Maryland: How Deep Blue Maryland Shows Redistricting Is Broken | The Atlantic

In spring 2011, the six Democratic members of Maryland’s congressional delegations tasked Eric Hawkins with two key jobs: Draw new district lines that get us re-elected easily for another five terms, while also taking direct aim at the state’s last two Republicans. Behind closed doors, Democratic insiders and high-ranking aides referred to it as “the 7-1 map.” Hawkins—an analyst at a Beltway data firm called NCEC Services—not only made it happen, but imagined an 8-0 map that might have shut Republicans out of power altogether. That, however, would have required spreading Democratic voters a little too thin and made some incumbents slightly less safe; these congressmen were partisans, sure, but they were also reluctant to risk their own seats.

Wisconsin: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Wisconsin’s redistricting case but blocks redrawing of maps | Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case that found Wisconsin Republicans overreached in 2011 by drawing legislative districts that were so favorable to them that they violated the U.S. Constitution. In a related ruling Monday, the high court handed Republicans a victory by blocking a lower court ruling that the state develop new maps by Nov. 1. Democrats and those aligned with them took that order as a sign they could lose the case. The case is being watched nationally because it will likely resolve whether maps of lawmakers’ districts can be so one-sided that they violate the constitutional rights of voters. The question has eluded courts for decades. The court’s ultimate ruling could shift how legislative and congressional lines are drawn —  and thus who controls statehouses and Congress. “This is a blockbuster. This could become the most important election law case in years if not decades,” said Joshua Douglas, a University of Kentucky College of Law professor and co-editor of the book “Election Law Stories.”

Editorials: Do we really want the Supreme Court to decide how partisan is too partisan? | Charles Lane/The Washington Post

On Dec. 12, 2000, the Supreme Court ended the recount of Florida’s votes in that year’s presidential election, effectively awarding 25 electoral votes to Republican George W. Bush and making him president. The decision was 5 to 4, with the most conservative Republican-appointed justices in favor of Bush. Democrats condemned the ruling as nakedly partisan, saying it was based not on precedent but a cooked-to-order legal rationale: Recount rules didn’t treat all ballots the same way, thus violating the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Many critics saw Bush v. Gore as an indelible blot on the court’s legitimacy. Seventeen-odd years later, Democrats are pressing a case whose essential premise is that the Supreme Court can and should be trusted to write a whole new category of rules affecting almost every state legislative and congressional election in the United States.

North Carolina: Independent redistricting vote thwarted in North Carolina Senate | News & Observer

A long-shot attempt to force a vote on creating an independent redistricting commission in North Carolina became a little bit longer Thursday. A Raleigh state senator tried to start the process of forcing the bill he supports to a vote, but a procedural maneuver by legislative leaders will require Sen. Jay Chaudhuri to wait 10 days – and lawmakers’ regular session may be over by then. Senate rules allow members to file discharge petitions to dislodge bills that have been stuck in committees without action. The petition must be signed by at least two-thirds of the chamber. There are 35 Republicans and 15 Democrats in the Senate. The 10-day pause applies to when Chadhuri can start collecting signatures. Chaudhuri, a Democrat, read most of a prepared statement on the Senate floor giving notice of his intention to file a petition to bring Senate Bill 209 to a vote of the Senate. Chaudhuri and four other Democrats filed the bill nearly four weeks ago; it has not been taken up in a committee since then. It would establish a commission to redraw state legislative and congressional districts without partisan consideration. Common Cause and other groups have been pushing for the independent body for years.

Wisconsin: Milwaukee County Board urges state Legislature to create nonpartisan redistricting panel | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

The Milwaukee County Board on Thursday urged the Republican-controlled Legislature to create an independent panel responsible for redrawing congressional and legislative districts that do not favor one political party over another. The board’s action comes three days after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on appeal that found Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 drew legislative district maps so favorable to their party that the districts violated the federal constitution. In that case, a panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 last year that Wisconsin GOP lawmakers had drawn Assembly district maps so skewed for Republicans that they violated voting rights of Democrats. The maps allowed Republicans to lock in huge majorities in the Assembly and state Senate without competitive elections, according to complainants.

