Delaware: An effort to take politics out of redistricting in Delaware | The News Journal

The General Assembly is only a few steps away from handing over the job of drawing legislative districts to an independent commission. Supporters, mostly Democrats, say the change would prevent politicians from holding onto power by manipulating the redistricting process. “Voters should choose their elected officials; elected officials shouldn’t choose their voters,” said Sen. Bryan Townsend, D-Newark, who sponsored legislation to create the commission. Townsend’s bill passed the Senate on a 12-7 vote Wednesday. It still needs to pass a House committee, then the full House, before going to Gov. John Carney’s desk.

Texas: Court wants update on Legislature’s redistricting plans | Austin American-Statesman

The three-judge panel overseeing the challenge to Texas’ congressional district maps will meet with lawyers April 27 to get an update on the case, including whether the Legislature plans to take up redistricting to correct problems the panel identified in a ruling last month. The status conference also will discuss a request to prohibit Texas from using the current map of congressional districts in the 2018 election. As of now, candidates expect to begin filing for the primaries in November. The conference will chart the next steps in the case after the panel, in a 2-1 ruling on March 10, found that three congressional districts were drawn by Republicans in 2011 to intentionally discriminate against Latino and black voters.

Editorials: How to Quantify (and Fight) Gerrymandering | Erica Klarreich/Quanta Magazine

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 the University 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.

Delaware: Senate OKs bill creating commission to draw new legislative districts | Delaware State News | Delaware State News

The Senate on Wednesday approved a bill ordering independent redistricting of the state’s legislative districts. The proposal received 12 votes in support and seven against, with one member not voting and one absent.The measure now goes to the House. Senate Bill 27 would create an independent nine-member commission to redraw legislative district lines every 10 years. The process is currently overseen by the General Assembly, which critics say can lead to gerrymandering. The commission would give at least three political parties representation and allow members of the public to serve. Applicants would initially be selected by a panel of judges, with the secretary of state then randomly choosing nine names.

Michigan: Redistricting debate: Creepy lizard or compact lines? | Detroit Free Press

Kevin Deegan-Krause held up an oddly shaped Lego creation last week and asked a crowd of about 150 people in Plymouth, “Can a creepy lizard threaten democracy?” His red and blue depiction of the sprawling 14th Congressional District didn’t look like a creepy lizard. His son thinks it looks like a saxophone, while his daughter says it resembles an assault rifle — even including an open spot for a trigger where Farmington has been carved out of the district. The Lego blocks may not look like the Massachusetts congressional district drawn in 1812 that spawned the term gerrymander — that district looked like a salamander and was combined with the name of the Massachusetts governor at the time, Elbridge Gerry. But Deegan-Krause’s teaching tool is a pretty accurate representation of the 14th Congressional District and a classic example of how gerrymandering is happening in Michigan.

North Carolina: Federal judge rules lawmakers’ attempt to change Greensboro election process unconstitutional | News & Observer

A federal judge on Monday overturned a legislative redrawing of the Greensboro City Council districts, calling the maps unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles stated in her ruling that the action taken by the Republican-controlled General Assembly in July 2015 established one racially gerrymandered district and unjustly packed too many Democratic-leaning voters into several districts, weakening their overall voting power. The Greensboro redistricting plan was sponsored by Republican Sen. Trudy Wade but she claimed legislative immunity and refused to testify at the trial earlier this year about why she introduced the 2015 plan. It surfaced in the same legislative session that the General Assembly attempted to change election districts for the Wake County commissioners. Both bills drew much criticism and speculation that the changes were power grabs designed to elect more Republicans.

Indiana: Redistricting Reform Still A Challenge For Lawmakers | Indiana Public Media

Reforming Indiana’s redistricting process is not likely to change this legislative session, despite four bipartisan bills addressing the issue. One of those bills, SB136 was written by Sen. John Ruckelshaus (R- Indianapolis). Ruckelshaus thinks more public interest and bi-partisan efforts are required in reforming the redistricting process. “I just strongly believe in bipartisanship, and I think that when you have districts that are more competitive in that regard it just produces a better product,” he says.

Virginia: Richmond judge upholds 11 legislative districts challenged in gerrymandering lawsuit | Richmond Times-Dispatch

A Richmond judge issued a ruling Friday upholding the constitutionality of 11 state legislative districts that were challenged as being designed for political purposes. The ruling by Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant is a setback for redistricting reform advocates in Virginia. The lawsuit was backed by the reform group OneVirginia2021. The decision will likely be appealed. Marchant heard evidence during a three-day bench trial in March relating to five state House districts and six state Senate districts drawn by the Virginia General Assembly in 2011.

