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Citizen Redistricting and gerrymandering
While Obamacare and Gay Marriage got all of the spotlight, possibly the decision with the most long term political importance was [i] ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE v. ARIZONA INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMMISSION[/i]
[url=http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jun/29/supreme-court-arizona-redistricting-commission-gerrymandering]
Supreme court upholds independent redistricting in blow to gerrymandering[/url]
The ruling allows various citizen redistricting panels and (likely other creative solutions) to go forward.
The changes to our politics that might come from ending gerrymandering and disallowing politicians to choose their own voters could have big effects over time.
I predict that many States will now take this path, It won’t be long until some States makes a commission to draw US Congressional districts. It could bring some tempering in the polarization of politics as politicians in more balanced districts not fear a loss from the “middle” rather than from their political right or left flank.
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73 Replies
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If you could redraw the districts of say OH, what would make them fair? Just around Cleveland you can see the obvious cherry picking. Like I live in Dave Joyce OH-14. It’s mostly North East Ohio, Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula counties, but happens to sneak in some of the $$$ suburbs of Cuyahoga, Summit, Medina I think.
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[url=http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/10/09/ohio-legislators-in-both-parties-want-new-congressional-redistricting-method.html]Bipartisan proposal in Ohio to make non-partisan Congressional redistricting[/url]
With voters deciding whether to change how Ohio draws legislative districts, a bipartisan pair of senators urged the Constitutional Modernization Commission on Thursday to recommend similar changes for congressional seats. Sawyer and Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Copley, are sponsoring a congressional-redistricting proposal that is similar to the legislative-redistricting proposal that is on the November ballot as Issue 1.
…The proposal would hand the process to the same seven-member commission proposed in Issue 1: the auditor, secretary of state and governor and four legislative appointees. Passing a 10-year map would require at least two minority-party votes.
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Examples of districts that make little sense are evident across Ohio:
The snake along the lake district links downtown Toledo and Cleveland; its so narrow that at one point its width is a bridge. Rep. Steve Stivers district includes both Upper Arlington and Athens. The duck-shaped 4th District stretches from Elyria, near Cleveland, to nearly the Indiana line. Summit County, home of Akron and both Sawyer and LaRose, is sliced into four districts.
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[link=http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-redistricting/]http://www.bloomberg.com/…cs/2015-redistricting/[/link]
A nice little Bloomberg infographic piece on the courts and gerrymandering vis a vis 2016 elections.
One of the most acrimonious redistricting fights in the nation came to an end on Wednesday, when Florida’s Supreme Court replaced the Republican-drawn congressional map with one that shakes up all but three districts in the state. The Court said Republican lawmakers violated a 2010 constitutional amendment, overwhelmingly approved by voters, that prohibited legislators from drawing districts to favor incumbents or to benefit one party over another. Under the court-ordered map, three districts currently held by Republicans will now be more evenly split politically or lean Democratic and one Democratic seat will lean Republican.
Similar redistricting battles took place in states around the country. New districts had to be drawn in 43 states for the 2012 election (the other seven have only one statewide congressional district). Of those 43, lawsuits have been filed in 42, with courts reviewing the district maps in 22. In three states, courts declared the new maps unconstitutional and ordered them redrawn; in nine other states, judges have stepped in to settle district boundaries when lawmakers were unable to agree.
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Democrats are likely to benefit from these final redistricting cases. The party could net a couple of seats in Florida and one in Virginia, and would stand to pick up more seats if courts strike Republican maps in North Carolina and Texas. If the disputes drag on through next year, some states might not elect members of Congress on settled maps until 2018, leaving just two years before a new U.S. census starts up the whole thing all over again.-
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/us/north-carolina-fights-over-its-election-rules.html]Supreme Court lets stand a lower court ruling that has forced North Carolinas Republican-dominated legislature to redraw its congressional electoral maps[/url]
As a result, the state must now follow a contingency plan, also devised by Republican lawmakers, that tries to comply with the lower courts ruling by making significant changes to the boundaries of the some of the states 13 congressional districts.
The contingency plan was approved by the state legislature on Friday, hours before the [link=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org]Supreme Court[/link] announced that it had rejected North Carolina Republicans application for a stay. But the approval of the contingency plan came over the strenuous objection of Democrats, who claimed that the new congressional maps were hyperpartisan giving Republicans 10 safe districts to the Democrats three and still failed to protect black voters interests.
Like many recent election law lawsuits here, race was at the heart of the legal challenge to the 2011 congressional map that was drawn up by Republicans after the 2010 census. The plaintiffs, residents of North Carolina, brought the lawsuit in 2013, alleging that congressional Districts One and 12 had been drawn up in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. They argued that lawmakers, in creating the 2011 boundaries, used the [link=http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/v/voting_rights_act_1965/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier]Voting Rights Act[/link] as a pretext to pack black voters into the two districts, thus making surrounding districts safer for Republicans.
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Simply put, the Republicans are now turning the well intentioned process to increase minority representation into a way to marginalize them
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Quote from Thor
Simply put, the Republicans are now turning the well intentioned process to increase minority representation into a way to marginalize them
SCOTUS oral arguments today on racial gerrymandering in Virginia.
