National: U.S. Census director resigns amid turmoil over funding of 2020 count | The Washington Post

The director of the U.S. Census Bureau is resigning, leaving the agency leaderless at a time when it faces a crisis over funding for the 2020 decennial count of the U.S. population and beyond. John H. Thompson, who has served as director since 2013 and worked for the bureau for 27 years before that, will leave June 30, the Commerce Department announced Tuesday. The news, which surprised census experts, follows an April congressional budget allocation for the census that critics say is woefully inadequate. And it comes less than a week after a prickly hearing at which Thompson told lawmakers that cost estimates for a new electronic data collection system had ballooned by nearly 50 percent.

Alabama: House approves redistricting bill after 2 days delay | Associated Press

The Alabama House of Representatives on Thursday approved new legislative districts, but only after Democrats were able to delay a vote by having the bill read aloud for 16 hours. Representatives in the GOP-controlled House approved the districts in a 70-30 vote that fell along party lines. Republicans argued the bill fairly corrects problems identified by a federal court with current boundaries. Democrats contended Republicans rammed through a plan aimed at entrenching GOP dominance in the state and minimizing the influence of black voters. Before the vote, Democrats requested for the 539-page bill to be read aloud. The process took 16 hours as the sound of the computerized bill reader filled the chamber for two days. Black lawmakers in the House said they requested the reading in order to make their objections known because Republicans tried to limit floor debate on the plan that is headed back for court review.

Alabama: Democrats Delay House Vote on Redistricting Bill | Associated Press

Alabama House Democrats on Tuesday used a procedural maneuver to delay a vote on proposed new legislative districts they argue are racially gerrymandered to maintain Republican control of the state’s largest county. Republicans, who hold a majority in both chambers of the Legislature, have the numbers to ultimately approve the new map. But Democrats delayed a vote until Thursday by asking for the 539-page bill to be read aloud, a process that will take 13 hours. Federal judges in January ordered lawmakers to redraw some lines before the 2018 elections. The ruling came after the Legislative Black Caucus and the Alabama Democratic Conference filed a lawsuit arguing African-American voters were “stacked and packed” into designated minority districts to make neighboring districts whiter and more Republican.

Pennsylvania: Lawmakers pressed for time on gerrymandering amendment | WITF

Around the state, advocates and frustrated Pennsylvanians are pushing lawmakers to change the rules governing how district lines are redrawn every ten years. The current process lets politicians the skew districts in their political favor–a process known as gerrymandering. But it’s going to take some serious legislative might to make changes. On Tuesday, a crowd of protesters nearly filled the Capitol’s front steps–many holding up green signs that read “end gerrymandering in PA.” They’re supporting bills in the House and Senate that aim to do just that, by amending the state constitution to make redistricting more impartial.

Wisconsin: Democratic Plaintiffs Urge Supreme Court To Uphold Gerrymandering Ruling | Wisconsin Public Radio

A group of Democratic plaintiffs is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a ruling that struck down Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn legislative map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. In a brief to the court, plaintiffs wrote that Wisconsin remains sharply divided politically, with a Democratic president winning the state in 2012 and a Republican winning in 2016. Similarly, they wrote, Wisconsin is represented in the U.S. Senate by one Democrat and one Republican. But the state Legislature is a different story, where Republicans won 60 out of 99 Assembly seats in 2012 despite losing the popular vote and grew their majority to 64 seats in 2016, even as the statewide vote remained nearly tied. “Republicans thus wield legislative power unearned by their actual appeal to Wisconsin’s voters,” the plaintiffs told the court.

Editorials: Can math stop partisan gerrymandering? | Sam Wang and Brian Remlinger/LA Times

Of all the problems in our democracy, near the top of the list is partisan gerrymandering. Because legislators reserve for themselves the power to draw district boundaries, dozens of seats across America are uncompetitive and tens of millions of citizens are left with little influence over who represents them. This fall, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to remedy the offense — with the help of a little math. Polarization is what makes partisan gerrymandering possible. As citizens sort themselves into neighborhoods of like-minded people, self-serving legislators can draw boundaries to artfully lasso them. Such jiggery-pokery creates districts where both parties have near-guaranteed wins. But there’s an asymmetry: the party in control — which in most states is the GOP — distributes its supporters to win as many districts as possible by small but safe margins, while packing the rival party’s voters tightly into far fewer districts.