Florida: GOP-led House wants to limit challenges to redistricting | Palm Beach Post

A measure that would cut off one of the main avenues for challenging legislative redistricting plans was approved Wednesday by a House committee, alarming groups that fought maps struck down by the courts in recent years for political gerrymandering. The measure (HB 953), which was substantially broadened by an amendment filed Tuesday evening, passed the House Public Integrity & Ethics Committee on a 14-3 vote. The Senate has already approved a much-narrower version of the legislation (SB 352) that would set guidelines for what happens when redistricting legal cases are unresolved in election years.

Wisconsin: Attorney General appeals redistricting case | Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a ruling that overturned the state’s Republican-drawn legislative districts. In a first-of-its kind decision last year, a panel of federal judges ruled Wisconsin’s legislative map was a partisan gerrymander that was “intended to burden the rights of Democratic voters” by making it harder for them to translate votes into legislative seats. In a separate order issued earlier this year, the court told lawmakers to redraw the map by Nov. 1 so it would be ready for the 2018 general election.

New Hampshire: Senate Kills Bill to Remove Redistricting Authority from State Legislature | New Hampshire Public Radio

The Republican-controlled state Senate killed a bill Thursday that would create an independent redistricting commission for state elections. Under New Hampshire law legislators have the job of re-drawing the state’s political map after every census report. That includes drawing district lines for the state House and Senate, the Executive Council, and New Hampshire’s two congressional districts.

Maryland: Senate OKs bill to create redistricting commission — if other states do the same | Baltimore Sun

The Maryland Senate approved a bill Thursday that would require the state to create a nonpartisan commission for redistricting — but only if five other states agree to do the same. Senators were divided between those who see the bill as a hollow gesture and others who say it’s a first step toward fixing Maryland’s confusing, gerrymandered political districts. Proponents of the bill say that requiring five other Mid-Atlantic states to shift to nonpartisan redistricting is a regional solution to the problem. Opponents countered that the measure would simply delay any meaningful action. “We’re going to pass something that will never happen, just so we can say we did something,” said Justin Ready, a Carroll County Republican who voted against the bill.

Texas: Court asked to block Texas congressional map for 2018 election | Austin American-Statesman

Texas should be blocked from using a map of congressional districts that was found to have been drawn in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act, a federal court was told Thursday. The motion, filed with a three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in San Antonio, follows a March 10 ruling that invalidated three districts, including one in Travis County, that the court said were drawn by Republicans to intentionally discriminate against Latino and black voters. That ruling, however, did not mandate or discuss any remedies to correct the problems. Attorney General Ken Paxton has argued that there is no need to redraw the congressional map because the court invalidated districts that were drawn in 2011, while Texans have been electing members of Congress according to a map that the Legislature adopted in 2013. But according to the motion filed Friday, the three districts invalidated in the 2011 map were little changed in the 2013 version.

Georgia: Critics warn Republican redistricting plan in Georgia is ‘likely illegal’ | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A coalition of left-leaning organizations urged Gov. Nathan Deal and lawmakers to scuttle a House Republican plan to redraw the district boundaries of eight Republicans and one Democrat, warning it could be ruled unconstitutional because it shifts thousands of minority voters out of the areas. In a letter sent Tuesday to state leaders, the groups said the redistricting plan outlined in House Bill 515 is “likely illegal” and urged legislators to wait until after the 2020 U.S. Census to make major revisions to the maps. (You can read the letter here.) “If HB 515 is signed into law, Georgia will likely be in violation of the Voting Rights Act and subject to litigation that has cost states like Virginia and Texas millions of dollars,” the groups wrote. “This would cast a dark shadow over our state.”

Alabama: Democrats file redistricting maps; number of districts could grow | Montgomery Advertiser

Alabama Democrats last week filed their proposals to redraw the state’s House and Senate district maps to address a January court ruling that struck down 12 legislative districts due to improper use of race in their construction. “This is the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus’ proposal,” said Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, the sponsor of the House bill, whose district was one of the 12 ruled unconstitutional. “If they’ve got better ideas, different ideas, let’s start the process of drawing constitutional districts.” The proposed map redraws “a majority” of the House’s 105 districts, Knight said. Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, co-chair of the Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment, said Monday the committee might look at drawing more districts.

Maryland: House kills Governor’s redistricting plan | Baltimore Sun

For the second year in a row, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly rejected Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s plan to take away lawmakers’ power to draw congressional districts. Without discussion, a key House committee on Monday killed Hogan’s proposal to cede that authority — and the less controversial power to General Assembly district boundaries — to a nonpartisan redistricting commission. The 18-5 party-line vote by the House Rules and Executive Nominations Committee effectively erases any hope the governor’s redistricting plan will advance this year. Hogan has pressed the legislature to take an up-or-down vote on his plan rather than letting it languish without one.