National: How 2 academics got the Supreme Court to reexamine gerrymandering | Vox

The Supreme Court has officially agreed to hear a case with the potential to put firm limits on partisan gerrymandering — and dramatically change the way states draw legislative boundaries. The case, Gill v. Whitford, challenges the 2011 Wisconsin state assembly map. Those districts were drawn by the Republican state legislature in Wisconsin, and packed Democrats into a smaller number of districts to maximize Republican odds. The lawsuit argues that the map is an unconstitutional effort to help Republicans retain power.

National: Some States Beat Supreme Court to Punch on Eliminating Gerrymanders | The New York Times

When Wisconsin Republicans last redrew the State Legislature’s district boundaries, in 2011, they set off a multimillion-dollar legal battle over accusations of gerrymandering that this week was granted a potentially historic hearing by the Supreme Court. Then there is California, which redrew its state legislative and congressional districts the same year with far less rancor. California is the largest of a handful of states that are trying to minimize the partisanship in the almost invariably political act of drawing district lines. California has handed that task to the independent and politically balanced California Citizens Redistricting Commission, and Arizona has a somewhat similar commission. Florida has amended its Constitution to forbid partisanship in drawing new districts. Iowa has offloaded the job to the nonpartisan state agency that drafts bills and performs other services for legislators.

Editorials: Court may rule on partisan gerrymandering – but maybe not | Lyle Denniston/Law News

The Supreme Court on Monday stepped, somewhat hesitantly, into the long-standing constitutional controversy over partisan gerrymandering, accepting a major test case for review but giving itself several ways to avoid deciding it. At issue is the question of whether the process of drawing new election district boundaries is unconstitutional if one political party specifically creates maps giving its own candidates a distinct advantage in getting elected, directly limiting the other party’s chances at the polls. It is a political act that is as old as the American Republic, drawing its name as a “gerrymander” from a member of the Founding generation, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, for his infamous state senate districting map so misshapen that it resembled an awkward salamander. In its modern form, it is sometimes blamed for the deep partisan polarization of Congress and other legislative bodies, because modern computer science and detailed census data makes it so much easier for those in charge of drawing new maps to place individual voters into districts to make them decidedly Republican or Democratic so as to achieve unequal electoral power.

Maryland: Supreme Court picks up gerrymander case with potential implications for Maryland | Baltimore Sun

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a major challenge to partisan gerrymandering in a case that could have implications for Maryland, where the state’s contorted congressional maps are being contested in a separate but similar federal case. The challenge to the Wisconsin legislative map, to be heard by the high court in the fall, could yield one of the most important rulings on political power in decades. The separate Maryland case is pending before a three-judge federal court.

National: Supreme court to decide whether state gerrymandering violates constitution | The Guardian

The US supreme court on Monday agreed to decide whether electoral maps drawn deliberately to favor a particular political party are acceptable under the constitution, in a case that could have huge consequences for future US elections. The justices will take up Wisconsin’s appeal of a lower court ruling that said state Republican lawmakers had violated the constitution when they created legislative districts with the aim of hobbling Democrats. The case will be one of the biggest heard in the supreme court term that begins in October. Last November, federal judges in Madison ruled 2-1 that the Republican-led Wisconsin legislature’s redrawing of legislative districts in 2011 amounted to “an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander”, a manipulation of electoral boundaries for unfair political advantage. The judges said the redrawing violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law and free speech by undercutting the ability of Democratic voters to turn their votes into seats in the Wisconsin state legislature.

Editorials: Does partisan gerrymandering violate the First Amendment? | Mark Joseph Stern/Slate

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Gill v. Whitford, a blockbuster case that could curb partisan gerrymandering throughout the United States. Shortly thereafter, the justices handed down two excellent decisions bolstering the First Amendment’s free speech protections for sex offenders and derogatory trademarks. While the link between these two rulings and Whitford isn’t obvious at first glance, it seems possible that both decisions could strengthen the gerrymandering plaintiffs’ central argument—and help to end extreme partisan redistricting for good.

National: Justices could take up high-stakes fight over electoral maps | Associated Press

In an era of deep partisan division, the Supreme Court could soon decide whether the drawing of electoral districts can be too political. A dispute over Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn boundaries for the state legislature offers Democrats some hope of cutting into GOP electoral majorities across the United States. Election law experts say the case is the best chance yet for the high court to put limits on what lawmakers may do to gain a partisan advantage in creating political district maps. The justices could say as early as Monday whether they will intervene. The Constitution requires states to redo their political maps to reflect population changes identified in the once-a-decade census. The issue of gerrymandering — creating districts that often are oddly shaped and with the aim of benefiting one party — is centuries old. The term comes from a Massachusetts state Senate district that resembled a salamander and was approved in 1812 by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry.

