Tag: Redistricting

The Story: In two decisions last week on the so-called "shadow docket," the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court summarily decided two appeals pending from...

The Story: The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis (R), has proposed a redistricting plan for the state. As a consequence of the 2020 Census, Florida...

The Story: The 2020 Census figures show that the State of Colorado acquired more than three quarters of a million new residents (774,518) since the...

The Story: In Virginia, a state with a close partisan balance between Democrats and Republicans, the people of the state decided in a referendum last...

Justice Stephen Breyer suggested a rule that a map be deemed an unconstitutional gerrymander if one party can win a majority of the statewide vote but nonetheless end up with less than one third of the available legislative seats.

The Constitution makes clear that legislative redistricting is a matter for the states and Congress, not the courts, to sort out. If an adjective creates a redundancy, does preceding it with two other adjectives give the Supreme Court a reason to venture where it has never gone before? The practice the court will consider is (adjective one) “partisan gerrymandering.” This modifier, however, does not modify; there is no other kind of gerrymandering. Tuesday’s issue is whether the court should attempt something for which it has neither an aptitude nor any constitutional warrant — concocting criteria for deciding when (adjective two) excessive partisan gerrymandering becomes (adjective three) unconstitutional. Until 1962, the court stayed away from the inherently political process of the drawing of district lines by legislatures organized along partisan lines because the Constitution is unambiguous: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” There are enough open-textured terms in the Constitution (“establishment” of religion, “unreasonable” searches, “cruel” punishments, etc.) Furthermore, the political realists who framed the Constitution, and who understood the pervasiveness of partisanship, added the following to the elections clause quoted above: Congress may “at any time by law make or alter such regulations” as the states might write regarding congressional elections. So, the Constitution is explicit: Congress, not the judiciary, is the federal remedy for alleged defects in the drawing of congressional districts. The political branches of the state and federal governments are assigned to deal with the inherently value-laden politics of drawing district lines. And the political-science professoriate stands ready to eagerly tutor the court about “wasted votes” resulting from “efficiency gaps.” Today, people who are unhappy about North Carolina’s gerrymandering argue (as a lower court did) that “the Constitution does not authorize state redistricting bodies to engage in . The Constitution is silent regarding limits on state legislatures’ partisan redistricting practices and is explicit regarding Congress’s exclusive power to modify these practices.

Was the last re-drawing of Michigan’s political district maps so biased in Republicans’ favor, they were illegal? That question literally went on trial Tuesday, with a three-judge panel in Detroit’s federal court hearing arguments for and against Michigan’s 2011 redistricting maps. Their first witnesses were League of Women Voters President Susan Smith, and George Washington University political scientist Christopher Warshaw. Attorneys for the Republican defendants tried to chip away at their case for both the political consequences of the redistricting, and dispute the fact that there’s a mathematical basis for determining gerrymandering. They also argue the federal district court has no jurisdiction to hear this case, because the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to decide on a constitutional standard for gerrymandering. On Monday, the Supreme Court shot down an effort to delay the case until the court hears gerrymandering cases from other states. He said the political map naturally favors Republicans, because Democratic voters tend to be packed into urban areas and “it becomes harder to translate those votes into proportionate seats.” “Plaintiffs are really here because they have a political geography problem, and they’re looking for the courts to solve it,” said Torchinsky, who also said Democrats’ gains in more recent elections suggest there’s no real gerrymandering problem. But Warshaw, the George Washington political scientist, said his research shows that while political geography changed negligibly between 2010 and 2012, Republicans picked up a demonstrable advantage when it came to translating votes into representation during those years. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is listed as one of the defendants—replacing the original primary defendant, former Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. Benson has said she agrees with the lawsuit, and her lawyer Jason Eldridge told the court Benson “does not plan to call witnesses or introduce evidence disputing gerrymandering.” Benson does agree with the Republican defendants on one point, though.

He represents eight localities, but only two are entirely in his 19th Senate District. Of Roanoke County’s five magisterial districts, he represents all of one, and the rest are split with two other senators representing them. When Democrats controlled the state Senate in 2011, Northam, then a senator from Norfolk, voted to approve lines like these. A main difference between McClellan’s bill and Suetterlein’s bill was that McClellan included language that says districts should not be drawn for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring any political party or legislator. Political data can’t be used to draw districts. Her language addresses one of the reasons Northam cited for his veto of Suetterlein’s bill last year. McClellan’s SB 1327 also gives more weight to keeping communities of interest together that may otherwise get split up if districts are drawn by prioritizing county or city lines. She said communities should not be split up, if possible. Suetterlein’s bill does say that “consideration may be given to communities of interest by creating districts that do not carve up homogeneous neighborhoods or separate groups of people living in an area with similar interests or needs in transportation, employment or culture.” General Assembly members draw their own district lines as well as Virginia’s congressional districts. Jessica Killeen, deputy counsel to Northam, told the committee last week that the Northam administration opposes Suetterlein’s bill because it believes “it does not go far enough to address some of the concerns we believe should be in criteria for redistricting.” Before McClellan’s bill died, committee Chairwoman Jill Vogel, R-Fauquier, asked Killeen if Northam would support Suetterlein’s bill.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is refusing to release an $850,000 contract Republican lawmakers drew up with a law firm to help them defend legal challenges to legislative district boundaries. Citing attorney-client privilege, Vos spokeswoman Kit Beyer refused to release the contract to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on the denial Monday. Assembly Republicans had hired the Chicago-based law firm Bartlit Beck to help defend the GOP-drawn boundaries in a long-running federal lawsuit. Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel had been representing the state in the case but lost in the Nov. 6 elections to Democrat Josh Kaul. Now both Kaul and the Bartlit Beck attorneys will defend the maps. Wisconsin Freedom of Information President Bill Lueders said he believed the denial of the newspaper’s request is illegal. Vos’ refusal to release the contract comes as a longstanding legal battle over the state’s redistricting plan looks poised to begin another chapter. A panel of federal judges ruled in 2016 that the state’s redistricting map was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered new districts to be drawn in time for the 2018 election. But the U.S. Supreme Court changed gears in June, putting the order on hold after finding a group of Democratic voters who were plaintiffs in the case lacked standing to sue.

Democrats want to take away redistricting authority from state legislators. Recently a group of protesters demonstrated at Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai’s home demanding that new districts be drawn by a nonpartisan group instead of state legislators (Aug. 13, “Turzai Hits Back at Protesters: Pa. House Speaker Says They Don’t Know Facts”). So how can these protesters claim to want to take politics out of redistricting when these protesters themselves are engaging in aggressive political activity? If politics is so bad, why are they participating in it? Any attempt to put redistricting into the hands of an unelected commission contradicts their stated goal of removing politics from redistricting because redistricting commissioners will be chosen on the basis of their political views. There’s no good reason to remove politics from redistricting. Whenever someone says they want to take politics out of something, usually that something becomes more politicized as a result. The movement to remove redistricting from the Legislature is a thinly disguised trick by the political left to bully us to give up our freedom to allow more progressive Democrats in office against the will of the voting majority. The system we have now works just fine because those making the decisions are accountable to the voters. Plum The writer is vice chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County.