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History and polling may be on Republicans' side as they try to break Democrats' unified control of Washington, but the 2022 midterm cycle is not a fait accompli, according to strategists from both parties.

In particular, some Democrats are hoping to flip the script on Republican "Dems in disarray" attacks as intra-GOP flaps, so far overshadowed by the Russia-Ukraine war, threaten to create more drama.

BIDEN GEARS UP FOR MIDTERM ELECTIONS AS DEMOCRATS FEAR FOR MAJORITIES

Republicans must stop squabbling among themselves, according to GOP strategist Cesar Conda.

The first year of President Joe Biden's administration was defined by Democratic quarrels over his sprawling list of social welfare and climate priorities. And similar forces are at play within Republican politics, Conda told the Washington Examiner. One example is the Republican National Committee's censure of Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois over their House Jan. 6 panel membership, he cited.

"Republicans need unity, or at least the perception of unity, going into the November elections," Conda said.

The RNC censure, which included language describing Jan. 6 protests "as legitimate political discourse," was criticized by the likes of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who is RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel's uncle. The committee later clarified the censure clearly differentiated between the violent and peaceful protesters.

Another example is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's complaints regarding National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott's 11-point "Rescue America" proposal. The Florida senator's pitch has been panned as a potential tax hike.

We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare after five years," McConnell said. "That will not be part of the Republican Senate majority agenda."

Democrats such as former consultant Christopher Hahn concurred that Republican disagreement could "change the math" Nov. 8.

"There are many primaries between traditional and Trump Republicans," the Aggressive Progressive podcast host said of onetime President Donald Trump. "In some states, there are already plans to mount third-party campaigns to thwart candidates who traditional Republicans view as a threat to democracy itself."

He added that "the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Trumpists winning primaries are the GOPs biggest obstacles to retaking the Senate."

Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin is a role model for managing the pro- and anti-Trump factions of the party, according to former GOP-turned-independent analyst Dan Schnur.

"The only thing that can keep Republicans from winning back their majorities is Republicans," he said of hard-line GOP lawmakers. "Distancing themselves from Trump might put some Republican candidates in an awkward position with their base, but sticking too closely to him could hurt them in November."

Despite the discord, Republicans have a roughly 4-percentage-point average advantage over Democrats on a generic congressional ballot. A Morning Consult tracking poll published last week found that the GOP had a 1-point edge over Democrats when respondents were asked the same question, 42% to 43%. That is a 3-point improvement compared to last September, when Democrats had 44% support to Republicans' 40%.

The main concern in this month's Morning Consult poll was the economy, incorporating taxes, spending, jobs, unemployment, and wages. Republican voters were slightly more enthusiastic than their Democratic counterparts, and the GOP had eroded Democrats' September 27-point lead among Hispanics. Democrats now only have a 10-point margin of victory with the demographic.

Republicans should not assume disaffected Democrats and independents will automatically swing toward the GOP, according to Conda. Instead, Republicans should present "commonsense" solutions to crime, education, immigration, and inflation problems, he contended. That contradicts McConnell, who would prefer not to provide details until after the contests.

Rather, Conda advocated a former House Speaker Newt Gingrich-esque "Contract with America 2.0" because Democrats' "woke politics and inattention to crime and education" are driving away Hispanics and Asian Americans.

"They should be tough on China and illegal immigration but must be careful not to talk about those issues [in] ways that alienate Asian and Hispanic Americans," the ex-aide to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Vice President Dick Cheney said. "Republicans must be the alternative, not just the opposition."

But the RNC is less anxious than Conda given that former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama suffered losses in their first terms Clinton losing 50-plus House seats in 1994 and Obama shedding 60-odd seats in 2010.

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"There is no bigger liability to Democrats than Kamala and Biden on the campaign trail, RNC deputy press secretary Nicole Morales said of Vice President Kamala Harris and her boss.

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Biden and Democrats hope Republicans will blow midterm election prospects - Washington Examiner

The Democratic Party is perceived by voters as being both ineffective and out of touch and, as a result, stands to suffer substantive seat losses in the midterm elections,new pollingby Schoen Cooperman Research indicates.