Wisconsin: In gerrymandering case, Wisconsin awaits word from high court on map that entrenched GOP’s legislative power | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The U.S. Supreme Court could announce as soon as Monday how it’s handling a landmark legal fight over Wisconsin’s gerrymandered political map, which has helped lock in legislative majorities for the GOP since it took power in 2011. The key legal question: Can a set of political districts be so stacked toward one party that it violates the Constitution? Until the court speaks, that is unsettled law. But while the law is uncertain, the politics are quite clear. Legislative boundaries like Wisconsin’s present a stark civics question: How meaningful are elections when control of the legislature in a competitive state is largely predetermined by the way the districts are drawn?

Pennsylvania: Lawsuit Says House Redistricting Is Partisan Gerrymander | The New York Times

Voting-rights advocates in Pennsylvania filed suit on Thursday to nullify the state’s congressional-district map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, joining other court battles over the role of politics in redistricting already being waged in three other states. It is the latest major legal effort arguing that gerrymanders have become so egregious they are subverting democracy and creating legislative races with predetermined results. In a tactical twist, however, the Pennsylvania lawsuit was filed in a state court, which means that if the plaintiffs prevail, the ruling would set no precedent for challenges in other states. The three other lawsuits, in Maryland, North Carolina and Wisconsin, were filed in federal court and argue that the maps of congressional or state legislative districts violate the federal Constitution.

Pennsylvania: Groups sue Pennsylvania over congressional district gerrymandering | Philadelphia Inquirer

Calling gerrymandering “one of the greatest threats to American democracy,” the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania sued Thursday to have the state’s congressional district map thrown out. Future maps, the suit urges, should be drawn without “burdening or penalizing an identifiable group, a political party, or individual voters based on their political beliefs.” Filed in Commonwealth Court on behalf of Democratic voters in each of the state’s 18 congressional districts, the complaint argues that the map, drafted in 2011, “was the product of a national movement by the Republican Party to entrench its own representatives in power.” The GOP did so, the suit argues, by “utilizing the latest advances in mapmaking technologies and big data to gerrymander districts more effectively than ever before.”

Texas: As court scoldings pile up, will Texas face a voting rights reckoning? | The Texas Tribune

Nearly two hours into the House’s marathon budget debate this spring, a conversation about funding the state’s future U-turned toward the past. Triggering the about-face: the issue of redistricting, the once-a-decade process of redrawing political boundaries to address population changes. State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Arlington, laid out an amendment seeking to bar Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office from using more taxpayer money to defend a congressional map that a court had just declared unconstitutional — ruling that it was intentionally drawn to discriminate against minorities. Paxton’s office had already spent millions of dollars on the case. As he explained his amendment, Turner called Texas the “worst of the worst” voting rights violators. The Republican-dominated chamber was destined to table the amendment, pushing it to a pile of Democrats’ other long-shot proposals. But first, Rep. Larry Phillips strolled to the front mic to defend his colleagues — past and present.

North Carolina: Republicans blast Gov. Roy Cooper for 1990s redistricting plans, gerrymandering | News & Observer

As legislative leaders rejected Gov. Roy Cooper’s call for a special session on redistricting last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown held up a map of the Senate district Cooper represented in the 1990s. The map showed Nash County — Cooper’s home — with a jagged swath extending north into Halifax County and a C-shaped territory through Wilson and Edgecombe counties. “I don’t think anybody could draw a map quite like this one,” said Brown, a Jacksonville Republican. “This one is about as bad as it gets, and this happens to be our governor’s map in 1990 that he drew.” … So what was Cooper’s role in redistricting during his time in the legislature? The maps Brown showed off were approved by the legislature along party lines in January 1992. At the time, Cooper was still in his first year in the Senate, having moved over from the House when the senator in his Nash County district died in office.