[link=http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/argument-preview-once-again-the-issue-is-race-2/]http://www.scotusblog.com…n-the-issue-is-race-2/[/link]…the case reached the Court again in an appeal by all eight of Virginias current Republican members of the House (together with two others who no longer are in the states delegation but continue to be named). The lawmakers are seeking to defend the constitutionality of District 3 under the 2012 plan, which was struck down as a racial gerrymander in a split decision by a three-judge federal district court last June.
Actually, that lower court has twice nullified the 2012 plan for District 3. Then, when the legislature last year could not agree on a replacement, the court fashioned a new one on its own. Adding to the strangeness of this case, the court-drawn map is the one that will be used in this years June 14 primary and November 8 general elections in Virginia, under an order by the Supreme Court last month.
…A final, clear-cut decision is not assured, for two reasons. …First, the Court hearing the case will have only eight members, which almost always raises at least the possibility of a four-to-four split. However, the last time the Court ruled on a racial gerrymandering case, one year ago, against state legislative districting in Alabama, the vote was five to four, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia was among the dissenters. If there were now to be a four-to-four split, that would simply leave the district court ruling intact, setting no precedent and with no Court opinion. The 2012 plan would be dead for future elections.
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Quote from Thor
Simply put, the Republicans are now turning the well intentioned process to increase minority representation into a way to marginalize them
[url+[link=http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/04/politics/conservatives-lose-key-supreme-court-voting-rights-case/]http://www.cnn.com/2016/0…rt-voting-rights-case/[/link]]
Conservative challengers lose key Supreme Court voting rights case[/url][/h1]
[link=http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-940_ed9g.pdf]In a unanimous result[/link], the court said a state can draw legislative districts based on total population. At issue in the case was the “one person, one vote” principle dating back to the 1960s, when the court held that state legislative districts must be drawn so they are equal in population.
But, until Monday, justices never specified whether that doctrine applied to the general population or to the voting population. All states currently draw lines based on general population, but two conservative plaintiffs from Texas argued their vote was being diluted in relation to other districts that had the same number of people but fewer voters.
The Obama administration and state of Texas opposed the lawsuit. Civil rights groups watched the case carefully, fearful that if the court were to rule with the plaintiffs, it could potentially shift power from urban areas — districts that tend to include a higher percentage of individuals not eligible to vote such as non-citizens, released felons and children — to rural areas that are more likely to favor Republicans.
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[url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-upholds-arizona-redistricting-plan/2016/04/20/426ac408-0715-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html]Supreme Court upholds Arizona redistricting plan[/url]
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that an independent redistricting commission in Arizona did not improperly favor Democrats when drawing the states legislative districts.
The justices said variances in the populations of the districts, drawn after the 2010 Census, were not so great as to violate the Constitutions rule of one person, one vote.
The court added that any flaws in the redistricting plan are more likely to have resulted from a well-intentioned attempt to comply with the Voting Rights Act rather than to favor one party over another.
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Ready for gerrymandering 2.0? Census bureau director is out the door today. Good luck to whoever gets that job or maybe trump can figure out how to eliminate the census.
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[url=http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/02/congressional_redistricting_pl.html]Ohio constitutional amendment to end partisan redistricting will go on the ballot in May. [/url] ^
[i]The Atlantic[/i]: [url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/ohio-senate-bipartisan-compromise-redistricting/552413/]
[h1][b]An End to Gerrymandering in Ohio?:[/b][/h1] A bipartisan compromise would require minority-party support for political maps, and would limit the number of communities that could be splintered.[/url]The proposal would require three-fifths support of the entire legislature to pass a map for use over a 10-year period. The three-fifths must include 50 percent of all members of the minority party. The resolution also sets forth a maximum number of counties that can be split by congressional districts, a provision that should affect district compactness.
If the legislature cannot create maps that follow these rules and secure the requisite support, the task would fall to a seven-member bipartisan commission. Their maps would have to win support from at least two of the minority members of the commission for the adoption process to continue. If the commission fails, the resolution creates two more contingencies: Either the legislature can have another go at creating a 10-year mapthis time, only having to secure a third of the minority partys votesor it could create a map that only lasts for four years and has much stricter compactness requirements. That four-year map would require a simple majority.
[link=https://www.fairdistrictsohio.org/blog]According to[/link] the Fair Districts Coalition, a collection of Ohio-based groups pushing for bipartisan redistricting reform, this amendment creates a bipartisan process that strongly encourages both major parties to cooperate and agree on a congressional map that better represents the views of Ohioans.
Redistricting reform has been a major issue in Ohio, with strong grassroots support for finding a way to break the partisan monopoly on mapmaking in the state. In 2015, the coalition achieved its first major victory when it ushered through [link=http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/05/ohio_redistricting_reform_amen.html]a ballot initiative[/link] that reforms the way state General Assembly maps are drawn. The resulting constitutional amendment created a seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission, whose members must include the governor, state auditor, secretary of state, two more political appointees, and at least two members of the minority party. The amendment also implemented strict limits on the number of counties that could be split by General Assembly districts.
