Southern states will be especially vulnerable to partisan and racial gerrymandering due to single-party control over the process and weaker protections for communities of color, a new report has found.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy institute at New York University Law School, analyzed the redistricting landscape across the country, categorizing states based on their projected risk for partisan and/or racial gerrymandering. The 27-page report, released Thursday, found abuse in the mapmaking process will be most severe in four Republican-controlled Southern states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

Meanwhile, every state is facing a shared challenge: a compressed timeline to draw the new maps. Typically, population data needed for redistricting is released in April, but due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration, the Census Bureau is now expecting those figures to be ready in late September. This will further complicate this year’s redistricting process, and therefore preparations for the 2022 midterms as well.

Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center who authored the report, said this round of redistricting is likely to be the […]