Category Archives: citizen commissions

Stephen Wolf posts an interesting diary entry at Daily Kos.

Bloomberg reports.

Stateline reports.

Austin-American Statesman: “The city since late January has been urging residents to apply for the map-drawing commission. So far, it has received only 98 applications, all but a handful from white men. Only five applicants are Hispanic, two are black and one is Asian. And the application deadline ends in just two weeks.”

AP reports.

News from Arizona.

News from Austin: “The city of Austin is looking for volunteers to help carry out a dramatic shift in city government. Applications are being accepted to serve on a 14-member committee of residents that will draw maps for 10 City Council districts. Voters agreed last fall to change the council from seven citywide members to 10 district representatives and a citywide mayor. The ballot measure called for a group of residents, not the City Council, to draw the districts, so that council members can’t gerrymander the lines to try to keep their seats.”

News from Arizona.

Elliott Weiss has written this oped for the Arizona Daily Star.

News from Arizona.

Michael Halberstam has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Election Law Journal). Here is the abstract:

Redistricting reform during this cycle has pushed for greater transparency in redistricting, more public participation, the removal of redistricting from the hands of legislatures, and the design of more legitimate redistricting institutions and decision procedures. Reform efforts, however, are generally focused on statewide and congressional redistricting. Meanwhile, little, if anything, is being done to reform or study thousands of local redistrictings across the country, which typically take place under the radar. Local redistricting processes, moreover, vary between jurisdictions and levels of government, take place in institutional contexts that differ from statewide redistricting, are subject to different political dynamics, and are more vulnerable to serious process failures than statewide redistricting. This article advances a policy proposal to reform local redistricting that weds aspects from several contemporary governance approaches – including so-called ‘third-generation transparency” methods. The article suggests that sates establish centralized statewide redistricting clearinghouses for local redistricting (RDCs) that would standardize and systematize the disclosure of redistricting data and process information across the whole range of jurisdictions within a state. It sets forth the proposed design of such RDCs in some detail upon a careful dissection of the concrete information requirements of the different governmental and nongovernmental actors at each stage of the redistricting process; and of the institutional and political dynamics of local processes. The proposal envisions adapting new technologies to address process failures, but leaving existing local institutional arrangements in place.

Apart from its specific intervention in the national debate about redistricting reform, this article can also be read as a contribution to the broader literature about new governance approaches, and more specifically, as a case study on how certain mechanisms of “targeted transparency” or “choice architecture” can be applied to regulating the democratic political process.

Nick Stephanopoulos has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Harvard Law Review Forum).  Here is the abstract:

In an earlier article, I relied on 2005-2009 data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to analyze the congressional districts that were used in the elections of the 2000s. In this brief addendum, I employ more recent ACS data, covering the 2006-2010 period, to analyze the congressional districts that recently have been drawn for the next decade’s elections. My findings should be a valuable resource for courts, litigants, scholars, and anyone else interested in the geographic makeup of America’s new congressional districts. The overall story is one of substantial continuity, but this headline masks an array of interesting subplots: for instance, the improvement of California’s district plan, the worsening of Maryland, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania’s, and the increase in the number of districts with highly heterogeneous African American populations.

When Californians considered Proposition 11, establishing the redistricting commission, I was skeptical that the Rube Goldberg-esque machine could actually pass a plan, which could be implemented in time for the 2012 elections, which would not be subject to a major court challenge or referendum.

Well the measure passed, and it survived some court fights.  Now comes news that Republicans who qualified a referendum to reconsider the state Senate lines are urging a no vote, admitting (quite candidly) that the main purpose of the referendum was to try to block the lines from being used in the 2012 elections.

Now I look forward to the debate over whether the lines created by the Commission were better or worse than the lines drawn by the California legislature (which has been accused of engaging in both partisan gerrymandering and bipartisan (sweetheart) gerrymandering in the past.  But I do think it is significant that the commission was able to produce lines which actually are being used, without change, in this year’s elections.

RedistrictingOnline.org reports.

The Arizona Capitol Times reports (subscription required). See also this article in the Arizona Republic. The federal complaint raising one person, one vote challenges is here. the state complaint is here.

Here.

AP reports: “A senior administration official said Wednesday night that Cuomo will sign the measure, withdrawing his promised veto of any “hyper-partisan lines.” Cuomo ultimately traded his veto for a long-term overhaul through a constitutional amendment promised by legislative leaders. The senior administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because although the deal is sealed, the officials hadn’t yet announced it.”

The NY Daily News says minority lawmakers are on board with the plan.