National: Redistricting Reform Advocates Say The Real ‘Rigged System’ Is Gerrymandering | NPR

If the election results of 2016 were really about rejecting the political establishment, then Congress didn’t get the memo. After all, 97 percent of incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives seeking re-election won even as national polls show overwhelming disapproval of Congress. Advocates for redistricting reform hope voters are ready to pay more attention to the otherwise wonky issue of legislative districts are drawn, a system that’s helped send so many incumbents back to Washington and state capitols, year after year. One group trying to change that system is One Virginia 2021, a nonpartisan organization that’s challenging the constitutionality of 11 state legislative district boundaries.

Texas: A backstory on the Texas redistricting ruling | San Antonio Express-News

Last week’s ruling by a three-judge panel in San Antonio that the Texas Legislature racially discriminated in drawing three congressional districts is being hailed as a major civil rights triumph in some legal quarters. “This is a huge victory for voting rights plaintiffs,” wrote nationally recognized elections law expert Richard Hasen in his Election Law blog. He predicted the 2-1 decision was unlikely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because “it closely tracks Justice (Anthony) Kennedy’s views of the issues in this area.”
Kennedy is often the swing vote on the closely divided court. Hasen said the ruling was especially important because it could lead to Texas once again being required to preclear redistricting and other election matters with the Justice Department, as it was before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This is because Judges Xavier Rodriguez and Orlando Garcia found intentional discrimination in the case.

Arizona: Judge throws out final challenge in 2012 Arizona redistricting case | Associated Press

A judge on Thursday dismissed the final challenge to Arizona’s congressional and legislative district maps drawn by an independent commission in 2012. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Roger Brodman dismissed the challenge to the congressional map brought by a group of voters following the adoption of the maps. The U.S. Supreme Court has previously upheld the legality of the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission itself and the legislative district maps. Brodman rejected arguments that commissioners used improper procedures and illegally made decisions behind closed doors. He noted that it was important for him to rule because the appeals will likely take years and there are only two more general elections before the next mapmaking effort by a new commission.

Texas: Analysis: Texas could find itself back in the voting rights penalty box | The Texas Tribune

Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated on the basis of race when they drew redistricting maps in 2011, according to a long-delayed federal ruling delivered last Friday night. That could eventually force the state to redraw the districts for the 36 members of its congressional delegation. Three districts of those districts are invalid, the judges found, and reworking them could have ripple effects for the districts around them. But that business about “intentional discrimination” could turn out to be much more significant: The courts could order the state to get federal government permission for any future changes to its voting and election laws.

Texas: Voting map ruling has long-term impact | The Star-Telegram

Don’t believe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton when he says it’s no big deal that a federal court ruled state legislators used racial gerrymandering to draw congressional districts back in 2011. He’s pulling your leg. Paxton is right that the Legislature replaced the 2011 voting map in 2013. He’s not quite right when he says there are “no lines to redraw,” because some of the problem districts have the same lines in both maps.

Texas: Texas lost a ruling over its congressional map. So what’s next? | The Texas Tribune

A three-judge federal panel’s recent ruling on Texas’ electoral maps could shake up state politics and carry national implications. The ruling may initially sound simple enough. Texas intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters in drawing its 2011 congressional map, the majority found in a 2-1 ruling Friday night. More specifically: Three of the state’s 36 districts violate either the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. But little is straightforward about redistricting, the once-a-decade process of rejiggering political boundaries to address the changing population. Friday’s ruling was no exception, simultaneously answering questions and raising new ones. “It’s a gigantic ruling, but it leaves a lot of uncertainty,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. “It makes your head hurt.”

Canada: Minorities and municipalities challenge Quebec’s new electoral map | Montreal Gazette

Even if Quebec’s chief electoral officer considers the issue closed, some minority and municipal leaders in Montreal are mobilizing to fight the province’s new electoral map. As the groundswell of opposition grows, some are talking about raising funds for a possible legal challenge to the new map, which west end politicians consider a stab in the back due to previous assurances it wouldn’t change. And the Greek community in Laval is in the same foul mood, saying the new map is splitting their community between two ridings. In fact, the new map has the community’s largest orthodox church, Holy Cross, in one riding while the parishioners are in another.

