Pennsylvania: In case that could affect 2018 elections, high court rules gerrymandering suit can proceed | Philadelphia Inquirer

In a case that could force the redrawing of congressional maps before the 2018 elections, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Thursday ordered the Commonwealth Court to decide a gerrymandering lawsuit by the end of the year. “We will have our day in court, and we will get a decision and a resolution of this matter in time for the 2018 election,” said Mimi McKenzie, the legal director of Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center, which represents the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania in the case. If the districts are, in fact, redrawn before next year’s midterm elections, the result could have national implications. New districts could give Democrats a boost in competitive, Republican-held districts just outside Philadelphia as they push to take control of the U.S. House. “It’s something that has broad national implications,” said Michael Li, senior redistrict counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

National: In 2017 Elections, Democrats Win Phase One of the Redistricting Wars | The Atlantic

After Virginia, the Democratic Party is breathing a sigh of relief. The rather easy victory for Governor-elect Ralph Northam stems the tide of recent hemorrhaging of key positions across the United States to Republicans, and continues Democrats’ control over a blue-ish state. Northam’s victory, and that of Justin Fairfax, the second black official elected in a statewide race in Virginia, also offers a sign that virulent and race-baiting white-identity politics—politics that characterize the Trump era and the late portion of Republican Ed Gillespie’s campaign—are beatable, even in the cradle of the old Confederacy. Those signs are reason enough for Democrats to celebrate. But the true national significance of Northam’s victory, as well as of major gains by the party in the General Assembly, might not be in the message they send, but the fact that those gains constitute the first big victory for Democrats in the political mapmaking game in at least a decade.

National: Researchers devise an algorithm to combat gerrymandering | Phys.org

As the Supreme Court considers Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to the practice of partisan gerrymandering that may rewrite the rules used to draw congressional districts, a team of computer scientists has come up with a new algorithmic approach to redistricting that’s less political and more mathematical. In a paper posted on arXiv.org, the researchers describe a computerized method for dividing state populations evenly into compact polygonal districts that average six or fewer sides. The neatly arrayed districts are a stark contrast to gerrymandered districts, which are stretched and contorted to provide an overall congressional advantage for one political party or another. “What we’re trying to do is come up with a system that makes it hard to engineer districts for political gain,” said Philip Klein, a computer scientist at Brown University and a coauthor of the paper. “It doesn’t give the user much freedom in deciding how the lines are drawn, which we view as a good thing because that freedom can be abused.”

Editorials: How Democrats may use election wins to re-draw voter districts | Joshua A. Douglas/Reuters

Most political observers say that Tuesday’s elections were a referendum on Donald Trump or a signal of what will happen in 2020. “The results across the country represent nothing less than a stinging repudiation of Trump on the first anniversary of his election,” wrote The Washington Post, in a typical statement of the conventional wisdom. True, the Democrats did well, picking up state legislative seats from Georgia to New Hampshire, including a massive swing of at least 15 seats in Virginia, as well as the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey. But politics can change quickly: Democrats lost the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia in 2009 and took heavy losses in the 2010 congressional midterms, yet Barack Obama won reelection in 2012. Yesterday’s wins may portend Democratic gains in Congress in 2018. But maybe they won’t. The true implication of the 2017 elections is what they mean for redistricting and electoral reforms in the years to come.

Maryland: AG’s office argues against Supreme Court review of 6th District gerrymandering claim | Frederick News-Post

Maryland’s attorney general is asking the Supreme Court to reject the appeal of 6th District Republicans challenging the state’s congressional district map. In a filing last week, Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) asked the Supreme Court to affirm a U.S. District Court decision not to impose a preliminary injunction that would have required a new statewide map before the 2018 election. A three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore ruled in August that the need for the “extraordinary remedy” of a preliminary injunction had not yet been proved by the plaintiffs. The judges also issued a “stay” in the case, postponing further filings until the Supreme Court’s decision on a different gerrymandering case from Wisconsin.

