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May 11, 2021

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

News Maryland News

Maryland Will Keep 8 Seats in U.S. House, Census Officials Say

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Maryland will keep its eight seats in the House of Representatives in the next round of redistricting, Census Bureau officials announced Monday.

Maryland joins 36 other states keeping the same amount of U.S. Representatives during the next round of redistricting.

For six states, the long-awaited census results mean they’ll gain representation in Congress: Fast-growing Texas will add two seats, and five states will each add one seat: Florida (which surpassed New York to become the third-largest state), North Carolina, Colorado, Montana and Oregon.

Because the House must remain at 435 lawmakers, seven states will have fewer representatives, after either losing population over the last 10 years or not growing as quickly as other states. New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia all will see their federal delegations shrink by one legislator starting in 2023.

Overall, there were 331,449,281 people living in the U.S. on April 1, 2020, an increase of 7.4% since 2010. That’s the slowest growth in a decade since the 1930s, and the second-slowest growth rate in U.S. history.

Maryland had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 Census, according to the newly released data, representing a 7% increase since 2010. That’s a drop from the 9% increase the state saw between 2000 and 2010, according to the data.

The apportionment changes, including population totals, are the first round of data to be released from the 2020 census.

Block-by-block population data that state officials need to draw districts of equal size will be released by Aug. 16 as an untabulated “legacy format summary file,” according to a Census Bureau release.

Although that data will be available as a legacy format summary file in mid-August, some states might be faced with an even longer wait for specific results. According to a separate release from the Census Bureau, “most states lack the capacity or resources to tabulate the data from these summary files on their own,” and tabulated data will be available by Sept. 30.

Even after Maryland officials receive the data, it will need to be adjusted to comply with Maryland law and have incarcerated individuals reallocated to their last known address, according to the Maryland Department of Planning website. State officials estimate that process will take at least an additional 30 days before the redistricting data is finalized.

Census officials originally planned to get redistricting data to states by March 31, but that date was pushed back after the COVID-19 pandemic waylaid their counting process.

Those delays could put Maryland lawmakers — and candidates for Congress and the General Assembly uncertain whether they’ll still be living within a district’s boundaries — on a time crunch: While Maryland law doesn’t set a strict deadline for drawing congressional districts, state legislative districts must be proposed by Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) to the General Assembly by Jan. 12, 2022. Those recommendations will become law unless lawmakers tack on their own changes by Feb. 26.

The candidacy deadline for Republican and Democratic congressional and legislative hopefuls is Feb. 22, 2022.

In 2010, the General Assembly met in a special session in October to approve congressional district lines.

Some states with even tighter deadlines written into law might have to change their redistricting laws to cope with the delays, according to a Brennan Center Analysis.

Hogan’s multi-partisan Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission, which he created via executive order earlier this year, is currently mulling how to work around the Census delays, commission co-chair Walter Olson (R) told Maryland Matters.

“It’s going to mean that we get hard, usable numbers months later than we would have hoped,” Olson said, adding that working around the Census delay will be among the commission’s top agenda items.

“The goal is to get as much work as we can done, including many hearings, before the Census Bureau comes through,” Olson said.

The redistricting commission, which earlier this month announced its full membership, will conduct public hearings in the coming months before making final recommendations to Hogan. They’ll aim to recommend geographically compact districts that aren’t meant to favor any party over another – and will also consider dividing state legislative maps into single-member districts.

Defending the census process

Typically, the state-level population data released Monday would have been provided by the end of December, but that process was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The census tallies how many people are living in the U.S. on April 1, and last year, that date fell shortly after states had issued lockdown orders aimed at curbing spread of the coronavirus. That scrambled plans for following up door-to-door with those who did not fill out the form.

“We advertised on pizza boxes, instead of during basketball games,” said Ron Jarmin, acting director of the Census Bureau. “Our partners joined us in reaching people at food banks and in school cafeterias, instead of promoting the census at county fairs.”