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Nina Totenberg on NPR with a good review of the Gerrymandering cases presently before the Supreme Court
[url=https://www.npr.org/2018/03/28/596220408/extreme-partisan-gerrymandering-the-supreme-courts-play-in-3-acts]Extreme Partisan Gerrymandering: The Supreme Court’s Play In 3 Acts[/url]
The First Amendment argument, however, appeals, in particular, to the justice whose vote is likely to decide the case, Justice Anthony Kennedy. In 2004, he provided the fifth vote for the court staying out of partisan gerrymandering cases, but he made it clear that he remained open to finding a way to measure what is unconstitutional gerrymandering based on party and he specifically mentioned the First Amendment notion that government action cannot punish people based on partisan affiliation.
Election expert Rick Hasen, of the University of California, Irvine, said that Kennedy, 81, knows he will not be on the court forever.
“It’s put-up-or-shut-up time,” Hasen said. “Either he’s going to say, ‘We’ve got to start policing this’ or he has to recognize that what is going to happen in the next round in 2020 is going to look a lot worse than in this round, that it’s going to be no-holds-barred, squeeze out whatever you can, in favor of your party and against the other party.”
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3 to 1 in OH for a redo on the maps.
“The first map drawn under the new rules will be created after the 2020 census. This will mark the first time that the party in power will not have almost total control over the process.”
[link=http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2018/05/ohio_votes_to_reform_congressi_1.html#incart_maj-story-1]http://www.cleveland.com/…tml#incart_maj-story-1[/link]-
Glad that Issue 1 passed.
But I hope that this doesnt take the energy out of more aggressive redistricting reform efforts.
Ohio went with a bipartisan compromise. The main reason the GOP signed off on support was because they were afraid of something stronger taking hold like true citizen redistricting.
This will still allow the GOP to gerrymander if push comes to shove… just only for 4 years instead of 10.
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2018 OH should be interesting. On NPR they said democrat turnout was 20% higher in the primary.
Dewine was beating Mary Taylor 2-1 on the GOP. Mary Taylor seems to be against anything Kasich like medicaid expansion. What I was reading below though makes it looks like the GOP might not want him though. He’s not Trumpy enough. If that’s right I’m not sure how he beat Taylor. Maybe we’ll have a democrat as governor.
[link=https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/8/17328480/mike-dewine-wins-ohio-republican-primary-governor]https://www.vox.com/polic…lican-primary-governor[/link]
Kasich is doing his party a favor in that hes trying to hand the baton off without any sort of ethical problems. But there may be an ethical problem not with the governor but with the Republican brand, said Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginias Center for Politics. Democrats have sometimes been aided in big elections in Ohio by GOP ethical and corruption problems.
[link=https://www.vox.com/2016/3/15/11224592/john-kasich]Kasich[/link] is looming over the entire race. He is relatively popular overall but has turned off many in the Republican base with his anti-Trump rhetoric and he keeps publicly fueling the speculation that he might try to topple Trump [link=https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2018/3/2/17070550/maverick-candidate-republican-party]in the 2020 GOP presidential primary[/link].
Heres the rub for DeWine as he is running to replace Kasich: He might indeed be broadly popular 51 percent approval, per [link=https://morningconsult.com/2018/04/12/americas-most-and-least-popular-governors/]Morning Consult[/link] but the GOP base is turning against him. A recent poll found that only 44 percent of Republicans approve of their governor, the Cleveland Plain Dealer [link=http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2018/04/new_poll_shows_richard_cordray.html]reported[/link], while 77 percent approve of Trump.
Theyre running as fast as they can away from Kasich, one Ohio Republican told me.
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SCOTUS punts on the issue saying no harm. Politicians selecting the voters is OK, no demonstrable harm.
Must be too complicated, like cell phones or even programming VCRs.-
Well Keagan laid out the way the can challenge by district and I think someone from another state is actually fielding a different challenge that is on a district level.
That later part I think is why we shouldn’t have lifetime appointments.-
Except the other side of the coin is that elected judges are prone to pay attention to the vagaries of the moment and the “mob,” something besides the King the Founding Fathers worried about, the mob mentality.
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Quote from Frumious
Except the other side of the coin is that elected judges are prone to pay attention to the vagaries of the moment and the “mob,” something besides the King the Founding Fathers worried about, the mob mentality.
It’s necessarily about elected but about sitting there in judgement for a life tenure. They say Clarence Thomas didn’t ask a question in 10 years. Not one. WTF was he doing for 10 years. So few people shouldn’t have so much say for so long.
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The question is why was he selected in the 1st place. He was a troll nomination. He was anti-Thurgood Marshall, a poke in the eye of blacks and liberals. Republicans were crying that Thomas was the “most qualified” candidate our of anyone, so much so that Bush sent only Thomas’s name up to the American Bar Association. For comparison, Gerald Ford submitted 20 names.
Says a lot for their judgement over the years.
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[h1]Supreme Court Divided on Partisan Electoral Maps[/h1]
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared divided along ideological lines again on whether the contentious practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries to entrench one party in power may violate the constitutional rights of voters, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh emerging as the potential deciding vote, [link=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-gerrymandering/u-s-supreme-court-divided-on-partisan-electoral-maps-idUSKCN1R70Z2?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FPoliticsNews+%28Reuters+Politics+News%29]Reuters[/link] reports.More than two hours of arguments in major cases from North Carolina and Maryland on the practice known as partisan gerrymandering focused on whether courts should be empowered to block electoral maps when they are drawn by state legislators expressly to give one political party a lopsided advantage.
