The 2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission is seeking to retain Voting Rights Act Counsel and also Litigation Counsel. The two Requests for Information are at https://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/job_opportunities/. Interested individuals or firms with relevant experience are encouraged to apply to one or both. … Continue reading
Category Archives: redistricting
NPR reports. … Continue reading
The following is a symposium contribution from Nick Stephanapoulos (Harvard): The following are a number of tentative thoughts about what the 2020 election means for redistricting—for both the plans currently in effect and the ones soon to be enacted. 1. At the … Continue reading
Jeff Zalesin at Yale Law Journal Forum. Abstract: The Constitution requires legislative redistricting plans to have approximately equal populations in each district. But no one knows exactly how many people live in any district, because census data are never fully … Continue reading
Science News reports. … Continue reading
Links to the Legal & Policy Analyst posting and the Senior Legal Strategist posting. … Continue reading
Tom Edsall NYT column. … Continue reading
City & State reports. … Continue reading
WRAL: A Republican lawmaker who played a prominent role in North Carolina’s redistricting process announced Friday that he will not seek reelection this fall and will instead retire from his post at the end of the year.Citing a “great personal … Continue reading
Lee Hamilton, William Cohen and Alton Frye WaPo oped. … Continue reading
At the Lectern: Acting with unusual speed and using an exceptional procedure in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court today issued an opinion extending by four months constitutional and statutory deadlines for the state Citizens Redistricting Commission to submit Congressional, … Continue reading
At the Lectern reports. … Continue reading
Release: A federal district court issued a preliminary order granting People Not Politicians, a broad and diverse coalition to create an independent citizens commission for Oregon, relief to qualify its redistricting reform initiative for the November 2020 election. The judge’s … Continue reading
New report from CAP. … Continue reading
At the Lectern reports. … Continue reading
The Guardian: A little-known Republican group is ramping up millions of dollars in funding from major US corporations such as CitiGroup and Chevron to protect the conservative stronghold on the country.The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which held the key … Continue reading
At the Lectern: In yet another case on the Supreme Court’s pandemic docket, California’s Legislature wants the court to order a four-month delay of the deadline for the state Redistricting Commission to submit Congressional, state legislative, and Board of Equalization district … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: The legal fight over the next round of redistricting in Wisconsin kicked off Wednesday, a full year before lawmakers begin drawing election maps.The filing of a request to change state court rules by a former Republican legislative leader reflects … Continue reading
NYT oped by David Daley. … Continue reading
St. Louis Public Radio: The way Missouri draws its state House and Senate districts will be up for referendum later this year after the House Wednesday backed a ballot initiative aimed at repealing the so-called Clean Missouri redistricting system.It’s a … Continue reading
The Nevada Independent reports. … Continue reading
Wow this looks good: Editorial Keith GaddieKirby GoidelKim Gaddie Pages: 7First Published: 27 January 2020 Full textPDFRequest permissions Mini‐symposium on Partisan Gerrymandering Free AccessIntroduction to the Mini Symposium on Partisan Gerrymandering Richard L. Engstrom Pages: 8-9First Published: 27 January 2020 Full textPDFRequest permissions Free … Continue reading
Guy Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer in The Monkey Cage: On April 7, thousands of Wisconsin citizens braved a global pandemic to show up at the polls to vote. Some commentators blamed Republicans in the legislature for forcing voters to choose between their … Continue reading
Bloomberg Law: North Carolina legislators can’t remove to federal court a state suit under the state constitution challenging a redistricting plan that they say is gerrymandered in favor of Republicans, the Fourth Circuit said Thursday. … Continue reading
Not at all surprised by this result (which I’ve long been predicting, all the while puzzling over why Republicans did not raise a different argument against the commission as applied to congressional redistricting). But a fascinating majority opinion by Judge … Continue reading
Yunsieg Kim and Jowei Chen have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: What are “traditional” districting criteria? The meaning of that term is critical to curbing abusive districting practices, because states must draw electoral districts according to … Continue reading
The Appeal reports. … Continue reading
I have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Georgetown Law Journal Online). Here is the abstract: The United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority has taken the Court’s election jurisprudence on a pro-partisanship turn which gives political actors freer range to … Continue reading
Detroit News reports. … Continue reading
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. … Continue reading
Richard Engstrom has written this article for Social Science Quarterly. Here is the abstract: Abstract Objective To highlight the extent of the partisan gerrymandering problem in the United States. Methods Bring both original and secondary sources to bear on the … Continue reading
Michael Morley has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Since the U.S. Supreme Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable under the U.S. Constitution, reformers have shifted their focus to pursuing … Continue reading
KC Star: Who should be counted when Missouri’s 197 legislative districts are redrawn: everyone who lives in the state or only citizens old enough to vote?It’s not a question that’s gotten much attention in the more than a year lawmakers … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian for The Appeal. … Continue reading
Cleveland.com reports. … Continue reading
AP: Republican senators rolled out a plan Tuesday to ask Missouri voters to undo key parts of a nationally unique redistricting model that directs a demographer to draw new legislative districts with “partisan fairness” and “competitiveness” as top criteria.The Republican … Continue reading
AP report, with a rundown of the major states in play. … Continue reading
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on documents from the trove released by Thomas Hofeller’s daughter: “GOP gerrymandering got greedy the last time and bad political climate caused it to unravel,” one of the state-by-state analysis documents in the files said of … Continue reading
The initiative to institute a commission in Nevada was amended and refiled to address a trial judge’s concerns about the ballot description. … Continue reading
At the same time as the Thursday hearing on voting system security that I’d mentioned, House Oversight will be holding a hearing on “Reaching Hard-to-Count Communities in the 2020 Census.” The witness list is still TBD, as far as I … Continue reading
The AP reports on Florida’s … exceedingly recent efforts to raise census awareness. In this context, I’m not sure whether “it’s never too late” is quite accurate. … Continue reading
A bill has passed the state Senate, and is working its way through the state Assembly. If it gets signed into law, that would make New Jersey the seventh state to change where incarcerated individuals are counted for representational purposes. … Continue reading
Joe Spaulding, lead field strategist for the Voters Not Politicians Michigan independent redistricting campaign that got 440,000 signatures in 4 months without paying any signature gatherers, reveals some follicular (and data-supported) tactics for fighting diminishing returns out in canvass-land. Thread. … Continue reading
As Hansi notes, Stephanie Hofeller just dropped the first full tranch of documents on The Hofeller Files. Enjoy. … Continue reading
The Arizona Daily Star goes quite deep on the past, present, and future of Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission. … Continue reading
Reid Wilson, in The Hill, discusses the population shift to cities. For those following census issues closely, one of the impacts of the implementation of differential privacy may blunt that apparent move a bit on the margins. As a really … Continue reading
Bill Leonard weighs in on new opportunities for partisan gerrymandering after the Census. … Continue reading
Larry Wilson contrasts California’s approach to Census outreach with the approach in Texas. … Continue reading
This seems like a good roundup of many of the electoral proposals on the agenda in Virginia for the coming legislative session. … Continue reading
Alabama is right on the brink of losing a congressional seat – under most projections, it’s the state that would get the 436th seat if that were a thing. (And that’s if the Census count is actually accurate.) And so … Continue reading