic district, that can be challenged in court.”
Overall, many other states have percentages of minority representation in Congress that are not commensurate with, and are most often lower than, their states’ level of minority populations.