What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State

On May 13, New Hampshire Senate Republicans released a new congressional map that would put both incumbents in the same district. A conference committee between the Senate and House approved the map, with small amendments, May 16, advancing it to the full legislature. Gov. Chris Sununu did not immediately weigh in on the proposed changes.

On May 12, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that the current congressional districts cannot stand, and that if Sununu and the state legislature cannot come to an agreement on a new map, the court will draw a new map using a “least-change” approach based on the 2020 census. The new maps must be ready ahead of the state’s candidate filing period in June.

The previous week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a new congressional map proposal that was similar to the map previously passed by the legislature, which Gov. Chris Sununu had vowed to veto.

The proposed map would produce one Democratic seat and one Republican seat in all but the biggest wave elections. However, the map did not assuage Sununu’s concerns; the governor issued a statement saying the New Hampshire citizens were counting on them to deliver a map that keeps incumbents accountable and districts competitive and that this new map was “still not there.”

The state legislature’s first map, which passed on March 17, proposed some of the biggest changes to New Hampshire’s congressional map since the late 1800s, removing several Democratic-leaning communities from the 1st District and giving them to the 2nd District. In response, on March 22, Sununu released his own competing map, which kept both districts in the “highly competitive” category.

On April 11, the New Hampshire Supreme Court announced that it would appoint a special master to draw the state’s next congressional map if Sununu and the state legislature can’t agree on a map by late May. A group of five New Hampshire voters, including former New Hampshire House Speaker Theresa Norelli, sued the state on March 31, saying the legislature and governor had reached an impasse and that they believed the maps wouldn’t be ready in time for the 2022 elections without court intervention.