Voting Blogs: What To Look for When the Supreme Court Decides the North Carolina Redistricting Case | Richard Pildes/Election Law Blog

The Court has already decided one major racial redistricting case this Term, Bethune-Hill, from Virginia. The other major racial redistricting case, Cooper v. Harris, from North Carolina, is now one of three cases outstanding the longest since argument. Cooper involves two congressional districts, CD 1 and CD 12 (by now, CD 12 must have been litigated before the Supreme Court more times than any congressional district in history). I want to untangle the various issues at stake and provide perspective on which legal issues are the key ones to focus on when this opinion finally comes down. To begin, the issues concerning CD 1 and CD 12 are quite different – and the ones involving CD 1 have the broadest legal significance (that makes it a bit unfortunate that most of the oral argument focused on CD 12).

Ohio: Attorney general rejects congressional redistricting amendment language | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Thursday rejected a proposal that would change how Ohio draws its congressional districts. But supporters say they have plenty of time to resubmit their constitutional amendment and collect the signatures to put it on the November 2018 ballot. Fair Congressional Districts for Ohio last week submitted its proposed constitutional amendment and a summary to appear on petitions. DeWine cited two errors where the summary language did not match the proposed Bipartisan Congressional Redistricting Reform Amendment. DeWine’s office is the first stop for any proposed ballot measure. DeWine’s job is not to judge the merit of proposed ballot initiatives but to certify that the amendment summary that will appear on petitions accurately summarizes the amendment.

Alabama: Redistricting plans move forward, but Democrats object | Montgomery Advertiser

House Democrats launched filibusters of legislation Tuesday in protest of the map and the chamber passing a bill last week critics say will prevent removal of Confederate memorials. “I don’t care if the Pope got a bill today,” said Rep. John Rogers, D-Birmingham. “It’s dead. We want parity, equality and fair play.” The slowdown could affect other pending legislation, like the budgets and prison bills, and Republicans tried to strike encouraging notes in the committee hearings Wednesday. The Senate Tourism and Marketing Committee held a hearing on that chamber’s map Tuesday afternoon but did not vote on the proposal. Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, the chair of the committee, recommended to Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, who drew the maps, to get together with Senate Democrats before the expected vote Wednesday.

Nebraska: Politically charged bills, including winner-take-all, voter ID, await senators | Lincoln Journal Star

Political fireworks ahead in the Legislature. Sen. John Murante of Gretna said Wednesday he still intends to offer an amendment to pending legislation that would return Nebraska to a winner-take-all presidential electoral system, but he has not picked a legislative vehicle yet. Meanwhile, Murante’s proposed constitutional amendment (LR1CA) to require a photo ID for voters to participate in Nebraska elections is virtually assured of consideration during the final 15 days of this legislative session because he has identified it as his priority proposal.

Texas: Redistricting case will go to trial in July | Dallas Morning News

A federal court panel in San Antonio has scheduled a trial in July on the state’s current congressional and statehouse maps, signaling the beginning of a wind-down to the state’s six-years-long battle over redistricting. The order, issued late Monday by a three-judge panel, ordered the parties in the case to prepare for a weeklong trial starting July 10. It is a favorable ruling to the plaintiffs, who had petitioned the court for a speedy way to remedy what they considered discriminatory issues with the state’s current electoral maps in time for the 2018 elections. The order is another in a string of damaging court losses for the state, which had asked for a later trial. In March, the same panel invalidated three congressional districts after finding that the congressional maps drawn by state lawmakers in 2011 were done so with intent to discriminate against minorities. A month later, the panel found that the statehouse maps drawn that same year were drawn with the intent of diluting minority voting strength.

Michigan: How to make every vote count | The Detroit Free Press

… With Michigan’s next general election still more than a year and a half away, handicappers are already speculating which of the familiar faces circling one another are poised to rule the state’s political landscape after 2018. But the future of Michigan politics — and the partisan complexion of future state legislatures and congressional delegations — may depend more on the U.S. Supreme Court, whose nine members will decide in a few weeks whether to take up a voting-rights case with big implications for Michigan’s political destiny. Federal and state laws require that members of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislative bodies be elected from districts that are approximately equal in population. Each member of the current U.S. House, for instance, represents approximately 700,000 residents.

