David Daley in NYT points to troubling developments with independent redistricting commissions. It’s early to reach any definitive judgments about these processes, but there are certainly disturbing signs.

From Arizona in 2000 to California, Michigan, Colorado, Missouri, Utah and Virginia since then, voters took it upon themselves via ballot initiatives to put independent commissions in place for the 2021 redistricting cycle. The clear message: to keep politicians and partisan operatives as far away as possible from drawing districts and tilting state legislative and congressional maps in their party’s favor for the next decade.

Yet as a new cycle begins, the ballot-initiative efforts and independent commissions on redistricting appear to have been undermined by partisans. Operatives have managed to exploit loopholes and, in some states, shredded the very notion of fair maps before a single line has been drawn….

Voters wanted the partisan manipulation to end. What they’ve got instead is partisans in too many states twisting redistricting commissions into something resembling the old back rooms, determined to continue contorting legislative maps — and democracy itself — into something all but unrecognizable.