Conservative justices, who have a 5-4 majority on the court, signaled skepticism toward judicial intervention while liberal justices seemed supportive. The ruling is due by the end of June.
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[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/us/supreme-court-gerrymandering-north-carolina.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage]New York Times[/link] :
The two cases hold the potential to set the course of American politics for generations. A decision to rein in partisan gerrymanders could reshape House maps in a number of states, largely but not exclusively to the benefit of Democrats. A decision not to rein in the mapmakers would give both political parties carte blanche to entrench themselves and hogtie their opponents when state legislatures draw the next decades House districts in 2021.
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Seems a hard drive was just found about the plan to place the citizenship question on the census and why it’s important. Seems the plan was created by a Republican operative in order to further gerrymander districts in Republican’s favor and then justify the political move by claiming it was necessary to further the rights of Americans, specifically the Americans whose rights were protected by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
An evil man. The quote by Hannah Arendt about the banality of evil fits,
As she described this little man referred to in the quote:
I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer which made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer at least the very effective one now on trial was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question-hofeller.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…question-hofeller.html[/link]
Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the partys dominance across the country.
But [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/obituaries/thomas-hofeller-republican-master-of-political-maps-dies-at-75.html?module=inline]after he died last summer,[/link] his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her fathers home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administrations decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trumps transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.
Those documents, [link=https://www.commoncause.org/page/read-the-gops-plan-to-supercharge-gerrymandering-with-a-census-citizenship-question/]cited in a federal court filing Thursday[/link] by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question. Critics say adding the question would deter many immigrants from being counted and shift political power to Republican areas.
The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests.
[b]But a majority of the Supreme Court justices seemed inclined to accept the departments explanation the question was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, and [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/us/politics/supreme-court-census-citizenship.html?module=inline]appeared ready to uphold[/link] the administrations authority to alter census questions as it sees fit. The justices are expected to issue a final ruling before the courts term ends in late June.[/b]
I will bet our political Court supports the Administration 5 to 4 using the Administration’s justification of “protecting” the Voting Rights Act, contrary to evidence and common sense.-
What a shock! The Supremes just voted 5/4 that partisan gerrymandering is NOT against the Constitution! Legislators are not forbidden to rig the system to allow legislators to select voters in an anti-Democratic way.
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Horrible decision.
And not just from a right/left partisan viewpoint.
One of the best ways to moderate our political discourse is to make politicians fight for the middle. This ruling just guarantees that districts will be more partisan and that our politics will likely be even more polarized in the future.
Some day people will look back at this case and view as wrongly decided … with real consequences.-
Conservatives do not believe in democracy.
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That’s why they’re smarter.
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North Carolina maps thrown out by state Supreme Court
GOP says it wont appeal
(Court also says the new maps can only be drawn during public hearings with all computers used in the process open to public view)
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good for them. Wish Ohio could be unpacked and uncracked. I’m Ohio 14 which is ridiculous in the SxSW corner.
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“Having considered all of the evidence, the memoranda and arguments of counsel, and the record proper, the Court ORDERS the following:
The Court declares that the 2017 House and Senate Plans are unconstitutional and invalid because there is no reasonable doubt each plan violates the rights of Plaintiffs and other Democratic voters under the North Carolina Constitutions 353 Equal Protection Clause.
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The Court will afford the General Assembly two weeks from the date of this Order, namely through September 18, 2019, to enact Remedial Maps for the House and Senate legislative districts for the 2020 election (hereinafter Remedial Maps) in conformity with this Order.
Except as otherwise noted in this Order, the following criteria shall exclusively govern the redrawing of districts in the House and Senate county groupings set forth above:
a. Equal Population. The mapmakers shall use the 2010 federal decennial census data as the sole basis of population for drawing legislative districts in the Remedial Maps. The number of persons in each legislative district shall comply with the +/- 5 percent population deviation standard established by Stephenson v. Bartlett, 355 N.C. 354, 562 S.E. 2d 377 (2002).
b. Contiguity. Legislative districts shall be comprised of contiguous territory. Contiguity by water is sufficient.
c. County Grouping and Traversals.
d. Compactness. The mapmakers shall make reasonable efforts to draw legislative districts in the Remedial Maps that improve the compactness of the districts when compared to districts in place prior to the 2017 Enacted Legislative Maps.
e. Fewer Split Precincts. The mapmakers shall make reasonable efforts to draw legislative districts in the Remedial Maps that split fewer precincts when compared to districts in place prior to the 2017 Enacted Legislative Maps.
f. Municipal Boundaries. The mapmakers may consider municipal boundaries when drawing legislative districts in the Remedial Maps.
g. Incumbency Protection. The mapmakers may take reasonable efforts to not pair incumbents unduly in the same election district.
h. Election Data. Partisan considerations and election results data shall not be used in the drawing of legislative districts in the Remedial Maps.In redrawing the relevant districts in the Remedial Maps, the invalidated 2017 districts may not be used as a starting point for drawing new districts, and no effort may be made to preserve the cores of invalidated 2017 districts.
Any Remedial Maps must comply with the VRA and other federal requirements concerning the racial composition of districts.”
