Brennan Center: The Brennan Center has studied best practices and developed a guide and model language for creating commissions that put community interests above partisan considerations, promote transparency, and bolster public accountability. We incorporated feedback from our partners that represent constituencies of … Continue reading
Category Archives: redistricting
I explore the implications in this thread, ending with the question whether the North Carolina Supreme Court will get involved to reverse despite the timing issue: Breaking A North Carolina state court has refused to grant relief to those challenging … Continue reading
Detroit News: Groups hoping to upend Michigan’s new redistricting commission faced a setback as a judge said they weren’t likely to succeed in arguing the commission violated their constitutional rights.U.S. District Court Judge Janet Neff denied the Republican groups’ push … Continue reading
Hearing is set for December 2 (which would have been the filing deadline), per the court’s order (h/t Melissa Boughton). … Continue reading
The issue is teed up for the court: Dueling motions in 3-judge state court Harper v Lewis #ncpol US House redistricting case: defendants ask summary judgement, and for case be dismissed as moot after new plan enacted: https://t.co/uep4IIjE5u / plaintiffs … Continue reading
Andrew Chin, Gregory Herschlag, and Jonathan Mattingly have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, South Carolina Law Review). Here is the abstract: In recent years, the U.S. mathematical community has been directing unprecedented attention to the problem of partisan gerrymandering, … Continue reading
News and Observer: The Republican-led North Carolina Senate approved a new congressional district map Friday to be used in 2020 that is likely to shrink the GOP’s edge in the state’s congressional delegation.But Democrats plan to challenge the map in … Continue reading
News & Observer: The new map that started advancing on Thursday would likely have an 8-5 Republican advantage. U.S. Rep. GK Butterfield, a Wilson Democrat, said Democrats have little chance of winning a sixth seat.“To have a fair map we … Continue reading
Walker: Tag team to counter @EricHolder is in the courts/data with @TheNRRT and in state elections with @RSLC Republicans need to wake up or Democrats will gerrymander themselves into power all across America – like they did in VA. And … Continue reading
NPR: A prominent GOP redistricting strategist had direct communication with an adviser to the Trump administration concerning the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, newly released emails show….The administration’s now-former adviser on census issues, Mark Neuman, however, … Continue reading
WaPo: In North Carolina, lawmakers have been forced back to the drawing board yet again after a state court ruled last month that the current congressional map was drawn illegally along partisan lines.It’s the latest judicial rebuke of gerrymandering in … Continue reading
Release. … Continue reading
Jackson Free Press: Even as Republicans swept statewide offices in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Joseph Thomas, an African American Democrat in a district that stretches across six counties, narrowly flipped a GOP-held Senate seat. Earlier this year, a federal court … Continue reading
Daniel Jacobson: MORE DETAILS: every time Hise leaves, he asks for 7 copies of the latest version of the map to be printed. And one of the times this morning, he said “they” want to see what a particular map … Continue reading
Michael Li: So far Ds have won the Virginia state senate & (for now) appear to have a good chance of winning the state house as well – thanks to a redrawing of the map. That’ll give them a trifecta … Continue reading
WRAL: The nuts and bolts of yet another North Carolina redistricting will start getting laid out Tuesday when legislative leaders huddle on the state’s court-challenged congressional maps.House and Senate leadership announced the committee late Monday, appointing the usual suspects to … Continue reading
David Daley: “I PROPOSE THAT we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats,” said North Carolina Rep. David Lewis, in 2016 in a legislative committee hearing, “because I do not believe it’s possible to … Continue reading
Today a three-judge considering partisan gerrymanders under the North Carolina state constitution issued two orders. In one order, the court approved the North Carolina General Assembly’s maps for state legislative district lines passed after the court had earlier found a … Continue reading
Slate: “For the first time ever,” Justice Elena Kagan declared on June 27, “this court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.”Kagan was reading a summary of her dissent in Rucho v. Common Cause, … Continue reading
Melissa Boughton reports. … Continue reading
Interesting WaPo report. … Continue reading
WRAL: The General Assembly’s mad scramble last month to redraw nearly half of the state’s House and Senate districts under a tight court deadline appears to have produced something new for North Carolina – fair maps.That’s according to a new … Continue reading