Other Americans became harder to reach due to wildfires and hurricanes. The Trump administration also interfered in the counting process, pursuing policies that some feared would make immigrants less likely to respond and cutting the operation short.

As they announced the new population figures, Census officials defended the accuracy of the counting process, saying the delayed door-to-door follow-ups allowed for more complete responses.

While the final numbers show a slower growth rate than what had been projected, affecting the final allocation of legislative seats, the population numbers for most states were still within 1% of the bureau’s estimates.

Under the new congressional districts, which will go into effect for the 2022 elections, each member of the House will represent an average of 761,000 residents.

The biggest population gains regionally were in the South and the West, with Southern states growing by 10.2% and Western states by 9.2%. The Northeast grew by 4.1%, and Midwestern states showed a 3.1% rise in population.

That followed trends underway since the 1940s, with 84 House seats shifting South and West during that time frame, Census officials said Monday.

By Bennett Leckrone and Laura Olson

Could First District Turn Blue? Report Offers Possible Map

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After turning the state’s Sixth Congressional District blue following the 2010 Census, Maryland Democrats could set their sights on the state’s sole remaining Republican lawmaker, Rep. Andy Harris, during the congressional redistricting that will follow the 2020 Census.

A map drawn by one political analyst shows it would be relatively easy for Democratic state lawmakers to shut out Maryland Republicans from Congress by shifting the boundaries of the state’s eight congressional districts.

David Wasserman, writing in The Cook Political Report (subscription required), said the map would result in a 35-point leftward swing for the First District. The new district would have voted for Joe Biden by 15 points in 2020; current First District voters chose Donald Trump by 20 points in the 2020 presidential race.

Wasserman is House Editor for The Cook Political Report, where he is responsible for analyzing U.S. House races and is recognized as one of the nation’s top election forecasters. He also is a contributor to NBC News.

Maryland’s other seven congressional districts would remain overwhelmingly Democratic with his map, voting for Biden by at least 20 points, Wasserman wrote in his Maryland redistricting preview and on Twitter.

Wasserman developed his map using Dave’s Redistricting App, which allows users to explore congressional redistricting options.

One Democrat who has filed to challenge Harris in the First District noted Wasserman’s analysis, but suggested opposition to such a big change.

On her campaign website, Heather Mizeur, a former state delegate and gubernatorial candidate who lives in Kent County, wrote:

“We don’t want a gerrymandered district. We want a fair district. The right answer in how it gets drawn at the end of the day is somewhere in between these extreme shifts.

“What we know for sure is that the district will be redrawn, it will get more competitive, and we are and will continue to be the campaign best positioned to defeat Andy Harris when it happens.”

The Maryland map currently in use (below) was approved in 2011 using data from the 2010 Census. A legal challenge to that map ended in 2019 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the courts have no role in partisan gerrymandering claims.

Statewide_reduced

Partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts can have dramatic effects on the party control of the House.

In the Atlas of Redistricting, Wasserman and others writing at FiveThirtyEight looked at congressional districts based on several different factors.

Their analysis showed that if districts were gerrymandered to favor Democrats, the party would be expected to have 251 seats in the House compared to 184 for Republicans. If districts were gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the GOP would be expected to have 264 seats to 171 for Democrats.

The U.S. Census Bureau, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, announced in February that redistricting data would be released to all states by Sept. 30, six months later than its April 1 deadline.

The bureau will deliver apportionment counts (which determine how many representatives each state will have) to the president by April 30, four months later than normal. Maryland is expected to maintain its eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Census Data Delay Likely Means No Redistricting Session This Fall in Md.

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The U.S. Census Bureau’s decision to delay releasing population data until fall almost certainly guarantees that Maryland lawmakers won’t redraw the state’s political boundaries before next year, political analysts said on Tuesday.

The bureau originally planned to get results of the 2020 Census to states by March 31. But officials announced on Friday that they will provide it by Sept. 30 instead.

They blamed the delay on the COVID-19 crisis, which made surveying every household in the country, a labor-intensive process that involves millions of face-to-face interactions, more difficult.