Indeed, the findings of our survey which was conducted among likely 2022 midterm election voters show that the electorate is increasingly pessimistic about the direction in which President BidenJoe BidenRepublican senators introduce bill to ban Russian uranium imports Energy & Environment Ruling blocking climate accounting metric halted Fauci says officials need more than .5B for COVID-19 response MORE and Democrats are steering the country and feel that the partys priorities do not align with their own.

In order to have a fighting chance in the midterms as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024 Democrats need to embark on a broader course correction back to the center. The party needs to show voters that they are focused on solving problems and addressing quality-of-life issues and that they reject the progressive lefts embrace of big government spending and identity politics.

Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) including 56 percent of independents explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent).

Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are out of touch with hardworking Americans and have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that theyre ignoring Americans day to day concerns such as rising prices and combatting violent crime.

Equally concerning for Democrats, there is a clear sense among the 2022 electorate that the state of the country has deteriorated since Biden became president and that he has not lived up to expectations.

Bidens net approval rating is 9 points underwater (54 percent disapprove, 45 percent approve), which marks a 4-point drop since our December poll (51 percent disapprove, 46 percent approve). A plurality of voters (43 percent) also say that Biden has done worse as president than they expected, rather than better (19 percent).

As inflation has risen, the economy has become a particular area of vulnerability for Democrats. Indeed, voters growing economic pessimism is one of the driving forces behind their dissatisfaction both with the current state of the country as well as with Biden.

Bidens approval rating on handling the nations economic recovery is 21 points underwater (59 percent disapprove, 38 percent approve). This marks a notable 17-point decline from our December polling, when Bidens approval rating on the recovery was negative 4 points, 50 percent to 46 percent.

In addition to harboring negative views about the economy generally, two-thirds of voters (68 percent) blame the Biden administrations policies for inflation either fully or partially.

Indeed, inflation which is at its highest level in 40 years is the top issue (51 percent) for voters, followed by the economy and creating jobs (32 percent). Yet only 16 percent of voters believe that Bidens main focus is on the economy. Thus, voters trust Republicans over Democrats to manage the economy (47 percent to 41 percent) and control inflation (48 percent to 36 percent).

In addition to the economy, voters see Biden and Democrats as underperforming on other important issues and in key roles, notably on policing and crime.

As violent crime surges across the country a trend that voters are nearly universally concerned about (85 percent) by a 2-to-1 margin, voters blame Democrats over Republicans for rising crime rates (52 percent to 25 percent). Further, Republicans are trusted over Democrats to reduce crime (49 percent to 34 percent).

Despite Bidens more moderate rhetoric on law enforcement and policing lately, most voters still agree that Biden and Democrats are soft on crime (56 percent) and a plurality agree that Democrats in Congress support the radical defund the police movement (46 percent).

Notwithstanding Democrats weaknesses on the economy and crime, our data on the COVID-19 pandemic is relatively encouraging for the party. Indeed, a majority of voters (53 percent) approve of the way Biden is addressing the pandemic.

To be sure, Democrats success in the midterms hinges partly on Americans feeling like COVID-19 is under control by Novemberand, positively, nearly one-half of voters (46 percent) now say that the pandemic is either completely or mostly under control, while just 12 percent say it is not under control.

Voters are also notably less concerned about the pandemic now than they were in December. Currently, voters are concerned, rather than not concerned, about the pandemic by a 24-point margin compared to December, when voters were concerned by a 50-point margin.

That being said, these improving dynamics vis--vis the COVID-19 pandemic will likely not be enough to tip the scales in Democrats favor, given the enormity of the challenges Biden faces at home and of course, the crisis hes facing in Eastern Europe.

Collectively, our data paints a picture of a Democratic Party that is unable to connect with voters on basic "kitchen table" issues, namely the economy and crime.

In his State of the Union address, Biden attempted to refashion his economic agenda in light of the Build Back Better plans failure and tried to sell some of the same big-spending proposals as anti-inflationary and deficit-reducing measures.

Instead of repackaging a failed progressive spending bill one that most voters either dont prioritize or oppose the president should make a commitment to reducing inflation by practicing fiscal discipline while also ruling out any new spending initiatives that lack bipartisan support.