North Carolina: Governor, other Democrats press for new maps quickly | Associated Press

Associated PNorth Carolina Democrats and allies continued to press Republican leaders Monday to redraw legislative maps quickly after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed last week that nearly 30 districts are illegally racially gerrymandered. Last Monday, the nation’s highest court upheld the lower court decision of three federal judges who originally tossed out the districts in August. The lower court can’t act until formally getting the case back from the Supreme Court, but the judges wrote Friday that they would “act promptly” on when new maps should be drawn and whether a special election is necessary this fall. Still, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said Monday that new “maps should be drawn this month and an election held before next year’s legislative session. If the legislature doesn’t do its job soon, the courts should.”

North Carolina: Redistricting reform gets a cold shoulder in Raleigh | Greensboro News-Record

If North Carolina legislators really want to end the legal quagmire that redistricting has become, they have plenty of options at their fingertips. A half dozen bills submitted this session in the state House and Senate offer pathways to what their sponsors depict as a less politicized process, capable of eliminating the alleged racial gerrymandering that has caused so much heartburn during the last six years. Choices on the table include turning the process over to nonpartisan bureaucrats, computer programmers and former judges. Or legislators could crank up a study commission to chart their escape from redistricting purgatory. But the potential remedies are all languishing in committee while successful lawsuits by aggrieved voters and activist groups force legislators to redraw voting maps dating to 2011, even as the decade’s end lurks just around the corner … when it’s almost time to begin a whole, new round of redistricting linked to the outcome of the next U.S. Census in 2020.

North Carolina: Federal court leaves open possibility for special elections this year | News & Observer

The three federal judges who could decide whether North Carolina will have special elections this year in state legislative races issued notice Friday that they plan to act quickly. The memorandum comes four days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling unanimously affirming that 28 of North Carolina’s districts used to elect members to the state Senate and state House of Representatives are illegal racial gerrymanders that diluted the overall power of black voters. The challengers of the 2011 redistricting plan submitted a request on Thursday to the three-judge panel asking for quick resolution to fix the gerrymandered districts.

Wisconsin: Supreme Court could tackle partisan gerrymandering in watershed case | The Washington Post

With newly elected Scott Walker in the governor’s office and a firm grip on the legislature, Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 had a unique opportunity to redraw the state’s electoral maps and fortify their party’s future. Aides were dispatched to a private law firm to keep their work out of public view. They employed the most precise technology available to dissect new U.S. Census data and convert it into reliably Republican districts even if the party’s fortunes soured. Democrats were kept in the dark, and even GOP incumbents had to sign confidentiality agreements before their revamped districts were revealed to them. Only a handful of people saw the entire map until it was unveiled and quickly approved. In the following year’s elections, when Republicans got just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote, they still captured a 60-to-39 seat advantage in the State Assembly. Now, the Supreme Court is being asked to uphold a lower court’s finding that the Wisconsin redistricting effort was more than just extraordinary — it was unconstitutional.

North Carolina: US Supreme Court affirms North Carolina legislative districts as racial gerrymanders | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday affirmed a lower court ruling that found 28 North Carolina legislative districts to be illegal racial gerrymanders that diluted the overall impact of black voters. But the justices did not agree with the panel of three federal judges who decided that new maps should be drawn and special elections should be held in 2017 to correct the district lines approved by the Republican-led General Assembly in 2011. The Supreme Court order states the panel had not provided a strong enough basis for why it took the extraordinary step of calling for special elections this year. The order sends the case back to the lower court for reconsideration.

North Carolina: Redistricting special session: House votes to cancel Gov. Roy Cooper’s call to draw new legislative maps | News & Observer

The legislature on Thursday canceled Gov. Roy Cooper’s call for a special legislative session for redistricting, making the case that the governor’s move a day earlier was unconstitutional. The state House voted 71-44. The Senate followed suit without holding a vote, and Republicans cut off Democrats who sought to debate it on the floor. Cooper had issued a proclamation calling a 2 p.m. special session Thursday in an effort to pressure lawmakers to redraw state House and Senate election maps within the next two weeks. The proclamation called for the special session – running at the same time as the current legislative session – to run for 14 days or until new maps are passed.

Japan: Diet finally enacts electoral redistricting law to correct vote weight disparities across Japan | The Japan Times

After years of stalling, the Diet enacted a law Friday to revise Lower House electoral districts to reduce voting weight disparities between densely and sparsely populated precincts that had marred the credibility of national elections. Based on population projections for 2020, the law will bring the maximum vote weight disparity between districts down to 1.999 to 1 — just under the 2-to-1 threshold that the Supreme Court has said would undermine the Constitution’s guarantee of equality for all under the law. It will do this by cutting 10 seats from the House of Representatives and redrawing district boundaries. The changes will take effect on July 16 after a monthlong period to notify the public about the changes. The amendment to the public offices election law will shrink the Lower House to a postwar low of 465 seats.

