What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State

Residents of Pulaski County, including two Arkansas state legislators, filed a federal lawsuit on March 7, challenging the state’s new congressional map. The map trisects Pulaski County, the most populous county in the state and home to Little Rock, splitting some Democratic precincts (and precincts with more members of minority groups) into three different districts. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that breaking up Pulaski County in this way dilutes the voting power of Black constituents, violating the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. and Arkansas constitutions. However, the lawsuit doesn’t have great odds considering Arkansas’s primary is creeping up quickly on May 24, and the Supreme Court recently refused to take on a challenges from groups in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, ruling that it was too close to the election to be overturning maps.

Arkansas’s new map officially went into effect on Jan. 14 — three months after the state legislature approved it. Back in October, the state legislature sent a final redistricting map proposal to Gov. Asa Hutchinson in the form of matching bills from the state House and Senate. It was then up to the governor to decide if he wanted to sign it into law, or veto it. Hutchinson decided to … do neither. Instead, he said he would allow the new map to become law without his signature. The public had an opportunity to file a veto referendum to repeal the maps, and, in fact, Arkansans for a Unified Natural State tried to, but according to the state’s Secretary of State office, the group did not file any signatures to do so.

Hutchinson’s decision to not sign Arkansas’s map into law allowed him to signal a tepid disapproval without vetoing his own party’s map — in fact, he specifically questioned the decision to trisect Pulaski County that is at the heart of the new lawsuit.