At the same time, though it was encouraging to hear Biden call to fund the police, rhetoric is just a first step. Absent a Democratic effort to approach criminal justice legislation in a bipartisan manner, the GOP will be able to weaponize the issue against Democrats in the midterms.

Ultimately, if Democrats do not embrace a strategic shift to the political center, they risk historic defeats worse than 1994 or 2010 in this years midterm elections.

Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman are pollsters and partners with the public opinion company Schoen Cooperman Research based in New York. They are co-authors of the book, America: Unite or Die.

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New polling confirms Democrats' left-leaning policies are out of touch | TheHill - The Hill

This story has been updated to include new Associated Press data and reporting.

You might remember the uproar last year over Texass new voting law: Democratic lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature fled the state for weeks in an attempt to block the bill, which they said would disenfranchise voters, and Republicans threatened them with arrest upon their return. The law eventually did pass, and with Texass primary earlier this month, we got our first look at whether the worst fears of Democrats and voting rights advocates were warranted.

Thousands of votes were, in fact, thrown out, directly as a result of a new requirement in the law. A new AP analysis of data from Texas found that a whopping 13 percent of the states absentee ballots were discarded or uncounted.

And in the states biggest county, the new procedures it mandated contributed to a hugely messy vote-counting process.

Its been every bit as catastrophic as we feared it would be, said James Slattery, a senior staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. I think the onus is on the legislature to acknowledge the harm that it did to Texas voters by passing Senate Bill 1 and make amends by repealing it next year.

But that probably wont happen given that key Republicans who pushed for the law have continued to defend it.

Heres what we saw in the primary and what it could mean for other states that have enacted or are considering similar laws.

The new law does a few things: It bans 24-hour and drive-through voting, prevents officials from mailing unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, requires monthly voter roll checks, and gives more latitude to poll watchers. It also adds a requirement that voters provide their drivers license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number when applying for a mail-in ballot and write that same number on their mail-in ballot when sending it in.

Democrats and voting rights advocates were adamant that the new ID requirement for mail-in ballots introduced huge room for human error, and huge amounts of human error occurred. Some 27,000 mail-in ballots were initially flagged for rejection across 120 counties in the state. The secretary of states office has yet to publish statewide mail-in ballot rejection figures, but the AP data, collected from 187 of Texass 254 counties, found 22,898 were rejected.

The statewide rejection rate for mail-in ballots has typically been between 1 and 2 percent in past elections and was about 1 percent in the 2020 general election when mail-in voting rates were much higher. But in the 2022 primaries, county-level rejection rates ranged from 6 to 22 percent, according to data compiled by the Texas Civil Rights Project and shared with Vox.

In four counties that reported the reason they had rejected mail-in ballots, those identification requirements were to blame over 90 percent of the time. In Harris County, which encompasses Houston and is the most populous county in the state, it was 99.6 percent.

This was foreseeable. Even some Republican officials were worried about mail-in ballot rejections ahead of the primary. Texas Secretary of State John Scott said during a February town hall that it was his biggest concern of this election cycle. In a statement Tuesday, Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for Scott, acknowledged the issues with mail-in ballots during the primaries and said his office is devoting a significant portion of its voter education efforts to the new ID requirements.

We are confident we will have all the information we need to apply any lessons learned during the primary to an even more robust voter education campaign heading into the November general election, Taylor said.

But others have continued to defend Senate Bill 1. Gov. Greg Abbott has blamed local election officials for misinterpreting the new law. And state Rep. Briscoe Cain, the laws leading proponent, has argued that it had no adverse effect on the chaotic vote counting process in Harris County if anything, he said it made it a whole lot easier to fire the county election administrator who oversaw it.

Voters whose mail-in ballots were flagged for rejection did have the opportunity to correct them to ensure that they were counted. But the process proved confusing and looked different depending on when the problem with a voters ID number was discovered.

You can see all the different ways that this can go wrong. What if the ballot never gets back to the voter? Or they dont see it and think its junk mail? Or they correct the number issue online but dont realize they need to send the ballot back? Slattery said.

For some voters, the process was just too arduous.

A lot of voters get these letters of rejection, and they just dont bother, said Michele Valentino, a Democratic election judge in Dallas.