NYT: “This was the year New York State lawmakers were going to stop protecting incumbents by gerrymandering political maps to improve their re-election chances….But in Albany, as they say, it is déjà vu all over again.”

News from Ohio.

Michael McDonald blogs.

Philly.com reports.

Here.  My earlier coverage is here.

You can find the opinion here.  Justin told us it would be so.  What is perhaps most worthy of interest in this case is the concurring opinion of Justice Goodwin Liu, counseling restraint in the area of redistricting. (This is especially noteworthy because Liu was filibustered for a 9th Circuit seat on grounds that he would be a judicial activist.)  Here is how his concurring opinion begins:

More than a half century ago, Justice Felix Frankfurter observed that “[t]he one stark fact that emerges from a study of the history of [legislative] apportionment is its embroilment in politics, in the sense of party contests and party interests.” (Colegrove v. Green (1946) 328 U.S. 549, 554 (plur. opn. of Frankfurter, J.).) Faced with entreaties by litigants seeking judicial intervention in the redistricting process, Justice Frankfurter famously warned that “[c]ourts ought not to enter this political thicket.” (Id. at p. 556.) Although the law has not adopted the uncompromising version of this principle urged by Justice Frankfurter (see, e.g., Reynolds v. Sims (1964) 377 U.S. 533; Baker v. Carr (1962) 369 U.S. 186), his admonition continues to resonate each decade when courts are asked to decide what are fundamentally political disputes. Judicial restraint is especially important in the context of legislative redistricting because, as the high court recently observed, “experience has shown the difficulty of defining neutral legal principles in this area.” (Perry v. Perez (2012) 565 U.S. __ [2012 WL 162610, 2012 U.S. Lexis 908].)

And here is how it ends:

In a future case, the court may be divided with regard to which map should serve as an interim map and, closely related, whether and when to issue a decision on that important issue. Those questions will inevitably play out against a backdrop of partisan interests. I hope the court is correct that prudence will be sufficient to guide us out of the thicket. But I believe the language of our Constitution already provides the guidance we need.

Stateline reports.

It is now uncertain enough that it puts the CA Supreme Court in a pickle.

John Myers reports on CA Supreme Court hearing today over whether citizen-commission state Senate redistricting needs to be put on hold for a referendum which may qualify for the ballot.

Bottom line: Expect a decision soon, but no one knows what that decision will be.

CalBuzz reports.

UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies has issued this press release about this new report.

“[I]f only California had a tax on phony outrage — we could balance the budget.”

Joe Mathews, on the dispute over ProPublica’s report on California’s citizen redistricting commission.

News from California: “The Supreme Court has scheduled a special January 10 oral argument for the Redistricting writ petition.  It’s been only 19 days since the court agreed to decide the petition and set an “extremely expedited briefing schedule” that will allow “oral argument in this matter as early as the first two weeks in January 2012, and the filing of an opinion in this matter as early as the end of January 2012.””

That’s today’s question at Politico’s Arena.

John Myers reports.  Said John Burton of the report: “It’s complete bull…t,  an absolute f…ing fabrication.”

More here.

Must-read ProPublica:

In the weeks that followed, party leaders came up with a plan. Working with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — a national arm of the party that provides money and support to Democratic candidates — members were told to begin “strategizing about potential future district lines,” according to another email.

The citizens’ commission had pledged to create districts based on testimony from the communities themselves, not from parties or statewide political players. To get around that, Democrats surreptitiously enlisted local voters, elected officials, labor unions and community groups to testify in support of configurations that coincided with the party’s interests.

When they appeared before the commission, those groups identified themselves as ordinary Californians and did not disclose their ties to the party. One woman who purported to represent the Asian community of the San Gabriel Valley was actually a lobbyist who grew up in rural Idaho, and lives in Sacramento.

In one instance, party operatives invented a local group to advocate for the Democrats’ map.

See also this press release from the California Republican Party.

Dave Wasserman’s take: “Overall, fascinating piece by @olgapierce & @propublica. But CA commission still deserves credit for more compact & competitive lines…My 2 main qualms w/ @ProPublica story: 1) Dems got 6-7 more seats from new lines? 2) Rose Institute cited as impartial “expert.” Really?…Aside from the righteous indignation over Dems who played the remap smart, @ProPublica does have awesome maps: http://projects.propublica.org/redistricting-maps/mcnerney…This shocking ProPublica “expose” on #CAredistrict explains how Berman/Sherman/Capps/etc. got great districts. Wait… “

Roll Call reports.

News from Ohio.

Horvitz and Levy’s “At the Lectern” blog reports.

Don’t miss this important Dallas Morning News editorial, which actually breaks some news.

Roll Call reports.