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Maybe trump widget his sharpie out like he did with the hurricane
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[link=https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/04/michigan-republican-party-loses-appeal-in-attempt-to-stop-redistricting-commission.html]https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/04/michigan-republican-party-loses-appeal-in-attempt-to-stop-redistricting-commission.html[/link]
[h1]Michigan Republican Party loses appeal in attempt to stop redistricting commission.[/h1] GOP had argued that ending partisan gerrymandering was a violation of its freedom of association.The Michigan Republican Party was again denied in an attempt to overturn the result of a November 2018 ballot proposal that changed how the states political districts are drawn.
A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati today unanimously upheld a lower court decision deeming the new law constitutional.
Proposal 2,[link=https://www.mlive.com/news/2018/11/what_the_passage_of_proposal_2.html] passed in 2018 with 61% of voters in favor and 39% against[/link], shifted the responsibility of drawing Michigans state and federal political districts every 10 years to a new commission.
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The[link=https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/07/michigan-republicans-sue-to-stop-redistricting-commission.html] initial lawsuit filed by the Michigan Republican Party [/link]against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, claimed the restrictions on who can serve on the commission were unconstitutional.The lawsuit, which was combined with another filed by Michigan Freedom Fund Executive Director Tony Daunt, was backed by the special interest group National Republican Redistricting Trust, led by former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
In it, Daunt and the state GOP argued that rights to freedom of association were violated because, under the adopted proposal, political parties are blocked from choosing representatives to serve on the commission.
A total of 4,332 applications to serve on Michigans first Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission have been processed by the Secretary of State to date, according to the Campaign Legal Center. The deadline to apply to be on the commission is June 1.
The decision today affirms the fact that, as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts said (in a separate challenge by the state GOP), voters have the power to decide for themselves how they want their government to be structured.’ ”
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[b]Democrats Smell a Chance to Control Redistricting[/b][/h1]
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[link=https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/06/democrats-trump-rout-redistricting-349053]Politico[/link]: Intent on not repeating the mistakes of 2010 under then-President Barack Obama, the party is seizing on a once-in-a-decade opportunity to drive the redistricting process and reverse the built-in advantage Republicans amassed over House district lines after the last census.
From Pennsylvania to Texas to Minnesota, cash-flush Democrats are working to win back legislative chambers needed to take control of drawing congressional maps or at least guarantee a seat at the table. If they succeed, it would correct an Obama-era down-ballot shellacking that handed Republicans House control and resulted in the loss of more than 900 Democratic legislative seats.-
[link=https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/republicans-risk-losing-texas-florida-arizona-state-houses-n1242842]https://www.nbcnews.com/m…-state-houses-n1242842[/link]
[h1]Republicans risk losing Texas, Florida & Arizona state races[/h1] This year, there are 86 legisltative chambers in 44 states on the ballot. And the outcome of those races will have huge implications for redistricting.
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The lesson from previous elections, especially 2016, is that voters can be unpredictable. And some of these potential flips are much more likely than others.
But with less than a month until Election Day, there are signs of real potential down-ballot problems for Republicans. And if the polls turn out to be right, the blue-tinged impacts may extend far beyond Washington and into state houses scattered across the country.
That would be just in time for the redistricting fight that will redefine Congress for the next decade.[/QUOTE]
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[link=https://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/missouri-voters-to-consider-amendment-3-a-reversal-of-states-redistricting-plan/article_741ca796-3afc-5016-90c1-cbed149c7074.html]https://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/missouri-voters-to-consider-amendment-3-a-reversal-of-states-redistricting-plan/article_741ca796-3afc-5016-90c1-cbed149c7074.html[/link]
[b]Missouri GOP trying to overturn a voter-approved nonpartisan redistricting plan passed in 2018[/b]
Known as Amendment 3, the proposal seeks a constitutional amendment to undo the Clean Missouri redistricting plan that was approved with 62% of the vote in 2018.
Missouri was among five states where voters in 2018 approved ballot measures designed to diminish the potential for political influences in redistricting. Its the only state to require a nonpartisan demographer to draw state House and Senate districts to achieve what proponents said would be partisan fairness and competitiveness as determined by a specific mathematical formula.
In response, the Republican-led Legislature earlier this year drafted Amendment 3 for the November ballot. It’s a constitutional amendment that would abolish the nonpartisan demographer position returning the task to a pair of bipartisan commissions.
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[link=https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/11/04/in-historic-change-virginia-voters-approve-bipartisan-commission-to-handle-political-redistricting/]https://www.virginiamercu…litical-redistricting/[/link]
Virginia approves bipartisan redistricting commission [image]https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif[/image]
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My thoughts on this are that all states need to have gerrymandering or all states need to have bipartisan (normal) districting. I favor the latter for sure but I don’t want a situation where only some states are doing it right.
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The Ohio legislature got redder.
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I think the battleground ship has sailed in OH, Dan
White, old and low education getting whiter, old and less educated
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[link=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/22/gerrymandering-us-electoral-districts-congress]From dark art to dark science: the evolution of digital gerrymandering[/link]
The Guardian{In 1980, redistricting expert Kim} Brace was able to draw about 10 possibilities for electoral maps. …Ten years later, in the 1990 redistricting cycle, Brace, the president of Election Data Services, a redistricting consulting firm, was back at the drawing board. But this time, he and his colleagues didnt have to draw on walls. They rigged up two personal computers one couldnt handle all the data they needed with rudimentary mapping software. They drew about 100 potential maps.