Some flaws can be expected when implementing a new system for the first time, but this bodes poorly considering how low turnout was relative to general elections: Fewer than 1 in 5 voters cast ballots in the primaries, which is higher than in the past six midterm primaries but still a lot lower than the roughly 46 percent of Texans who showed up for the last midterm general election in 2018.

I can see this issue compounding and worsening as we reach the midterms this year, said Jasleen Singh, counsel in the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she focuses on voting rights and elections. That theres even this much hardship that voters are encountering at this stage is incredibly concerning and dangerous for democracy.

The AP analysis showed a higher rate of rejections in Democratic than Republican counties (15.1% to 9.1%). That was also predictable: Voters of color typically bear the biggest burden from any restrictions on voting, and they make up a large share of many of those Democratic-leaning counties.

But there are reasons for Republicans to be concerned too. Mail-in voting was already restricted primarily to people over age 65, people with disabilities, and college students. That means that the population of people who vote by mail in Texas has historically skewed older, whiter, more rural, and more conservative, and the new voting law isnt likely to change that. Some smaller counties were not yet accounted for in the AP data.

There are already staggering rates of mail-in ballot rejections in urban centers such as Harris County, and there are still a lot of rural counties in Texas that have yet to report their own rejection data, but its possible that the new ID requirements might end up hurting the constituents of the Republicans who wrote the law more so than others, Slattery said.

Florida and Georgia have already enacted similar bills, both passed by party-line votes, that impose new restrictions on mail-in voting. Its part of Republicans national push to curtail access to mail-in voting and discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election, when many states expanded mail-in voting due to the pandemic.

Florida now requires voters who are requesting mail-in ballots to provide a drivers license number, another non-driver identification number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number on their application. It doesnt go as far as requiring that information to be written on the ballot itself, as Texas has. But Texas did reject thousands of mail-in ballot applications over its new ID requirements. Florida could encounter similar issues, though the state has a much bigger and more established mail-in voting operation that could make it easier for voters to adjust. Voting rights groups have sued over the law, and a federal judge is expected to rule in the case before the states primaries in August.

Georgias Senate Bill 202 similarly requires a voter to provide their drivers license number or other ID number and date of birth when requesting a mail-in ballot and write that information on the mail-in ballot before sending it in. It has drawn legal challenges from the Biden administration and civil rights groups arguing that it makes it harder to vote for people of color and people with disabilities.

What were seeing with [the Texas law], and I think with many of the laws passed last year, are these layering effects. In places where it was already harder to vote, its now even harder to vote, Singh said.

Other states are still considering similar measures, and though the outcome of the Texas primaries should make them wary of doing so, Republicans pushing those bills havent shown any signs that they intend to reverse course.

According to the Brennan Center, at least 18 bills in five states would newly require voters to provide their Social Security number, drivers license number, or voter record number when applying for a mail-in ballot. An Arizona bill would require voters to present an ID when returning a mail-in ballot and reduce the list of acceptable forms of voter ID to those that include a signature, a fingerprint, or a unique security code. And three bills in Missouri, New Jersey, and Washington propose new grounds for rejecting a mail-in ballot, including if the signature does not appear to be valid, though the New Jersey and Washington bills are unlikely to pass.

These cookie-cutter laws that a national organization has drafted without close consultation with local election officials and that are jammed through without really serious and careful debate could end up blowing up, Slattery said.

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The Texas primaries showed the risk of restricting mail-in voting - Vox.com

Do Utah Democrats send a candidate to Novembers ballot in the U.S. Senate race, which most likely extends the partys five-decade-long losing streak? Or, should they compromise their values to make an uneasy alliance with a conservative candidate in hopes of denying Sen. Mike Lee another term in Washington?

Its certainly not the most exciting Choose your own adventure book on the shelf, but its on the spring syllabus for Utahs Democrats.

Distilled to its essence, it is a choice between principles and practicality, and neither are particularly great choices for Utahs minority party.

Kael Weston is unopposed in the Democratic Party, so giving him the nomination should be nothing more than a formality. Traditionally, lone candidates are nominated by acclamation at the partys convention without the need for a formal vote by delegates.