North Carolina: Senate gears up on judicial redistricting | WRAL

Experts raised questions Wednesday about the constitutionality not only of proposed new judicial districts in North Carolina, but the state’s current ones as well. Years of inattention, preceded by decades of political tinkering, left the districts North Carolina uses to elect judges with unbalanced populations in faster-growing urban areas. That opens them to constitutional attack, a pair of attorneys with a long history in state government told state senators gathered to discuss controversial judicial reforms. The state addressed this issue years ago in Wake County, but similar issues linger in Mecklenburg County and, potentially, in other areas, according to Michael Crowell, the former executive director of North Carolina’s Commission for the Future of Justice and the Courts, and Gerry Cohen, an attorney who worked with the legislature for more than 30 years.

National: The Burdens of Gerrymandering Are Borne by Communities of Color | NBC

Gerrymandering is a disgraceful national tradition that should have no place in our electoral system, irrespective of the political party in control. It doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to recognize that this isn’t how democracy is supposed to work but, with a case from my home state of Wisconsin pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, that’s exactly who is going to decide whether our representative democracy will work for everyone, regardless of political affiliation or racial distinctions. Both political parties have engaged in it over the years during the redistricting process but, most recently, gerrymandering has become an effective tool in the GOP’s nationwide campaign to suppress the votes of their opposition. Republicans, for instance, took control of approximately 17 seats in Congress in 2016 solely through gerrymandering according to analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School’s nonpartisan law and policy institute.

Michigan: GOP to fight anti-gerrymandering ballot proposal | The Detroit News

Republicans who have dominated recent state and federal elections are mobilizing in opposition as a grassroots group nears its signature goal for a 2018 ballot proposal to create an independent commission that would redraw political maps. The Michigan Republican Party and local affiliates are warning supporters about the petition, alleging it is a veiled attempt by Democrats to change the rules of a game they are losing. Longtime GOP attorneys also are plotting a legal attempt to kill the measure before it makes the ballot. “As I’ve often told people, it’s a lot cheaper to keep a proposal off the ballot than it is to try to defeat it in a multimillion-dollar campaign,” said attorney Bob LaBrant, who helped form an opposition committee that could raise money for a potential court challenge.

Pennsylvania: U.S. Supreme Court: Lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s Congressional redistricting can proceed | Associated Press

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to put on ice a federal lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s congressional districts approved after the 2010 census. Justice Samuel Alito on Friday rejected the requested stay of the lawsuit by five Pennsylvania voters against the governor and elections officials, a court official said Saturday. Republican leaders in Pennsylvania’s General Assembly had said in the request that a trial in the case could occur in about a month, as the justices are considering a Wisconsin gerrymandering case with what they call “substantively identical claims.”

North Carolina: Republicans object to special master in North Carolina remap | Associated Press

North Carolina Republican legislative leaders on Monday opposed a plan by federal judges to use an outside expert to help them examine and possibly redraw General Assembly district lines, arguing that it’s premature to hire one and questioning the expert’s impartiality. An attorney for GOP mapmakers objected to the judicial panel’s intentions — announced last week — to appoint a Stanford University law school professor as what’s called a “special master.” The same three judges last year struck down nearly 30 districts originally drawn in 2011 by the GOP-controlled legislature, determining they unlawfully relied too heavily on race. The General Assembly approved new lines in August, but the judges wrote last week they remained concerned that seven House and two Senate districts “either fail to remedy the identified constitutional violation or are otherwise legally unacceptable.”

Louisiana: State looks to slay its gerrymanders with redistricting summit | Associated Press

Seizing on a national spotlight about the drawing of political maps, Louisiana residents trying to rework the state’s system for divvying up electoral districts on Wednesday (Nov. 1) announced a January summit they hope will bring about changes. “We have a problem with the current structure,” said Stephen Kearny, chairman of the event and co-founder of a grassroots, bipartisan group called Fair Districts Louisiana. “No matter how virtuous our politicians are, the conflict of interest in being able to choose your own voters in itself provokes bad behavior.” Fair Districts Louisiana is working with LSU’s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs on the daylong summit on Jan. 19. The event aims to start talks about revamping Louisiana’s current map-drawing method ahead of the next redistricting cycle tied to the 2020 Census.