By 2000, Brace was able to draw about 1,000 plans. In 2010, the last time he drew maps, he was able to produce 10,000 possible maps. It lets you see and imagine different alternatives, Brace said. It gives me that capability of understanding the parameters and playing field that Im playing in.
Over the last decade, mathematicians and others have also begun to automate the map-drawing. New algorithms allow mapmakers to very quickly generate thousands of sample maps based on whatever criteria they input. They could immediately generate thousands of gerrymandered maps, for example, that give one party a significant advantage while also meeting other neutral redistricting criteria like keeping districts compact and meeting the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. The point isnt necessarily to use a computer to draw a map, experts say, but to explore the possibilities of whats possible.
In 2010, Republicans took advantage of redistricting like they never had before. The party launched a concerted effort, called Project Redmap, to win control of state legislatures and then aggressively drew districts that entrenched Republican control.
We were horrified with what some people had done with our software, Slavin said. We were software guys, math guys. We were making tools and stuff. And we werent invested in, you know, trying to make one side win against another or anything like that.[/QUOTE]
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Quote from Cubsfan10
My thoughts on this are that all states need to have gerrymandering or all states need to have bipartisan (normal) districting. I favor the latter for sure but I don’t want a situation where only some states are doing it right.
Unfortunately, such a remedy is prevented by the US law, which leaves elections to the states. — But the [link=https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/annotated-guide-people-act-2021]For the People Act[/link] would ban partisan redistricting.
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Interesting data coming out of the 2022 mid-terms. Won’t have the final numbers for a while, but as of now it looks like Republicans are on track to get about 51% of the House seats with 52% of the national 2-party vote.
That makes a D+1 intrinsic House advantage. That compares to the pre-2020 redistricting baseline of R+2.5-3 for the House. (Meaning that [i]on average[/i] Democrats had to get 53% of the vote to win 50% of the seast)
If this is a true structural that holds over the next decade it could have big implications during tight elections.
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In Ohio dems lost seats because the GOP ignored the Ohio SCOTUS ruling on maps.
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Quote from dergon
Interesting data coming out of the 2022 mid-terms. Won’t have the final numbers for a while, but as of now it looks like Republicans are on track to get about 51% of the House seats with 52% of the national 2-party vote.
That makes a D+1 intrinsic House advantage. That compares to the pre-2020 redistricting baseline of R+2.5-3 for the House. (Meaning that [i]on average[/i] Democrats had to get 53% of the vote to win 50% of the seast)
If this is a true structural that holds over the next decade it could have big implications during tight elections.
both sides are all-in on gerrymandering, which is terrible for the country. But obviously with one side doing it the other has to as well whenever possible. I hope there is a solution.-
Not equally all in. At the state level, many blue states have moved away from gerrymandering to non-partisan redistricting
CA is the major example. With an agressive gerrymander on or similar to what DeSantis did in FL, California could be a 50D-2R
And NYs progressive courts blocked their effort to partisan gerrymander.
Red state legislatures, Republican voters, and conservative courts have no such qualms, making the rate and degree of the gerrymander greater R than D
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But yeah. The Supreme Court killed any hope for federal rules on the gerrymander for at least a generation
So now it will be state-by-state. And, given the stakes at the federal level you may see blue states and progressive voters turn away from non-partisan efforts
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Both sides argument again & again & again comparing 1 sides jaywalking with the others grand larceny.
One wonders what balance is being used with both sides arguments constantly appearing like zombie arguments; that forces the question, what exactly do these both sides believers believe in if they are unable to process a difference?
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Quote from Frumious
Both sides argument again & again & again comparing 1 sides jaywalking with the others grand larceny.
One wonders what balance is being used with both sides arguments constantly appearing like zombie arguments; that forces the question, what exactly do these both sides believers believe in if they are unable to process a difference?
Strange how you keep saying the same thing even though nobody here is comparing the way you suggest they are.
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Quote from dergon
Red state legislatures, [i]some [/i]Republican voters, and conservative courts have no such qualms, making the rate and degree of the gerrymander greater R than D
Notice my edit of dergon’s post in italics.
It’s all the hope they have left for the ones that don’t believe in the rule of law, fair elections, civil rights, any abortion rights and some form of gun control. These are all things a majority of voters want so they have to take advantage of the process to win anywhere. However, even this can be overcome. except in the extreme states which sadly Ohio has become.
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Quote from dergon
Not equally all in. At the state level, many blue states have moved away from gerrymandering to non-partisan redistricting
CA is the major example. With an agressive gerrymander on or similar to what DeSantis did in FL, California could be a 50D-2R
And NYs progressive courts blocked their effort to partisan gerrymander.
Red state legislatures, Republican voters, and conservative courts have no such qualms, making the rate and degree of the gerrymander greater R than D
yeah, true, not equal. but seems to be heading there.
in any case, just saying I think it’s a serious problem. I guess it is unlikely to be solved.-
Looks more and more like Republicans did indeed win the national popular vote. Problem looks to be two-fold. 1) Democrats under-performed in safe blue seats but overperformed in competitive races, particularly ones where future abortion restrictions were considered a state-level possibility. 2) Republicans paid a price for juicing the turn-out of their base, alienating independents who broke for Democrats (a historic change from most mid-terms).
