Alabama: ADC: Legislative map ‘entrenches’ racial divisions | Montgomery Advertiser

Race did not predominate in alternative legislative maps created by the Alabama Democratic Conference, the group argued in a brief filed last month in the ongoing legal battle over the state’s House and Senate district boundaries. The filing responded to a state brief that called the ADC and Legislative Black Caucus’ proposals “bizarre” and accused the plaintiffs, suing to overturn the 2012 legislative map, of creating their own racial quotas. The ADC brief said their mapmaker followed standard practice in drawing maps, and said the Legislature’s approach “entrenches . . . racial divisions. The Supreme Court has made clear that race predominates when significant numbers of voters are moved by race at the boundaries of districts – and this is precisely what the State did – even as the ADC plans demonstrate that it is not necessary to do so to end up with districts that have the black population percentages that these districts do,” said the brief, filed on Nov. 24.

National: Courts Are Shaking Up House Elections in 2016 | Bloomberg

After every U.S. census, states redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts to account for changes in population. This sets off a decennial exercise in partisan gamesmanship, with Democrats and Republicans seeking to alter the lines to their advantage. Lawsuits inevitably follow. Since new maps were drawn before the 2012 election, courts have weighed in on them in 22 states. Five years after the census and less than a year away from the 2016 election, five states are still waiting on judges to determine the fate of their districts. Their decisions could help Democrats chip away at the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of the most acrimonious redistricting fights in the nation came to an end on Wednesday, when Florida’s Supreme Court replaced the Republican-drawn congressional map with one that shakes up all but three districts in the state.

National: 4 Court Cases That Could Impact the 2016 Elections | Roll Call

Breaking news can be hard to predict, except when it’s tied to a controversial court case. Candidates and consultants spend their time, energy and dollars staying on message — trying to focus voters on winning issues. But breaking news, even something such as a court decision that can be anticipated, often derails those plans by interjecting a subject that wasn’t in the campaign prospectus into the national conversation. It’s far too early to declare which issues will be decisive in the 2016 elections, but a handful of court cases are likely to become news throughout the next year. That would force candidates for president, the Senate, and the House to respond, creating opportunities for them to shine — or to say something controversial, even stupid. Of course these news events could be trumped by bigger breaking news, such as another terrorist attack.

Editorials: Let Math Save Our Democracy | Sam Wang/The New York Times

Partisan gerrymandering is an offense to democracy. It creates districts that are skewed and uncompetitive, denying voters the ability to elect representatives who fairly reflect their views. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case in which a small dose of math can help the justices root out these offenses more easily. Redistricting may seem unglamorous, but it comes up repeatedly before the court. Last month, the justices heard a case that could streamline the path by which they receive such complaints. In oral arguments, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. expressed his fear that his court could be flooded with complex redistricting cases. But he needn’t be concerned. Tuesday’s case gives the court a chance to adopt a simple statistical standard for fairness that cuts through the legal morass. In the United States legislative system, district maps must be redrawn every 10 years, after each census, a process that legislators manipulate to gain advantage.

Editorials: Evenwel and the Next Case | Daniel Tokaji/ACS

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Evenwel v. Abbott. The subject of the case is the meaning of the “one person, one vote” rule. The appellants argue that the Constitution requires equality of eligible voters among legislative districts. This argument is unlikely to carry the day – in fact, the appellants may well lose unanimously. Evenwel is still an important case, however, because what the Court says will affect how states draw state legislative districts after the next census and possibly even sooner. The hard question isn’t the disposition of Evenwel but rather its implications for the next case. The “one person, one vote” rule requires that legislative districts be drawn on the basis of population. Where single-member districts are used, each district must be of approximately equal population. In Reynolds v. Sims, the Supreme Court held that the “one person, one vote” rules applies to state legislative districting. This ended the states’ practice of using districts with very different populations – some with disparities over 40:1 – which generally advantaged rural areas at the expense of urban and suburban areas.

Florida: State Supreme Court approves congressional map drawn by challengers | Miami Herald

With just over four years left before another redistricting cycle begins, the Florida Supreme Court gave final approval to Florida’s congressional map Wednesday, rejecting the Legislature’s arguments for the fourth time and selecting boundaries drawn by the challengers in time for the 2016 election. “Our opinion today — the eighth concerning legislative or congressional apportionment during this decade since the adoption of the landmark Fair Districts Amendment — should bring much needed finality to litigation concerning this state’s congressional redistricting that has now spanned nearly four years in state courts,” the court wrote in a 5-2 decision. The ruling validated the map drawn by a coalition led by the League of Women Voters, Common Cause of Florida and several Democrat-leaning individuals, and approved by Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis after the Florida Legislature tried and failed to agree to a map in a special redistricting session. Although the boundaries are now officially set for the 2016 elections, the map is expected to be challenged by at least two members of Congress in federal court. U.S. Reps. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, have threatened a lawsuit for restricting the ability of their constituents to elect minorities to office.

