Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project—a team of nonpartisan academic and legal experts—gave the legislature’s gerrymandered redistricting maps failing grades across the board: four map ‘concepts,’ four Fs. It is not at all surprising that politicians writing their own districts in secret behind closed doors have failed the basic test of fairness.
Meanwhile, the people’s maps that Governor Larry Hogan will submit to the legislature—developed through dozens of public meetings by an independent citizens commission—received straight As.
As Governor Hogan said last week, “We are not interested in drawing Republican districts or Democratic districts. I want what nearly all Marylanders want, which is fair maps and fair districts.”
About the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project provides nonpartisan analysis of partisan gerrymandering. Helen Brewer, a legal analyst for the project, described their work as “nonpartisan analysis of redistricting maps as they are being proposed and adopted across the country in all 50 states. We are looking at proposed congressional maps and state legislative maps, and our analysis again is nonpartisan. It’s really data-driven, mathematically based, and we’re trying to really bring a clear picture to all the math, data and law that’s going on in the redistricting process.“