Not this year, though.

A group of prominent Democrats, fronted by former Rep. Ben McAdams and Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, say the party should withhold its nomination to increase the chances for independent Evan McMullin to defeat Lee.

Wilson admits its a gamble, but Democrats havent won a U.S. Senate election in Utah for 50 years, and she would like to try something different, even if it results in electing someone who is much farther to the right on the political spectrum.

Im well aware Evan McMullin would not be as good as a Democrat in terms of my values and what I believe. But I expect he would invite us into the room when hes making tough decisions. Thats not an opportunity Mike Lee is affording me right now, Wilson says.

Its a brutally pragmatic argument and one you dont often see in todays hyperpolarized political culture. Even if Democrats decide to kick party politics aside, there is no guarantee McMullin can beat Lee in November.

McAdams also says he would willingly trade McMullin for Lee, even if their politics rarely align.

Youll never have a candidate who agrees with you 100% of the time, and losing accomplishes nothing, McAdams says.

McAdams says he is on board with the plan because he believes Lee is an obstructionist who is unwilling to compromise.

Washington, D.C., is a dumpster fire. I personally know how broken and dysfunctional it is, and Mike Lee is the ringleader of that dysfunction. He cant even find his way to bipartisanship on things like roads and bridges, McAdams says. We have got to start sending people to Washington who are going to be constructive and work to fix whats broken.

But what of Weston? Doesnt he deserve the opportunity to represent the Democratic party? This clinical assessment of the race shoves him and his political ambitions aside.

Longtime Utah Democrat Quang Dang, who is helping Weston plot his political strategy, says the gambit put forward by McAdams and Wilson will do lasting damage to the party.

This whole plot to not have a Democratic candidate on the ballot is absurd. Never in the history of this party has this been done, Dang says. We have to deal with this gimmick, and gimmicks dont work in politics, especially Utah politics.

Weston is not a rookie candidate. He ran against Rep. Chris Stewart in 2020, losing to the Republican by 22 points in Utahs 2nd Congressional District.

Dang says Democrats who want to push Weston aside for McMullin are making many assumptions. First, Lee likely faces a primary against one or two other Republicans. Both Becky Edwards and Ally Isom are gathering signatures to avoid elimination at the GOP convention. Although Lee is the presumptive favorite, Dang says thats not a fait accompli, and the political winds could shift.

Politics is not sports betting. We ought to vote for the candidate that best represents our values and principles, not on who we think is most likely to win, Dang says.

The problem for Weston or any Democrat running statewide in Utah is simple math. You have to get more votes than your opponent.

Longtime political strategist Reed Galen says the numbers are more favorable for McMullin than Weston, but its still a long shot.

Are there enough Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents in Utah to beat Mike Lee? Are there enough Republican voters who dont like Mike Lee to cross over and vote for a Democrat? I think the answer to all of those questions is an unequivocal no, Galen says.

The former Republican and Park City resident helped form the Lincoln Project in 2020 as part of the effort to prevent Donald Trump from winning another term in the White House. He says Democrats are not known for looking at politics pragmatically.

They lead with their hearts a lot, not with their heads. When it comes to cold calculations, theyre not very good at it. For Democrats who dont like Mike Lee, there are only two choices in this race: Mike Lee or Evan McMullin, Galen says.

While this strategy is very rare, it is not unprecedented. In the 2014 Kansas U.S. Senate race, the Democratic nominee, Chad Taylor, dropped out to clear the way for independent businessman Greg Orman. According to Smart Politics, Orman lost by nearly 11 points to Pat Roberts, but the race was much closer than in the past as Republicans won the previous nine U.S. Senate races by an average of 37 points.

The United Utah Party has already thrown its weight behind McMullin, endorsing his candidacy against Lee.

How this plays out will depend on the whims of Democratic delegates who will be selected at the Democratic caucus meetings next week. All of this culminates at the state convention at the end of April.

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Utah Democrats face dilemma: help an independent to try to beat Sen. Mike Lee or stand with the party - Salt Lake Tribune

A New York State judge indicated on Thursday that he would allow this years midterm elections to proceed using the states newly drawn district lines that heavily favor Democrats rebuffing Republican requests to delay the election process while he considers whether the maps are an unconstitutional gerrymander.