Pennsylvania: GOP leaders seek stay of redistricting lawsuit | Associated Press

Republican leaders in Pennsylvania’s General Assembly on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put on ice a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s congressional districts approved after the 2010 census. House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati asked Justice Samuel Alito in a filing for a stay of the lawsuit by five Pennsylvania voters against the governor and elections officials. The request said a trial in the case could occur in about a month, as the justices are considering a Wisconsin gerrymandering case with what they call “substantively identical claims.” A lawyer for the plaintiffs said Wednesday they oppose the request to Alito and said they were prepared to respond.

Wisconsin: Report: Robin Vos confronted John Kasich over Wisconsin redistricting position | Wisconsin State Journal

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos confronted 2016 presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in September over his stance on partisan redistricting in Wisconsin, according to a report published Sunday in New York magazine. During a meeting of national statehouse leaders in Columbus, Ohio, Kasich “got into a tussle” with Vos after the Republican from Rochester brought up the U.S. Supreme Court case involving redistricting in Wisconsin, the report said. According to the report, Vos “amicably” approached Kasich, who is also a Republican, during the meeting and then swore at him for supporting the challenge to Wisconsin’s legislative districts, which opponents say unfairly benefit GOP candidates.

Ohio: Emails, documents are stark reminder of Ohio’s secret gerrymandering process | Cleveland Plain Dealer

For weeks in 2011, state-paid contractors, on leave from their public jobs for Republican lawmakers, worked secretly in a hotel room described as the “bunker” to create political maps aimed at creating safe Republican districts for most of Ohio’s congressional delegation.
The maps, drawn in part with guidance from national Republican Party leaders and the staff of U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner, often disregarded community concerns and instead focused on political gains by creating districts that in some cases weave more than 100 miles across the state. It worked. In three election cycles since, no seat has changed party hands – a 12-4 GOP majority despite a much closer overall vote.

National: The political lines that divide us | Public Radio International

American politicians are often compared to children. They finger-point, they’re stubborn and, at times, they can be downright manipulative. According to Justin Levitt, a law professor and associate dean for research at Loyola Law School, this immature behavior comes out in full force when it comes to drawing boundaries for voting districts. Levitt has written extensively about crafting electoral lines on his website All About Redistricting. He says that even though unfair redistricting can make the difference between voices being heard and voices being drowned out, politicians will often create these boundaries to best suit their own needs. But sometimes, when drawing questionable lines, lawmakers can get their hands caught in the cookie jar.

Editorials: North Carolina Republicans are worried about the man who might redraw our voting map. They should be. | News & Observer

N.C. Republicans don’t like the idea of using an outside expert to draw new legislative districts for our state. Federal judges, who say the current map relies too heavily on race, intend to assign that job to Stanford University law school professor Nathan Persily. An attorney for the GOP objected Monday in a court filing, according to the Associated Press. Republicans don’t necessarily have a problem with Persily’s credentials, which are many, or his map-drawing chops, which are considerable. They worry about what GOP lawyer Phil Strach called “possible bias.” They’re right about that, but maybe not for the reason they think. We looked at more than a dozen op-eds, interviews and projects that Persily has participated in during the last decade. He’s commented on court decisions involving North Carolina cases – as Strach notes in his filing – but Persily’s analysis of those cases wasn’t particularly controversial or partisan. Still, Republicans should be worried about the maps that Persily might draw – not because he’s biased against the GOP, but because he’s biased against voters being disenfrachised.

National: How Redistricting Became a Technological Arms Race | The Atlantic

These ain’t your grandfather’s gerrymanders. Gone is the era of elaborate cartographical sketches and oil paintings of salamanders, and of salted old-timer politicians drawing up their “contributions to modern art” armed with markers and heads full of electoral smarts. Today, political mapmaking is a multimillion dollar enterprise, with dozens of high-profile paid consultants, armies of…

North Carolina: Special master named to draw legislative districts | News & Observer

Federal judges announced their plans on Thursday to ask a Stanford University law professor to look at nine North Carolina legislative districts as they weigh the constitutionality of election maps adopted in August. The news came in an order filed in federal court by the three-judge panel asked to decide whether the new maps correct 28 districts drawn in 2011 and later found to be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The judges raised questions about seven state House districts and two state Senate districts that “either fail to remedy the identified constitutional violation or are otherwise legally unacceptable.” One Senate district was in Guilford County; the other was in Hoke and Cumberland counties. The House districts were in Wake County, Mecklenburg County and Guilford County. … Judge Catherine Eagles informed the attorneys in the order that Nathaniel Persily, who has helped draw districts for New York, Maryland, Georgia and Connecticut, would review North Carolina’s new legislative maps and possibly help the judges draw new lines for 2018.