Maryland and other states will use the data — once they get it — to craft congressional and legislative boundaries that will be used for the next five election cycles, beginning with U.S. House and General Assembly contests in 2022.

The delay in receiving population data makes it highly unlikely the legislature will meet in special session this fall, according to three people knowledgeable about the process.

Instead, lawmakers will have to tackle congressional and legislative redistricting when they convene in January for the 2021 session.

There is no way to replicate the more generous timeline that lawmakers had in 2011, said Patrick H. Murray, a former chief of staff for the late Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., now the top aide to Baltimore County Executive John A. Olszewski Jr. (D).

For that redistricting, then Gov. Martin J. O’Malley (D) announced a redistricting committee in the summer, the committee drafted a congressional map in early October and the legislature convened a special session to consider it later that month, Murray recalled.

Given advances in computer software since the 2011 redistricting, lawmakers and their staffs won’t necessarily need a lot of time to draw new lines, said Daniel M. Clements, a retired lawyer and longtime Democratic activist who has been involved in past redistricting efforts.

But pitched battles that often occur internally — among incumbent members of Congress and the General Assembly over various precincts — can take time to resolve.

The 2022 primary election is set for June 28. And the deadline for candidates to file is Feb. 22.

Assuming it does not get pushed back, legislators will have less than six weeks to conclude a process that is fraught with political intrigue and where emotions can run hot.

“You will have that piece, but the shorter time means they just have to resolve it quicker,” Clements said.

In January, Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) created a nine-person redistricting commission to study Maryland’s population changes, take public input and draw a set of boundaries that he can submit to the legislature.

The panel will have three Democrats, three Republicans and three voters who aren’t registered with any political party.

Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson, a Republican; retired federal judge Alex Williams, a Democrat; and Howard Community College President Kathleen Hetherington, an independent, will serve as co-chairs.

The other six slots will be filled by a group of applicants who put their names forward prior to the Feb. 12 deadline.

Olson would not disclose the number of people that applied, but he described them as “an impressive and diverse group of applicants.”

The governor’s commission will hold statewide hearings once it is empaneled.

Olson said the delay in Census data compresses the amount of time the panel will have to do their work.

“Our work has to be done later and with somewhat more time pressure than would have been predicted,” he said. “We have our assignment, which is to propose maps for U.S. House [districts] and for the General Assembly. Whether a special session occurs or not is not part of our to-do list.”

Speaking on WBAL Radio, Hogan again slammed Democratic leaders in the General Assembly for how they have drawn lines in the past and for rebuffing his efforts to take line-drawing out of the hands of legislators.

He pledged to submit the commission’s maps as his own, “without any influence or tampering.”

“I have the power as governor to draw districts,” he added. After that, he conceded, “it’s a battle between the executive branch and the legislative branch.”

By Bruce DePuyt

Md. Lawmakers Will Map Congressional Districts Based on 2020 Census

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Maryland lawmakers later this year will draw new maps for the state’s congressional districts based on the latest population statistics from the 2020 Census.

The U.S. Constitution requires the census to be conducted every 10 years. The population numbers are then used by states to draw new congressional districts, which typically is completed in time for the congressional election two years after the census.

Following the decennial census, federal law requires states to be notified by Jan. 25 by the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives on the number of congressional seats that state will have for the next 10 years.

That notification will be delayed this year, however, as the U.S. Census Bureau continues processing and tabulating the population numbers.

According to The Washington Post, the census bureau currently believes it will finalize state population numbers by March 6, more than two months after the Dec. 31 deadline.

The deadline was missed as a result of delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic and changes made by the administration of President Donald Trump, which is being sued over some of its decisions concerning the census.

Although the count continues, population estimates suggest Maryland will retain its eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Once the state is told how many seats it will have, Maryland lawmakers will draw new boundaries for those congressional districts. After the congressional map is approved by the Maryland General Assembly, it is subject to veto by Gov. Larry Hogan.