In a preliminary hearing in Steuben County Supreme Court, Justice Patrick F. McAllister, a Republican, said that even if he ultimately ruled that the maps were unconstitutional, it was highly unlikely that replacements could be ratified in a timely manner ahead of primaries in June and Election Day in November. That, in turn, would risk leaving the state without proper representation in Congress.

I do not intend at this time to suspend the election process, the judge said. I believe the more prudent course would be to allow the current election process to proceed and then, if necessary, allow an election process next year if new maps need to be drawn.

Justice McAllisters conclusion delivered a sharp setback to state Republicans, who sued last month to try to stop the new congressional and State Senate lines drafted by the Democrat-controlled State Legislature from taking effect this year. The Republicans believe their party is well positioned to retake control of the House of Representatives in November, but every seat could count.

The fresh New York boundaries would make that harder, giving Democrats an advantage in 22 of the states 26 congressional districts, while potentially cutting the current number of Republican House members from New York in half and effectively eating into gains won by redistricting measures in other states. Analysts have suggested the new State Senate lines could be just as favorable to Democrats, helping the party maintain its supermajority in Albany.

Legal analysts who study redistricting said that Justice McAllister or an appeals court could still conceivably rethink his approach, but a court-ordered delay to this years elections was an increasingly unlikely scenario, now that candidates have begun collecting petitions to get on the June primary ballot.

If I were a candidate, I think the smart bet is that the maps we have today are the maps that are going to be used in November, said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. There doesnt seem to be the will to change them for this cycle.

Still, Republicans left the hearing room in Bath, N.Y., on Thursday with some reasons for optimism.

Justice McAllister rejected motions to dismiss the case and indicated that he was open to arguments that the maps had violated language added to the New York Constitution in 2014 that barred mapmakers from drawing lines to benefit one political party or candidate.

The judge also ordered Democrats to hand over a raft of documents by March 12 that might shed light on how the Democratic drafters settled on the lines, and he told both sides to appear a few days later to argue over the merits of the Republicans challenge.

The important thing here is that the court rejected all of the efforts by the State Legislature and the attorney general to dismiss the case, said John J. Faso, a former congressman from New York who is serving as a spokesman for the Republican challengers a group of New York residents backed by deep-pocketed national Republican groups.

What is redistricting? Its the redrawing of the boundariesof congressional and state legislative districts. It happens every 10 years, after the census, to reflect changes in population.

How does it work? The census dictates how many seats in Congress each state will get. Mapmakers then work to ensure that a states districts all have roughly the same number of residents, to ensure equal representation in the House.

Who draws the new maps? Each state has its own process. Eleven states leave the mapmaking to an outside panel. But most 39 states have state lawmakers draw the new maps for Congress.

If state legislators can draw their own districts, wont they be biased? Yes. Partisan mapmakers often move district lines subtly or egregiously to cluster voters ina way that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.

Is gerrymandering legal? Yes and no. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic gerrymandering.

Mr. Faso said that the Republican lawyers would continue to argue that there was enough time to draw new maps for use in this years elections. You cant really allow an election to take place if the lines are declared unconstitutional, and there is time for a remedy, he said.

Democratic leaders have not disputed that the maps may produce gains for their party. But they say that those gains would result not from their mapmakers partisan motives but from the realities of population shifts that have made an already blue state much bluer since the last redistricting cycle in 2012.

Redistricting experts have called New Yorks new maps a political gerrymander. But proving that beyond a reasonable doubt in court, where judges tend to show deference to lawmakers, may be difficult. Justice McAllister called it a high bar on Thursday.

If the maps are tossed out, New Yorkers could be asked to vote in three consecutive years for House members and state senators in regularly scheduled elections in 2022 and 2024, as well as a special election in 2023.

Lawyers for the Democrats vowed to immediately appeal the judges order to hand over documents quickly, which could further complicate the proceeding. Under special rules used to speed up the case, Justice McAllister must render a verdict by April 4.

Luis Ferr-Sadurn contributed reporting.

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Democrats Win Early Victory in Court Fight Over District Maps - The New York Times