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[link=https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-independent-voters-broke-for-democrats-in-the-midterms-11668249002?mod=latest_headlines]https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-independent-voters-broke-for-democrats-in-the-midterms-11668249002?mod=latest_headlines[/link]
yeah, when you read how poorly the Republicans did with independents (because of Trump/election denial/abortion), all you can say is they deserved to do poorly.
again, they have got to find a way to get rid of Trump and not be seen by independents as a party of extremists, or they can wander around in the wilderness.
(per WSJ article) overall 49% of voters were R, 43% D. But independents broke D by 30 points in AZ, 28 in GA, and 18 in PA (vs 4 points nationally). That’s what bad candidates can do for you.-
Its not just independents. I know a lot of moderate Reps that broke away to defeat the bad candidates. I might be overly optimistic but I think this might finally be the chance for the Reps to kick Trump to the curb. They cant win unless they do.
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Quote from dergon
Looks more and more like Republicans did indeed win the national popular vote. Problem looks to be two-fold. 1) Democrats under-performed in safe blue seats but overperformed in competitive races, particularly ones where future abortion restrictions were considered a state-level possibility. 2) Republicans paid a price for juicing the turn-out of their base, alienating independents who broke for Democrats (a historic change from most mid-terms).
So is it wrong that the Republicans won the national popular vote but lost the Senate and could lose the House? (answer: no). Will we have Fox News fuming about this, and silence from the left (even though they were enraged by similar in the past)? Probably.
Saying this, b/c it reminds me of how frustrated I got when, in recent elections, there were calls (and they were many, and shrill) to throw out the Electoral College b/c the national popular vote is not the same as the EC result.
You change the rules and you get different turnout in different areas, campaigns are run much differently, etc. There is no way you can say “if we just got rid of the EC the other candidate would have won”, or “if we had different election rules the other party would have won the popular vote.” You don’t know. Change the rules and you change the game, and possibly the outcome.
And what bothers me about this is that it is ignored, and instead most people just choose whatever argument favors the party they like at a given moment. If next year the opposite argument favors their party, they switch arguments. That’s ok for children, but really I would like the world to be run by rational people who are better than that. But it isn’t.
Another way of saying: I’ve seen some excuse all of this with “hypocrisy isn’t that big of a deal”. I could not disagree more. If you allow hypocrisy to go unchallenged you’ve abandoned rational argument, fairness, etc, and all you have left is might makes right.
Or, what I really think: most people aren’t very rational. And that’s not a good thing.
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I am of 2 minds with the EC. I am against it largely because of its history of why it was created & I am not strictly talking about Founder suspicion of the popular vote, but also in the elections of 2000 and 2016. Consider that in the past 30 years of presidential elections, the Republicans have won the popular vote only once. Something wrong with that mathematics & results. A very strong reason to trash the EC. Its biased which is 1 reason it was created.
That said, in its absence I can too easily see less populated states & even within states, rural areas could very well be neglected in campaign elections.
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Quote from Frumious
That said, in its absence I can too easily see less populated states & even within states, rural areas could very well be neglected in campaign elections.
Well yes, that is why it was created.-
R’s just “won” the popular vote by ~5% and “lost” the midterms.
I feel like we will hear less about gerrymandering from the D’s for a bit.-
R’s just “won” the popular vote by ~5% and “lost” the midterms.
Where are you getting this information?
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BHE has been right on this. Gerrymandering is bad for all of us. Leads to polarization and far left or right candidates.
Dems could easily have the upper hand if they wanted it to. I have to give them credit here. They did just enough to balance it out but didn’t make it a landslide the way the Reps would have if they could have.
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[h3][link=https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/politics/texas-state-maps-redistricting-supreme-court]Supreme Court dismisses challenge to Texas state legislative maps[/link][/h3]
At the center of the dispute is Senate District 10, which is centered in Fort Worth in Tarrant County. Challengers argued the map was redrawn to make it more Republican and more Anglo.
A panel of three judges on a district court conducted four days of hearings and held that although the new state Senate map may disproportionately affect minority voters in Tarrant County, and although the legislature may have given pretextual reasons for its redistricting decisions, the challengers could point to no evidence indicating that the legislatures true intent was racial.
Voting rights groups asked the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the district court set too high a standard when it required the challengers to show that race predominated in the redrawing. They say all that they had to show was that race was a factor when drawing the maps.
[/QUOTE]
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I listened to a fascinating This American Life over the weekend regarding the constitutional amendment in Ohio regarding gerrymandering. Actually it was pretty sad. What a crock the Republicans are there. Sorry dergon and DCD. Must be infuriating.
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The district I live in is cracked and packed so thats its all white suburbs and rural but manages to scoop into north Akron. Like a jigsaw puzzle.
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I’m sure. What is so frustrating listening was the “bipartisan” coalition to fix the problem in the constitution and then the egregious misrepresentation of the language to keep everything the same. Pathetic.
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Mrs_was listening to the same pod
Had to turn it off she was so frustrated
(She campaigns for ranked choice voting initiatives and other fair voting issues)
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I imagine if I lived in Ohio I would have not made it all of the way through. What was it like living through the five tries?
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Keep in mind the Ohio GOP ignored the court orders on redistricting in Ohio. We’re egregiously gerrymandered to favor the GOP.
