UNM professor co-authors report on New Mexico redistricting
October 7, 2022 - Savannah Peat
A small shift in boundaries can have a drastic impact.
That’s why the tiniest bending of a line turned into a hard-fought battle for fairness in New Mexico’s redistricting process, a painstaking redrawing of state election districts following a new federal census.
In a new report co-authored by University of New Mexico Professor and Director of the UNM Center for Social Policy, Gabriel Sanchez, he and University of Georgia Professor David Cottrell found New Mexico’s legislators stuck to their guns and their current districts when brainstorming on new maps starting in 2021. Meanwhile, the state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Committee veered towards draft maps which contained more competition for future elections.
Sanchez and Cottrell discovered in the end, the non-partisan maps generated by this committee and a computer program did not come to fruition, possibly as a result of this variation.
The study, commissioned by the Arnold Foundation, showed both state Democrats and Republicans maintained districts in favor of incumbents, as well as where these incumbents lived.
“You’ve got a pretty apparent conflict of interest. Legislators are looking at the maps with a critical eye of how that’s going to impact their likelihood of retaining their seat,” Sanchez said.
New maps produced by lawmakers contain a total of 24 competitive seats, compared with a max total of 34 generated by the CRC.
Read more in the UNM Newsroom