Virginia: State Supreme Court to hear appeal in redistricting case | Associated Press

Virginia’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by a redistricting advocacy group challenging a judge’s decision upholding 11 state House and Senate districts. The court on Tuesday granted a petition filed by the advocacy group OneVirginia2021, which claims that during the 2011 redistricting process, lawmakers violated the requirement that election districts must be compact. Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant ruled in March that the districts are constitutional.

National: The Supreme Court’s quiet gerrymandering revolution and the road to minority rule | London School of Economics

On October 3rd the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that will, for better or worse, literally reshape American democracy.  Wisconsin plaintiffs in Whitford v Gill asked for constitutional protection against the dilution of their votes from extreme partisan gerrymandering in the state, the practice of drawing legislative and Congressional district boundaries to maximize the seat advantage for the incumbent party. Several justices voiced concern over the courts jumping into this political thicket.  But there was no acknowledgement that this Court has been an enabler in allowing political parties to draw electoral districts with the explicit goal of maximizing electoral advantage, over the right of citizens to cast an equally weighted vote.

National: Obama’s army enlists in redistricting fight | Poiitico

Organizing for Action, the progressive group born out of Barack Obama’s old campaign apparatus, is joining the redistricting effort that Obama has made a central cause of his post-presidency. On Monday, OFA officially launched a partnership with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder. OFA officially runs independently from Obama, though the former president made the announcement himself. “OFA volunteers and supporters will provide the grassroots organizing capacity and mobilization that we’ll need to win state-level elections and move other initiatives forward ahead of the 2021 redistricting process, making sure that states are in the best position to draw fair maps,” Obama wrote in an email sent to the OFA’s list, which he called “Our Next Fight.”

North Carolina: Arguments wrap in partisan gerrymander case | WRAL

Arguments wrapped Thursday in a North Carolina lawsuit that aims to change American politics. The case targets partisan gerrymandering in general and North Carolina’s current congressional map in particular. Republican legislators, attorneys for good-government groups argue, drew intensely partisan lines, using detailed data from past elections to produce maps nearly guaranteed to elect 10 Republicans and three Democrats to Congress. Such partisan efforts have long been accepted, but the federal courts may eventually draw a line in the sand. North Carolina’s case is before a three-judge panel and could take months, or even years, to run its course. A similar case out of Wisconsin has already been argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court’s decision is pending.

Pennsylvania: Gerrymandering: Advocates ask State Supreme Court to use rare power | Philadelphia Inquirer

Advocates are trying to fast-forward court action on changing Pennsylvania’s congressional map — considered among the most distorted in the nation — before the important 2018 elections. A state judge overseeing a suit by the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania wants to hold off any action pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a similar case out of Wisconsin, but the league is asking the state high court to fast-track the case. In a hearing earlier this month, Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pelligrini made clear he did not see the case being decided before the 2018 elections, saying, “I can tell you it isn’t going to happen.” On Monday he ordered a stay in the league’s suit. “The idea that we would have yet another election that takes place under a map that violates people’s constitutional rights to vote, that’s not acceptable,” Mimi McKenzie, legal director at the Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center, which is representing the league, said Thursday.

Michigan: New committee opposing ballot initiative on gerrymandering hints at partisan fight ahead | Michigan Radio

If you’ve been to a fall festival or any kind of carnival in the state lately, chances are there was a booth there for Voters Not Politicians. That group is gathering signatures to get a proposal on the ballot. It wants an independent commission to draw the congressional and legislative districts to avoid gerrymandering districts in favor of one party or the other. Republicans, the party in power, have been responsible for drawing those maps. They say Voters Not Politicians is a Democratic front group, according to an article from Gongwer News Service.