This state is setup to elect some grade A tugnuts. Like most people I think could agree that rape is bad, yet Gym Jordan get’s re-elected. Larry Householder had millions in his scandal with first energy.
Like I’m good with Kasich, Portman types but the center of the GOP has given way to the right and right of right. I wish Kasich was the GOP nominee in 2016. He did win OH over Trump.-
Keep in mind? That was the whole point of my sharing the TAL episode. The court order ignoring was the gist of my five tries question. I would suggest you listen although I dare you to get further than Mrs. dergon. Its pretty depressing. Infuriating is a better word.
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[b]Supreme Court Wont Review Kansas Map[/b][/h1]
The U.S. Supreme Court wont review a congressional redistricting law enacted by the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature that some voters and Democrats saw as political gerrymandering, the [link=https://apnews.com/article/kansas-congressional-redistricting-sharice-davids-9ca9c1455bd5cb8482fae395c58cde42]AP[/link] reports.
The nations highest court said Monday without explaination that it wont hear an appeal of a Kansas Supreme Court ruling from May 2022 that partisan gerrymandering does not violate the state constitution. -
Supreme Court Orders District Redrawn in Louisiana
The Supreme Court said Monday that Louisianas congressional map must be redrawn to add a second majority-Black district, CNN reports.
The justices reversed plans to hear the case themselves and lifted a hold they placed on a lower courts order for a reworked redistricting regime. There were no noted dissents.
This decision comes just a few weeks after justices ruled that Alabama must redraw its congressional map.
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[h1]Utah Supreme Court to Hear Partisan Gerrymandering Argument Today[/h1]
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/us/redistricting-map-utah-salt-lake-city.html]NYT[/link]:
[blockquote] On Tuesday, the Utah Supreme Court will consider whether to wade into the increasingly pitched nationwide battle over partisan gerrymanders. The justices will decide whether the states courts can hear a lawsuit challenging the House map, or whether partisan maps are a political issue beyond their jurisdiction.
The U.S. Supreme Court considered the same question in 2019 and decided that the maps were beyond its purview. But voting rights advocates say Utahs Constitution offers a stronger case than the federal one for reining in political maps.
Theres a very clear provision in the State Constitution that says all power is inherent in the people, and that they have the right to alter and reform their government, said Mark Gaber, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based advocacy group representing the plaintiffs. He said other relevant provisions in the State Constitution, but absent from the federal Constitution, include guarantees of free elections and the right to vote.
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[h1]Utah Supreme Court to Hear Partisan Gerrymandering Argument Today[/h1]
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/us/redistricting-map-utah-salt-lake-city.html]NYT[/link]:
[blockquote] On Tuesday, the Utah Supreme Court will consider whether to wade into the increasingly pitched nationwide battle over partisan gerrymanders. The justices will decide whether the states courts can hear a lawsuit challenging the House map, or whether partisan maps are a political issue beyond their jurisdiction.
The U.S. Supreme Court considered the same question in 2019 and decided that the maps were beyond its purview. But voting rights advocates say Utahs Constitution offers a stronger case than the federal one for reining in political maps.
Theres a very clear provision in the State Constitution that says all power is inherent in the people, and that they have the right to alter and reform their government, said Mark Gaber, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based advocacy group representing the plaintiffs. He said other relevant provisions in the State Constitution, but absent from the federal Constitution, include guarantees of free elections and the right to vote.
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[h1]Court Orders New Congressional Maps in New York[/h1]
New York appellate division court [link=https://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/ad3/Decisions/2023/CV-22-2265.pdf]ruled for the Democrats[/link] in the states closely-watched redistricting lawsuit and ordered the Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the states congressional maps.
However, its expected that Republicans will appeal the decision.petitioners have demonstrated a clear legal right to the relief sought. This determination honors the consitutional enactments as the means of providing a robust, fair and equitable procedure for the determination of voting districts in New York.6 The right to participate in the democratic process is the most essential right in our system of governance. The procedures governing the redistricting process, all too easily abused by those who would seek to minimize the voters’ voice and entrench themselves in the seats of power, must be guarded as jealously as the right to vote itself; in granting this petition, we return the matter to its constitutional design.7 Accordingly, we direct the IRC to commence its duties forthwith.
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[link=https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/17/alabama-republicans-reject-second-majority-black-house-district-00106675]https://www.politico.com/…ouse-district-00106675[/link]
[h2]Alabama Republicans, despite Supreme Court ruling, reject call for second majority Black House district[/h2] Lawmakers must adopt a new map after the high court in June affirmed a three-judge panels ruling that Alabamas existing congressional map likely violated the Voting Rights Act.
Republicans, long resistant to creating a second Democratic-leaning district, proposed a map that would increase the percentage of Black voters in the 2nd Congressional District from about 30% to nearly 42.5%, wagering that would satisfy the court or that the state will prevail in a second round of appeals.
House Speaker Pro Tempore Chris Pringle, who serves as co-chairman of the state redistricting committee, said the numbers are sufficient to provide an opportunity for an African American candidate to get elected. He said the plan satisfies the courts instruction to give Black voters a greater opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.
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The Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment approved the proposal in a 14-6 vote that fell along party lines. The proposal will be introduced as legislation Monday afternoon as lawmakers convene a special session to adopt a new map by a Friday deadline set by the three-judge panel.[/QUOTE]
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Let the court redraw them.
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