Texas: Congressional Maps Are Struck Down for Discrimination | The New York Times

A panel of federal judges in San Antonio has ruled that a handful of Texas congressional districts drawn by the Republican-dominated state Legislature in 2011 discriminated against black and Hispanic voters and violated the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. The ruling striking down the maps was made late Friday. It is the latest development in a long-running and racially charged redistricting case that locked Democratic lawmakers, minority groups, the Obama administration and the Texas Republican leadership in a legal battle for nearly six years. Democrats and civil-rights lawyers accused the majority-white Texas Republican leadership of drawing district maps in ways that diluted the voting power of Democratic-leaning minority voters, accusations that Republicans denied.

Texas: Federal panel rules Texas congressional districts illegal | The Texas Tribune

Some of Texas’ 36 congressional districts violate either the U.S. Constitution or the federal Voting Rights Act, a panel of federal judges ruled Friday. In a long-delayed ruling, the judges ruled 2-1 that the Texas Legislature must redraw the political maps it most recently used for the 2016 elections. Specifically, they pointed to Congressional District 23, which stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, takes in most of the Texas-Mexico border and is represented by Republican Will Hurd of Helotes; Congressional District 27, represented by Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi; and Congressional District 35, a Central Texas district represented by Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. The 166-page ruling by the San Antonio-based district judges was the latest in a complicated case that dates back to 2011, and comes just two election cycles away from the next U.S. Census — when the state would draw a new map under normal circumstances.

Georgia: House GOP tweaks district maps as Democrats cry foul | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia House Republicans made a late bid Friday to change the district boundaries for eight Republicans and one Democrat. The one Democrat, Rep. Sheila Jones, D-Atlanta, is not happy. Jones said she didn’t know about House Bill 515 until it was being presented to the Reapportionment Committee late Wednesday afternoon. The House voted 108-59 on Friday to approve the bill, which allowed it meet the “Crossover Day” deadline for bills to pass from one chamber to another without parliamentary maneuvering. The House vote came just three days after the bill was first introduced; most bills take weeks or months to reach the House floor.

Virginia: Another redistricting blow for Virginia GOP: Judges award $1.3 million in attorneys fees | Daily Press

A federal court has awarded $1.3 million to the attorneys who successfully sued to redraw Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, an amount assessed partially against Virginia taxpayers and partly against current and former Republican members of Congress. The case is one of three redistricting lawsuits in Virginia, and the only one that has seen full conclusion with last year’s redrawing of U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott’s district. Legal fees in these cases have run into the millions, much of it borne by taxpayers, as Republicans and Democrats fight over the district lines so crucial to winning elections.

Virginia: U.S. Supreme Court orders reexamination of Virginia General Assembly racial gerrymandering case | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday instructed a lower court to re-examine whether the Virginia General Assembly unconstitutionally stuffed African-American voters into certain districts, opening the door to a new political map that could reshape the Republican-controlled state legislature. Anti-gerrymandering advocates hailed the court’s opinion as a victory in the pursuit of more competitive elections, though the final outcome of the case remains unclear. With two justices partially dissenting, the Supreme Court told the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to reconsider the matter using a different legal standard that could make it easier to prove lawmakers improperly prioritized race above other redistricting criteria when redrawing House of Delegates districts in 2011.

Editorials: How Much Racial Gerrymandering Is Too Much? Court Doesn’t Know, But Wants Virginia To Think About It | Elie Mystal/Above the Law

I hate racial gerrymandering cases because they don’t fit neatly into a defensible, logically consistent, electoral philosophy. Racial gerrymandering is an unprincipled, highly practical, necessary grotesquerie of representative democracy. Absent mountains or rivers or some other kinds of geological formations, drawing district lines is fundamentally arbitrary. I get that some people like geometric shapes, but just because your district looks like a square and mine looks like a half-eaten snow crab doesn’t make your district more “fair.” Once you draw the line, you are making a decision to exclude some people and include others, and we shouldn’t pretend to be able to do that at the political level without some knowledge of the racial breakdown of the voters. Yet our rules say that race cannot be the “predominant” factor in drawing districts: which is kind of like saying “Don’t stare at the miniature disco ball in my eye socket!” Simply saying that race can’t be a predominant factor makes race a predominant factor in showing that race wasn’t a predominant factor.

Virginia: Supreme Court says Virginia redistricting must be reexamined for racial bias | The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Wednesday told a lower court to reexamine the redistricting efforts of Virginia’s Republican-led legislature for signs of racial bias and gerrymandered legislative districts that dilute the impact of African American voters. The justices declined to take a position on that issue. But they said a lower court had not applied the right standards when it concluded that the legislature’s work was constitutional. The decision was a win for black voters and Democrats who have challenged the General Assembly’s actions in drawing legislative as well as congressional lines. A win at the Supreme Court last term resulted in redrawing the congressional map in a way that favored the election of a second African American congressman last fall.