Michigan: Gerrymandering seriously impacts voting, according to new test | The Michigan Daily

Although President Trump won the state by a narrow margin, GOP candidates in down-ballot races in Michigan won across the board, adding further to their large majority in the State Legislature. According to a new test conducted by Bridge Magazine, GOP candidates succeed in Michigan despite relatively equal support for both parties because of gerrymandered districts. The test, titled the “efficiency gap,” calculates how many votes are “wasted” when a certain party draws district lines in their favor. Wasted votes are those cast for the candidate that didn’t win and those cast for the winning candidate beyond the number they needed to win.

Texas: Ahead of 2018, trial likely looms in Texas political map battle | The Texas Tribune

As the 2018 election cycle nears, it appears Texas and its legal foes are headed for a trial — yet again — over what the state’s House and congressional boundaries will look like, and it will likely come this summer. “I think the trial is certain,” said Jose Garza, an attorney for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, a lead plaintiff in the years-long challenge of the state’s political boundaries. “At the end of the day, we’re going to get new political maps, and the court’s going to draw them.” His comments followed a lengthy and complicated hearing Thursday over the fate of the state’s 2013 House and congressional maps — a high-profile status conference that followed a pair of federal rulings that Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minority voters in initially drawing each map in 2011.

Editorials: Texas’ redistricting methods discriminate against minorities while politicians shrug | Dallas Morning News

Three times in a matter of weeks, federal courts have found that Texas is intentionally discriminating against minority voters. Yet fixing problems with its voter identification law and its congressional and statehouse district maps isn’t on the Legislature’s front burner. In fact, it isn’t anywhere near the stove. This could come back to burn Texas. In the absence of legislative courage, the state could face a court-ordered redistricting or even a return to a requirement that it gain federal approval before changing any voting regulations.

Illinois: Democrats guard district-drawing privileges | St. Louis Public Radio

It’s a sentiment shared by Democratic politicians and liberal pundits: disgust over how Republicans drew up favorable (for them) legislative districts after the 2010 Census. Redistricting is blamed for Congress’ relative lack of legislative production and the rise of stringent partisanship, and has prompted Democrats to fight back in several states. Even former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is getting in on it, leading the National Democratic Redistricting Committee to crusade against gerrymandering (aka the act of drawing legislative districts to benefit a political party). But one place that isn’t a battleground is Illinois, where Democrats could be seen as the bad guy, having drawn legislative boundaries in 2011 that put the GOP at a disadvantage. And that has some wondering whether Democrats’ broader push for “fair” maps is really about politics more than principle.

Georgia: Lawsuit: 2015 Redistricting Violated Black Voters’ Rights | Associated Press

Georgia lawmakers violated federal voting rights law by moving black voters out and white voters in to two state House districts in 2015, according to a lawsuit filed Monday that calls the mid-decade redistricting an effort to protect white Republican incumbents. The Washington, D.C.-based Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law filed the federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia on behalf of the state chapter of the NAACP and five residents of the affected districts. Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the state’s top elections official, also is named in the suit. “Lawmakers firmly placed their thumb on the scale by redrawing district boundaries in ways that would preserve their incumbency and freeze the status quo in place,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee. “They seek to disregard the demographic changes occurring across Georgia by putting pen to paper mid-decade.”

Ohio: Signatures filed for congressional redistricting issue in fall election | Columbus Dispatch

A trio of nonprofits filed an initial batch of 1,000 signatures Monday to kick-off an effort to place congressional redistricting reform on the November 2017 or 2018 ballot. The proposed ballot issue would closely follow a legislative redistricting proposal that voters overwhelmingly supported in 2015. The goal is to dampen the political gerrymandering that allows the political party in control to draw districts to its benefit, creating few competitive seats and securing the party’s majority status. “This is a critical effort to ensure fair districts and fair elections for every congressional seat in Ohio,” said Carrie Davis, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “When members of Congress have safe seats drawn to guarantee which party wins, the real losers are the voters.”