National: How Far Will The Supreme Court Go In The Big New Voting Rights Case? | TPM

Almost everyone in the voting rights community agrees that the unexpected case challenging long-held assumptions about the concept of “one person, one vote” — which is being heard by the Supreme Court next week — could have devastating consequences. But a point of contention among experts is what threat a more incremental decision poses to the already crippled Voting Rights Act. The case is called Evenwel v. Abbott. It is coming out of Texas, where the challengers are contesting the state legislature’s senate redistricting plan. At issue is whether the use of total population to draw districts — as Texas and other states have near universally done — is unconstitutional. The challengers suggest that some other metric — perhaps one that counts districts by citizens or by eligible voters — is preferable. They say their votes have been diluted because they live in a district that has a higher percentage of eligible voters compared to district that is roughly the same size in total population, but has a lower rate of voter eligibility — in part because of the presence of Latino noncitizens.

Arizona: High court set to hear redistricting case | Yuma Sun

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday about why legislative districts in Arizona have unequal population — and whether that matters legally. Republican interests as well as two state GOP officials want the justices to conclude that the Independent Redistricting Commission acted illegally when it drew the lines in 2011 for all of the elections for this decade. They point out that some of the 30 districts have more residents than others. That point is not in dispute. Even the commission’s attorneys concede that there is an 8.8 percent difference in population between the largest and smallest. What the high court will consider is the question of whether the move was justified.

New Mexico: Tenth Circuit Overturns Sanctions in Voting Rights Case | National Law Journal

Plaintiffs lawyers who brought a challenge to a political redistricting plan in Albuquerque were wrongly ordered to pay $48,217.95 in attorney fees as a sanction for dragging out the litigation, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit found that U.S. District Judge William Johnson of New Mexico abused his discretion in calculating the amount of the sanction against the lawyers based on the date they received a damaging expert report from the city. The plaintiffs did not dismiss their case after receiving the report.

Florida: Court Begins Working Through Redistricting Issues | CBS Miami

A Leon County judge and lawyers for the Legislature and voting-rights organizations on Tuesday began muddling through the legal process for deciding on a new set of districts for the 40-member state Senate. While the hearing before Circuit Judge George Reynolds was largely procedural, attorneys for the two sides clashed over whether the coalition of voting-rights organizations, which includes the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida, faces the same burden of proof as lawmakers do when a full-blown trial about the maps begins Dec. 14. Reynolds has the task of recommending one of five maps — one drawn by Senate aides and four drawn by the voting-rights groups — to the Florida Supreme Court after the existing map was set aside as part of a legal settlement. Lawmakers conceded in that settlement that the current map, drawn in 2012, would likely be found by the courts to violate a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering adopted two years earlier.

Virginia: Lawyers for elections board want map work to proceed | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The plaintiffs and the original defendants in Virginia’s congressional redistricting case want a three-judge panel to proceed with drawing a new map over the objections of Republicans in the state’s delegation. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say congressional Republicans’ motion to suspend the proceedings, pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of the GOP appeal, is “simply the latest in a series of efforts to delay this court’s correction of the unconstitutional racial gerrymander” in Virginia’s 3rd District.

National: Redistricting Reform Gains Steam | US News and World Report

State legislatures are constitutionally obligated to redraw congressional districts every 10 years. But now, with an increased awareness of the potential for unfairness and abuse, voters are starting to push back. Most states make the redistricting decisions themselves, and accusations of gerrymandering – drawing the maps to unfairly preserve majority advantage – are frequent. Since the most recent census in 2010, lawsuits challenging congressional, state Senate or state legislature redistricting maps have been filed in 38 states; there were 37 such challenges following the 2000 round of redistricting. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court considered arguments over whether the Democrat-designed map in Maryland could be reviewed and potentially thrown out by a state panel. At the heart of that dispute is the fact that the state’s political affiliation, currently 54.3 percent Democrat and 25.8 percent Republican, has changed only marginally since Democrats held a 57 percent to 29.7 percent advantage in 2000. And yet Maryland’s eight-member congressional delegation has gone from being evenly split between the parties 15 years ago to a 7-1 Democratic advantage now after two rounds of redistricting under Democratic governors and legislatures. One of the districts, which have survived reviews by federal courts, was recently described by a federal judge as resembling “a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.” “Most people know that Maryland is home to some of the most egregiously gerrymandered districts in the country,” says Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College in Maryland.

