LRAC Scoring

Three Non-Partisan Groups Evaluate Proposed Congressional Maps Released by the Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission

The non-partisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project (PGP) has given a Grade-F to the four Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission’s (LRAC) Congressional draft maps released on November 9, 2021. The LRAC electoral maps were graded on partisan fairness, competitiveness among other redrawn maps, compactness, and county splits. The PGP assessment helps Marylanders to compare these maps to others, including the final Congressional map of the Maryland Citizen Redistricting Commission. (See the Action Blog of October 27, 2021.)

Based on the most recent national and statewide elections data, the PGP-expected results will be 1 or 0 Republican and 7 or 8 Democratic members of Congress. Plans 1, 3, and 4 do not have any competitive districts; Plan 2 has one competitive district. All of these plans have 2 districts with 40 percent or more Black Voting Age Population (BVAP).

Another non-partisan group, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), has developed different analytical software, PlanScore, to evaluate partisan advantage in Congressional districts using the 2020 Presidential election results. Based on the PlanScore analysis, Democrats are predicted to win 86-90% of the seats with 64% of the vote share. The MCRC Congressional plan is also biased toward the Democrats but predicts that they will win only 79% of the seats.

A for-profit entity, FiveThirtyEight, presents their predicted partisan breakdown for these four LRAC and one MCRC map graphically at https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/maryland/. This is consistent with the above results.

LWVMD encourages the public to examine these maps and let the LRAC know specifically what is good or not about them. The League invites the public to also observe and respond to the continuing work of the LRAC and sign up to rally with us in Annapolis on December 8 when the Maryland General Assembly considers which Congressional map to adopt.

The LRAC’s maps, in both easy-to-read PDF and an interactive format, can be accessed by the public by the link “Draft Congressional Concept Maps Released” at: h ttps://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Committees/Details?cmte=rac

The LRAC has not yet released any legislative maps.

The details of the PGP’s Redistricting Report Cards on the Congressional maps are at:

Concept Plan 1: https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card?planId=rechkP8YGFzQ7DE2h

Concept Plan 2: https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card?planId=recXkmhD5ROcEW3vw

Concept Plan 3: https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card?planId=recAHafBYVYQDxv4l

Concept Plan 4: https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card?planId=recHDShZVMTIxI6rq

The details of the CLC’s PlanScore on the Congressional maps are at:

Concept Plan 1: https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211112T211441.925930768Z

Concept Plan 2: https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211112T212813.379313127Z

Concept Plan 3: https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211112T213755.066603904Z

Concept Plan 4: https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211112T214034.927619836Z

MCRC Final Map: https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211113T195944.084461264Z