Washington, D.C. — This week, Democracy Docket published a podcast episode featuring Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), who joined Marc Elias to sound the alarm about Republican-led efforts to undermine democracy and the ongoing fight for fair maps.

During their conversation, Jenkins and Elias discussed how the work of NDRC and Affiliates this year could shape the national congressional map leading up to the 2026 midterms and the long term fight for fairness.

Specifically, Jenkins highlighted pending litigation in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, where NDRC’s affiliates are playing a central role to protect or achieve fairer maps—all of which could impact the national congressional map leading up to the 2026 midterms. This year will also be a crucial election year in the fight for fair maps with important state-level elections taking place in Pennsylvania and Virginia this fall. 

Jenkins also discussed NDRC & Affiliates’ longer-term efforts to protect the census from efforts by the Trump Administration and Republican-led states to undermine an accurate count in the 2030 Census.

The full podcast episode can be watched here. An excerpt from the interview is below:

MARINA JENKINS: “The current state of affairs for redistricting is actually incredibly good. The congressional map right now is the fairest it has been in decades. The New York Times, after the 2022 election, said it was the fairest map in a generation. And so, you know, we’re in a really good place, and a lot of this success has happened since our organization was founded. Since the NDRC was founded in 2017, we’ve been able to move to this place where, in states across the country, there are competitive maps and the will of the voter is being realized.

“What we saw in the 2024 elections in Congress, you know, this kind of was missed in a lot of the headlines about, you know, just how poorly Democrats did and, you know, what was happening at the top of the ticket. But the truth of the matter is actually the congressional votes match the representation that we have right now as closely as they have ever. The phrase that the New York Times uses is ‘fairest maps in a generation,’ but if you think about the fact that the Voting Rights Act amendments of 1982 really put us into even what could conceivably be considered fair at all, we have the fairest maps we’ve ever had as a country—ever.
“Which doesn’t mean that we’re done—and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t so much work to be done. There are a lot of states, as you noted, that redistricting is a state-by-state issue. It’s a patchwork of processes and laws from state to state. And so, looking at the map, there are still a lot of places where congressional and state legislative maps are gerrymandered. You know, we’re still fighting in a lot of states: in Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia. You know, the fight goes on in North Carolina. We’re working in Wisconsin. There is so much more work to do, because we are now in this era of perpetual redistricting. This is no longer a moment where we think about redistricting once every 10 years and then put it to bed until we’re ready for it again. This is really work that has to happen all the time for us to make that progress and keep it.” 

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