National: The mathematicians who want to save democracy | Nature

Leaning back in his chair, Jonathan Mattingly swings his legs up onto his desk, presses a key on his laptop and changes the results of the 2012 elections in North Carolina. On the screen, flickering lines and dots outline a map of the state’s 13 congressional districts, each of which chooses one person to send to the US House of Representatives. By tweaking the borders of those election districts, but not changing a single vote, Mattingly’s maps show candidates from the Democratic Party winning six, seven or even eight seats in the race. In reality, they won only four — despite earning a majority of votes overall. Mattingly’s election simulations can’t rewrite history, but he hopes they will help to support democracy in the future — in his state and the nation as a whole. The mathematician, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has designed an algorithm that pumps out random alternative versions of the state’s election maps — he’s created more than 24,000 so far — as part of an attempt to quantify the extent and impact of gerrymandering: when voting districts are drawn to favour or disfavour certain candidates or political parties.

National: Republicans are so much better than Democrats at gerrymandering | The Washington Post

Democrats would need to flip 24 seats to retake the U.S. House in 2018. But at least two-thirds of that tally may be permanently out of reach, thanks to a dirty geographical trick played by Republican lawmakers in 2010. That’s according to a new Brennan Center analysis of gerrymandering — the process lawmakers use to draw legislative districts for their own partisan advantage. A bit of background before we delve into the nitty-gritty. Every 10 years, congressional districts are redrawn following the Census. On paper, this is done to ensure the people’s House is representative of the country’s people — states gain or lose districts based on population changes, and district boundaries shift to reflect our ever-changing demographics.

Editorials: Answers, and new questions, on partisan gerrymandering | Lyle Denniston/Law News

Both sides in a new Supreme Court test case on partisan gerrymandering – drawing new election districts to favor one party – on Tuesday answered the Justices’ questions about whether the case should stay alive, disagreeing sharply on that. But they also may have raised a broad new question about what voters challenging such partisan-driven maps must do to make a case. If the Justices feel they have to rule on that issue, it could make a major difference to the future of such disputes. Besides that added issue, the two sides’ new briefs may have stirred up a new controversy over who speaks for North Carolina in election cases. That is a complication that led the Justices to refuse last month to decide a major voting rights case from the same state.

North Carolina: U.S. Supreme Court again faults North Carolina on voting rights | Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday faulted North Carolina again in a racially tinged voting rights case, upholding a lower court’s ruling that Republican lawmakers mapped state legislative districts in a way that diluted the clout of black voters. But the justices also threw out another ruling by the same panel of three federal judges ordering special elections by November to fill the state legislature seats at issue in the dispute. The high court, with no recorded dissents, sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider whether special elections are necessary. The Supreme Court in January put the matter of special elections on hold while it decided whether to hear the state’s appeal of the ruling.

North Carolina: Supreme Court Affirms North Carolina Redistricting Order | Associated Press

The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down 28 state House and Senate districts in North Carolina because they violated the rights of black voters. But the justices rejected the court’s order to redraw the districts and hold a special election. The action by the justices Monday sends the matter back to the lower court, which could order new districts in time for the regular cycle of elections in 2018.

Editorials: Constitutional Connections: Race, partisan gerrymandering and the Constitution | John Greabe/Concord Monitor

For the most part, the Constitution speaks in generalities. The 14th Amendment, for example, instructs the states to provide all persons the “equal protection of the laws.” But obviously, this cannot mean that states are always forbidden from treating a person differently than any other person. Children can, of course, be constitutionally barred from driving, notwithstanding the Equal Protection Clause. Thus, there is a need within our constitutional system to refine the Constitution’s abstract provisions. Otherwise, public officials and the people would not know what is permitted and what is forbidden. The process of refinement has devolved principally (although not exclusively) to the courts. It is the courts that have told us that the Equal Protection Clause permits the states to discriminate on the basis of age in issuing driver’s licenses, but ordinarily does not permit the states to treat persons differently on the basis of their race.