Small southern states are rarely the focus of American politics. But this week Tennessee took centre stage. On April 29th the Supreme Court delivered its third big blow to the Voting Rights Act. By a 6-3 vote in Louisiana v. Callais, the justices declared that electoral maps can no longer be challenged on the grounds of race—say, by arguing that district lines unfairly dilute black votes—as long as the mapmakers claim to have drawn them strictly for partisan gain. The decision unleashed a scramble: on May 6th Tennessee politicians released a map that carves up Memphis, the state’s second city, into three other ruby-red congressional districts. “This is a moral outrage as well as a political one,” says Rachel Campbell, the head of Tennessee’s Democrats. “Martin Luther King died there in pursuit of civil rights.”
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The ruling lands in the middle of a sordid bout of mid-decade redistricting. The race for politicians to pick their voters began when Texas gave in to Donald Trump’s push to redraw the state’s congressional map to add five more Republican seats. Democrats retaliated in California, where voters blessed new district lines to neutralise the Texas grab. The frenzy then spread to Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Since Callais dropped, Republicans have called for doing away with all Democratic districts in the South. Lawmakers in Louisiana are meeting to pass a map that cuts New Orleans up like Memphis. Courts are weighing a plan signed by Ron DeSantis that would give Republicans 24 of 28 seats in Florida, where 30% of voters are Democrats.
The Economist’s election model predicts that Democrats will gain more than 20 seats in the House, which means these Callais-inspired gerrymanders will probably not be enough for Republicans to hold the chamber in November. But the outcome of closer elections in the future could well depend on which party is willing to rig the maps more ruthlessly.
To catch up, Democrats would need to match Republicans blow for blow. Until recently, they have trodden carefully. In many of the states they control lawmakers are bound by self-imposed constraints—legal, constitutional and ethical. Democratic trifectas in Colorado, Washington and New York are boxed in by independent commissions that prevent politicians from redrawing maps; New Jersey’s constitution allows redistricting only once a decade. Changing those rules usually requires voter approval, which took months of campaigning to get in California and heaps of money in Virginia. For a party that has denounced gerrymandering as “cheating” and “undemocratic”, Democrats will have to persuade voters that when Republicans go low, they should too.
Democrats may also face awkward trade-offs. The easiest way for the party to draw more winnable seats is to move reliably Democratic black voters into whiter districts. Last year, when Illinois tried to wring another Democratic district out of East St Louis at the national party’s urging, the legislature’s black caucus pushed back, fearing that black incumbents would lose their seats. “It’s such a quandary,” says Akilah Ensley, a strategist. “Black voters are the base of the party and we just got freedom in my parents’ lifetime.”
The real loser of Callais is neither political party, but democracy itself. The danger of this judicially inspired redistricting bonanza is not just that black Americans have less of a say. The more safe seats are drawn up, the less changes in the national mood will swing results—leaving Americans who vote differently from their state’s majority voiceless. It is in the country’s interest for both parties to negotiate a truce. But there is not nearly enough goodwill in Washington to dream of it.
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