Congressional Redistricting

National Democrats have doubled their spending for state legislative elections in an attempt to chip away at the Republican dominance in state capitols. 

Judges in North Carolina on Tuesday said that despite declaring the state's electoral map to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered for partisan reasons, there wasn't enough time for the map to be redrawn before midterm elections in November.

"We further find that imposing a new schedule for North Carolina's congressional elections would, at this late juncture, unduly interfere with the State's electoral machinery and likely confuse voters and depress turnout," Judges James Wynn Jr., William Osteen Jr. and W. Earl Britt wrote in their order Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court punted Monday on its biggest decision of its term so far. The justices had been expected to rule on the limits of partisan gerrymandering.

Instead, the court sidestepped the major issues on technical grounds, sending the issue back to the lower courts for further examination.

The Ohio Ballot Board has approved placing before voters in May a congressional redistricting plan.

Even as Democrats and Republicans spend 2018 vying to win key races around the country, a larger legal battle underway this year could reshape the American political map — literally.

By June, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to decide three major redistricting cases — out of Wisconsin, Maryland and Texas — that will lay some of the foundation for what the maps will look like, not just this year, but after the 2020 census that could affect control of Congress for the next decade.

The state of those legal cases and other key ones (that could affect 2018 and 2020) are below.

Updated on Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. ET

Keith Gaddie has "hung up his spurs."

The election expert from the University of Oklahoma no longer helps state legislatures draw new district lines to maximize their partisan advantage.

He was still wearing those spurs in 2011 when he provided data that helped Wisconsin Republicans enact a legislative redistricting plan aimed at maximizing their power for the foreseeable future.

But now he has reversed course and filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the practice is undemocratic.

Ohio Senate Democrats say majority Republicans are stymieing bipartisan congressional redistricting talks with "strong-arm tactics."

Ohio Governor John Kasich is joining friend and ex-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's effort to overhaul partisan redistricing that's helped fuel their own Republican party's rise to power.

An Associated Press analysis shows a redistricting process controlled by Ohio Republicans resulted in the party winning nearly two more U.S. House seats and five more Ohio House seats in the last election than would have been expected in neutral circumstances.

Civil rights advocates and Democrats are celebrating after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled North Carolina Legislature had drawn two congressional districts that amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Election experts say the decision is likely to boost the prospects for success in similar challenges across the South.

The Ohio Attorney General's office has approved the petition summary submitted by the group behind a ballot proposal to change the way the state's congressional districts are drawn.