Texas: Clock ticking toward 2018 as court to mull redistricting questions | The Texas Tribune

A pair of federal court rulings that Texas leaders purposefully discriminated against minority voters in rejiggering congressional and state House boundaries have triggered a slew of pressing questions among politicos here: Will Texas soon see new political maps that are friendlier to Latino and black voters and, in turn, Democrats? If so, who would draw them: the scolded Republican-led Legislature or the courts themselves? Will the maps land ahead of the 2018 elections? A three-judge panel based in San Antonio will start wading through such questions on Thursday as lawyers for each side of the redistricting dispute return to court for a high-profile status conference. “This hearing is a very important event in the sequence of what’s going to happen,” said Jose Garza, an attorney for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, a plaintiff in the case.

Wisconsin: GOP Legislature Calls Redistricting Ruling Dangerous | Associated Press

Attorneys for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to uphold GOP-drawn legislative boundaries, saying a ruling that found them to be unconstitutional was “dangerously” wrong. The filing comes in support of separate and similar arguments made by Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel in his appeal of a three-judge panel’s ruling last year striking down the maps. The judges ordered new maps to be drawn by November, saying the current ones amounted to unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering favoring Republicans. It was the first ruling of its kind after decades of legal battles over redistricting.

Texas: Court: Texas House map intentionally diluted minority votes | The Texas Tribune

Texas lawmakers intentionally diluted the political clout of minority voters in drawing the state’s House districts, a panel of federal judges ruled Thursday. In a long-awaited ruling, the San Antonio-based panel found that lawmakers in 2011 either violated the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act by intentionally diluting the strength of minority voters statewide and specifically in a litany of House districts across Texas. Those districts encompass areas including El Paso, Bexar, Nueces, Harris, Dallas and Bell counties. “The impact of the plan was certainly to reduce minority voting opportunity statewide, resulting in even less proportional representation for minority voters,” U.S. District Judges Orlando Garcia and Xavier Rodriguez wrote in a majority opinion, adding that map-drawers’ discussions “demonstrated a hostility” toward creating minority-controlled districts despite their massive population growth. In some instances, the judges ruled, map-drawers’ use of race to configure some districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act instead “turned the VRA on its head.”

National: Gerrymandering Is Illegal, But Only Mathematicians Can Prove It | WIRED

Partisan Gerrymandering – the practice of drawing voting districts to give one political party an unfair edge—is one of the few political issues that voters of all stripes find common cause in condemning. Voters should choose their elected officials, the thinking goes, rather than elected officials choosing their voters. The Supreme Court agrees, at least in theory: In 1986 it ruled that partisan gerrymandering, if extreme enough, is unconstitutional. Yet in that same ruling, the court declined to strike down two Indiana maps under consideration, even though both “used every trick in the book,” according to a paper in theUniversity of Chicago Law Review. And in the decades since then, the court has failed to throw out a single map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. “If you’re never going to declare a partisan gerrymander, what is it that’s unconstitutional?” said Wendy K. Tam Cho, a political scientist and statistician at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Texas: Minority votes intentionally diluted by GOP-led Texas House redistricting, federal court says | Dallas Morning News

Texas statehouse districts drawn by the Republican-led legislature in 2011 intentionally diluted the votes of minorities, violating the U.S. Constitution and parts of the Voting Rights Act, a federal court ruled Thursday. In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel in San Antonio found that the maps gave Republicans an advantage in elections and weakened the voting strength of minority voters. House Districts in Dallas and Tarrant counties were among those in which the judges ruled minority voters had seen their clout weakened. The ruling is yet another blow to the state in its six-year legal battle over the redrawing of the maps. Last month, the same court found that the state’s congressional maps were drawn with intent to discriminate against minority voters and invalidated three congressional districts. And last week, a federal judge ruled that the state’s voter ID law was written with intent to discriminate.

Texas: Court: House map drawn to dilute minority voters | Austin American-Statesman

Republicans redrew Texas House districts in 2011 to gain partisan advantage by intentionally and improperly diluting the voting strength of minority Texans, a federal court ruled Thursday. In a 2-1 decision, the San Antonio-based federal court panel said “invidious discriminatory purpose” underlies the map that set district boundaries for the state’s 150 House members in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act and the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. “The impact of the plan was certainly to reduce minority voting opportunity statewide, resulting in even less proportional representation for minority voters,” the court said.