Texas: Paxton officially requests review of redistricting ruling | San Antonio Express-News

As expected, Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday officially asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling that invalidated two of Texas’ 36 congressional districts. “The lower court’s decision to invalidate parts of the maps it drew and adopted is inexplicable and indefensible,” Paxton said in a statement. “We’re eager for the high court to take up the case.” The U.S. Supreme Court already temporarily suspended a San Antonio court ruling that found congressional districts 27 and 35 were drawn with discriminatory intent. It also froze a separate ruling from the three-judge federal panel requiring the state redraw nine of its legislative districts because of “intentional discrimination” by race.

Texas: How the Texas redistricting lawsuit outlived a voter who sued | The Texas Tribune

Juanita Wallace was among many voters of color who sued the state over its redistricting plans in 2011, accusing lawmakers of redrawing its political boundaries in a way that diluted the power of black and Latino Texans. Six years later, several elections have played out using embattled state House and congressional maps, even though federal judges so far ruled that Texas leaders intentionally discriminated in approving the boundaries. And the maps will probably stay in place for the 2018 elections as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the state’s latest appeal. Wallace — a longtime educator, civil rights advocate and former head of the Dallas NAACP — won’t be around to see the result. She died of cancer last year at age 70.

Wisconsin: Elections official blames Schimel for keeping him from talking | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The head of the state Elections Commission says the attorney general is effectively stopping him from participating in a forum on Wisconsin’s gerrymandering case — a move that he says amounts to a top Republican limiting the speech of a Democrat. Attorney General Brad Schimel counters he is simply following a rule for lawyers to make sure one of his clients doesn’t talk to opposing attorneys without his own lawyers present. The dispute comes as state officials adjust to a new elections agency that is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Mark Thomsen, a Democrat and chairman of the commission, was invited to speak Friday on a panel that also features attorneys challenging Wisconsin’s election maps and voting laws. Thomsen wanted to participate in the forum but Schimel barred Thomsen and the attorneys from appearing together because Thomsen is a named plaintiff in the lawsuits at issue.

North Carolina: Partisan gerrymander trial highlights differences from Wisconsin case | News & Observer

Morton Lurie is a Raleigh resident who describes himself as a conservative Republican. On Monday, he was one of the North Carolina voters standing outside a federal courthouse in Greensboro, criticizing a map drawn in 2016 that has given Republicans a 10 to 3 edge in Congress. Though it can be difficult to keep up with all the redistricting lawsuits filed this decade in North Carolina, Lurie is one of the challengers of maps adopted by the Republican-led legislature last year to correct two of the 13 congressional districts found by federal judges to be unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Lurie objects to districts that are essentially safe seats for one party or another. “The House of Representatives is that part of our government designed to be sensitive to the interests and will of voters spread across the country,” Lurie told media during a break in a trial that started Monday in his lawsuit.

Pennsylvania: Judge grants stay in state gerrymandering lawsuit as federal lawsuit gets December trial date | WPMT

A Commonwealth Court judge Monday granted a stay in the state lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s Congressional district map, as a district judge set a December trial date in a federal lawsuit also seeking to force lawmakers to re-draw the map. Respondents to the state lawsuit, filed by the League of Women Voters PA, argued a ruling should be stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on Gill v. Whitford, a gerrymandering case from Wisconsin. Oral arguments in that case were heard earlier this month, and the Supreme Court justices are continuing to deliberate on that case. The separate lawsuits hope to reach the same end result, but are using different methods to do so.

Editorials: North Carolina should care about Wisconsin redistricting case | Andrew Chin and Steph Tai/News & Observer

Redistricting shapes the power of political parties. When states redraw their electoral maps every 10 years, they alter the relative power of parties by changing the partisan makeup of each district. And when states engage in gerrymandering by creating districts with the intent of reducing the electoral weight of certain categories of voters, we should be even more concerned. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a particularly important redistricting case on October 3. In this case, Gill v. Whitford, the Court addressed the legality of gerrymandering for partisan purposes. To answer these questions, the Court must resolve how lower courts can and should approach the use of scientific and statistical expertise regarding partisan gerrymandering.