Pete Williams: The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a challenge to maps drawn by Republicans for state legislative and congressional district boundaries in Michigan.The decision, which allows the GOP districts to stand, was expected because the court declared in … Continue reading
New report from Common Cause. … Continue reading
The New Guy Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer piece in the ACS Supreme Court Review pulls no punches.: Rucho is not an easy case to take seriously as doctrine. Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion is more redolent of a debater’s brief than a … Continue reading
Big development: JUST IN: The same three-judge panel that presided over Common Cause v. Lewis (partisan gerrymandering case over 2017 #ncga maps) has been appointed to hear the g/m case over the congressional maps #ncpol— Melissa Boughton (@mel_bough) October 2, … Continue reading
David Daley: Luxury cabanas atop Austin’s JW Marriott kept state legislators cool poolside as August-in-Texas temperatures soared above 103 degrees during each day of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 2019 annual meeting. The gathered Republican officials could enjoy a $14 … Continue reading
Alex Tausanovitch for CAP. … Continue reading
David Daley with the latest from the Hofeller files: IN COURT AND IN PUBLIC, many top Republicans have denied gerrymandering gives them any advantage at all. They’ve captured state legislatures and won an edge in Congress, some have suggested, due … Continue reading
Release. … Continue reading
You can find the complaint here. Here is what I wrote when a three-judge state court struck state legislative districts as a partisan gerrymander: First, it is not clear that there is enough time to bring such a challenge and … Continue reading
Michael Harriott for The Root on the Hofeller Files. … Continue reading
More revelations from David Daley. … Continue reading
News and Observer reports. … Continue reading
News and Observer: Raleigh Sen. Dan Blue, the top Democrat, vouched for the maps as well as Hise. Blue, a former N.C. Speaker of the House, has been involved in numerous redistricting efforts in past decades in North Carolina and … Continue reading
Ash Center: Today, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, a research center at Harvard Kennedy School released “The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission: One State’s Model for Gerrymandering Reform,” a new report detailing the lessons learned from Arizona’s innovative … Continue reading
NPR: Despite the assertions of Senate leaders, there remains some skepticism about whether the court will agree to enact the maps the legislature approves.Stanford University professor and election law expert Nathaniel Persily was appointed Friday to help the court review … Continue reading
The three-judge state court which found North Carolina’s legislative districts to be unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders under that state’s constitution has appointed Stanford professor Nate Persily as the referee/special master in the case. This means that Persily at the least will … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. … Continue reading
Worth your time from Alexa Ura. … Continue reading
New report from the Schwarzenegger Institute. Executive summary: … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Vox. It begins: Reformers hoping to rein in partisan gerrymandering have a big idea that’s caught on in several states: handing the redistricting power over to an independent commission, rather than politicians in the … Continue reading
David Lublin, Lisa Handley, Tom Brunell, and Bernie Grofman have written this article for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Here is the abstract: Though African-American and Latino electoral success in state legislative and congressional elections continues to occur … Continue reading
Listen here. … Continue reading
Blockbuster: Hofeller did not follow his own advice. Before his death, in August, 2018, he saved at least seventy thousand files and several years of e-mails. A review of those records and e-mails—which were recently obtained first by The New Yorker—raises new … Continue reading
Democrats are now pondering a state court challenge to North Carolina’s partisan gerrymandering of the state’s 13 congressional districts, following a state court ruling that the state legislative districts are a partisan gerrymander. The U.S. Supreme Court in the Rucho … Continue reading
NYT: At the heart of a decisive court ruling on Tuesday striking down North Carolina’s state legislative maps was evidence culled from the computer backups of the man who drew them: Thomas B. Hofeller, the Republican strategist and master of gerrymandering, who died … Continue reading
Politico: Democrats were caught napping in the 2010 election ahead of the last round of redistricting — and it cost them control of Congress for nearly a decade.Now Republicans are warning the same thing could happen to them.Senior Republicans concede … Continue reading
Josh Douglas CNN oped. … Continue reading
Following up on this post about today’s state court ruling, North Carolina Republicans have thrown in the towel: A looong legal battle over these state legislative districts in North Carolina is over. No more appeals. Democrats and opponents of partisan … Continue reading