Delaware: Legislation seeks to prevent political meddling in drawing districts for the General Assembly | Sun Times

A plan to change how the state sets the borders for legislative districts has attracted bipartisan support in the upper chamber of the General Assembly. Senate Bill 27 seeks to overhaul General Assembly redistricting by taking it out of the hands of the legislature, sponsor Sen. Bryan Townsend said. Instead, an independent commission would redraw voting maps without reference to politics. The Democrat of Newark said the idea is to create an unbiased and transparent method of setting boundaries. The legislation proposes a nine-member nonpartisan commission.

Pennsylvania: Anti-gerrymandering bill gaining traction | WFMZ

In just a few years, voting districts will be redrawn across the country, and there’s a bipartisan push trickling down to the Lehigh Valley to do away with “gerrymandering.” Every 10 years, voting lines are redrawn with the census. Gerrymandering refers to manipulating voting district lines to benefit a party. It’s named after Eldridge Gerry, a former vice president and Massachusetts governor in the early 1800’s. In Pennsylvania, the political party in charge draws the lines. With the lines set to be drawn again in 2020, there is a growing movement to change how the districts are divided.

Texas: Attorneys Say Texas Might Have New Congressional Districts Before 2018 Election | KUT

Months ago, new Texas congressional maps for the 2018 election seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea. The federal court looking at a lawsuit against the state’s 2011 map had sat on a ruling for years, and the case had gone unresolved for several election cycles. But thanks to a down-to-the-wire decision last month, attorneys representing plaintiffs in this case say, there’s hope for new districts in time for the next election. Just last year, Gerry Hebert, one of the plaintiff attorneys, said he couldn’t figure out why the U.S. District Court hearing the case was taking so long to reach a decision. “We really have left a lot of the lawyers scratching their heads about what the court is actually doing – if anything – to get this case moving,” he said at the time.

National: How will Big Data change gerrymandering? Both parties are eager to know what you do online | Salon

When you exit the Pennsylvania Turnpike just north of Pennsylvania, on Main Street in working-class Norristown, you’re in the overwhelmingly Democratic 13th congressional district — at least for a couple of miles. The help-wanted signs are in Spanish; people walk past the Premier Barber Institute, bail bondsmen, and the 99-cent stores wearing branded short-sleeve shirts from their chain-store jobs. But come around a corner and up and hill and suddenly the neighborhoods turn leafy and green. Suburban-looking dads walk large dogs with flowing tresses. The houses are lovely and set back from the road. This three-quarter-mile stretch is in one of the nation’s most infamously gerrymandered districts, Pennsylvania’s reliably Republican seventh, a one-time swing district so wildly drawn that it resembles Donald Duck kicking Goofy. Signs warn drivers not to tailgate.

National: The mathematician who’s using geometry to fight gerrymandering | PRI

After every new US census, states have to redraw their congressional districts to divide up their populations fairly. But in practice, these districts don’t always end up equal: Federal judges recently ordered Wisconsin lawmakers to redraw maps of the state’s legislative districts, after finding the districts had been shaped to favor Republican candidates. Allegations of gerrymandering are also playing out in states like Texas and North Carolina. So what does a gerrymandered district even look like on a map? More like a carved-out jigsaw piece than a rounded blot, as it turns out. But as Tufts University mathematician Moon Duchin explains, gerrymandering can be difficult to prove, even when something about a district’s shape seems fishy. “We’ve had justices saying that, ‘We know a bizarre, irrational shape when we see it, but we don’t know what precisely should the threshold be which makes a shape too tortured, or irregular, or unreasonable,’” she says. (Take a closer look at district shapes across the US.)

Illinois: Both sides agree legislative mapping should change, details on how and when are murky | Illinois News Network

Republicans and Democrats apparently agree. The way Illinois draws legislative district maps needs to change. But there’s disagreement on how and when to get it done. After every 10-year Census, the majority political party – Democrats for decades in Illinois – redraws the state’s legislative maps. Critics say that lets politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. Even former President Barack Obama supports redistricting reform. A citizen-led effort to change the process failed to get in front of voters last year after an attorney with ties to the state’s leading Democrats, including Speaker Michael Madigan, successfully blocked the initiative just before a ballot-printing deadline.