REDMAP

The minority vote protections in the Voting Rights Act resulted in a situation where the party that elected minorities also had an advantage in the House of Representatives. Democrats championed the process, redrawing districts to maintain minority populations. Due in part to this, Democrats largely controlled Congress for 40 years, from 1955 to 1995. Democrats are increasingly winning the majority of the votes in densely populated but small geographic, mostly urban, areas. These urban districts are very hard to gerrymander. This is because most local governments want House districts that respect local boundaries and that local politicians can defend in the polls, while Democratic city governments can influence Democratic state legislators who might otherwise be tempted to gerrymander. GOP drawn boundaries have been seen to overcrowd districts created by Democrats with disproportionate amounts of minority populations. By increasing numbers in a safe Democratic district, Republicans reduce the influence of the liberal voting bloc in both state politics and congressional elections. Republicans controlled the US House from 1995 until 2007. However, the Republican party regained its power in state legislatures following the losses by the Democrats in the 2010 mid-terms. The Democrats were unpopular with voters at this time, allowing Republicans to implement a political effort called REDMAP that enabled them to redraw favorable maps with the 2010 Census data. ==Effects==

REDMAP targeted 107 local state legislative races in 16 states, including swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. With the intention of flipping Democratic-majority state legislatures and Democrat-held state governorships for the express purpose of controlling redistricting, REDMAP funded negative ads in lower-profile state legislative races. to devise districts favorable to the Republican party, for example by clustering Democratic voters into a handful of districts and ensuring the rest were drawn to include Republican majorities. As such, the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case. ==Criticism==

REDMAP has been criticized for its efforts to gerrymander districts. ==See also==