Colorado: Redistricting reform effort underway in Colorado | The Durango Herald

An effort is underway to present Colorado voters with a ballot question that would reform the state’s congressional redistricting process. Critics of the proposed initiative worry that it would limit minority voting blocs across the state by prohibiting drawing districts for the purpose of “augmenting … the voting strength of a language or racial minority group.” In all fairness, the proposed language would also prohibit mapping districts for purposes of “diluting” the voting strength of a minority group. Proponents say they have constructed a bipartisan effort ahead of the 2020 census, when the next congressional redistricting process would get underway. After the 2010 census, Republicans and Democrats fought over redrawing Colorado’s seven congressional districts, which created more competitive boundaries, to the ire of some Republicans. The issue was ultimately decided by Colorado courts after maps introduced by the Legislature during the 2011 session never advanced. Lawsuits were filed in Denver District Court, and in November 2011, the court ruled in favor of a Democratic proposal. In December 2011, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the Denver District Court decision.

Florida: Election supervisors urging Florida Supreme Court to decide on new district lines | First Coast News

It’s a debate that’s been going on for more than a year. Now, election supervisors say they, along with you, the voters, are at the mercy of the courts as they wait for the new congressional district lines to be drawn. The redistricting could affect where you vote and who you’re voting for. “It affects the candidates right now: not knowing who their constituency is and those things will flush themselves out as it goes through the court process,” said Clay County Supervisor of Elections and soon to be President of the Supervisors Association, Chris Chambliss.

Texas: High Court Rejects Fee Dispute in Texas Redistricting Case | Associated Press

The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from lawyers for former Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and others seeking $360,000 in legal fees after challenging state redistricting plans. The justices on Monday let stand a federal appeals court ruling that said the lawyers were not entitled to fees. A three-judge district court blocked the state’s redistricting plan ahead of the 2012 elections after Davis and voting rights groups challenged it. But in a separate case, the Supreme Court later eliminated the Justice Department’s ability under the Voting Rights Act to identify and stop potentially discriminatory voting laws before they take effect.

Florida: Both sides make conspiracy accusations in Florida’s redistricting fight | Miami Herald

The knock-down fight over the political future of the Florida Senate entered its third round this week as lawyers for the coalition of voting groups accused Republican lawmakers of conspiring again to protect incumbents, while the Legislature’s lawyers accused opponents of “operating in the shadows” to help Democrats. The Senate’s map “smacks of partisan intent” because it failed to maximize population and respect political boundaries, “while offering unmistakable benefits for the Republican Party and incumbents,” wrote the lawyers for the coalition plaintiffs, led by the League of Women Voters and Common Cause of Florida. But the lawyers for the Republican-led Senate and House blasted the plaintiffs for relying on map drawing experts who had ties to Democrats and therefore drew maps that “systematically” benefited Democrats.

Editorials: Illinois redistricting fix has momentum; keep it going | Rockford Register Star

Some of our friends are highly skeptical of the Independent Maps movement to restore fairness to Illinois political map making. “What good will it do?” “Voters are too turned off to get engaged again.” “Change is too hard and it takes too long.” Reasonable thoughts. Let’s start with the last statement. Nothing worth attaining ever comes easily or quickly. The best argument for change is whether you are satisfied with the political makeup of Illinois. Most people who don’t have a seat in government will tell you that they are not. The current budget stalemate is just one example of a dysfunctional state government. It’s going to take a long time to get the kind of change needed to get Illinois back on track, but if we don’t start now that change will never happen. Voters are turned off because they really don’t have a choice when they walk into their polling places. In 2014, about 60 percent of elections for the General Assembly were uncontested. Incumbents won 97 percent of the time.

National: Supreme Court Digs Into Redistricting | Bloomberg

The U.S. Supreme Court’s docket is crowded with voter redistricting disputes this term. The high court already heard a procedural redistricting dispute, Shapiro v. McManus, U.S., No. 14-990, argued, 11/4/15 (84 U.S.L.W. 615, 11/10/15), and the justices recently agreed to take a look at a racial gerrymandering challenge to Virginia’s latest voter map in Wittman v. Personhuballah, U.S., No. 14-1504, review granted, 11/13/15 (84 U.S.L.W. 663, 11/17/15). But on Dec. 8, the one-person, one-vote principle will take center stage at the high court in two separate redistricting cases: Evenwel v. Abbott, U.S., No. 14-940, oral argument scheduled, 12/8/15, and Harris v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, U.S., No. 14-232, oral argument scheduled, 12/8/15. Where the justices ultimately land in these cases could have a national impact. The dispute in Evenwel—possibly the most consequential of the two one-person, one-vote challenges—centers on whether the one-person, one-vote principle announced in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), protects all persons, or just eligible voters.

Florida: 2 redistricting proposals pulled | News Service of Florida

A coalition of voting-rights organizations has withdrawn two state Senate redistricting proposals it had submitted to a Leon County judge, virtually ensuring that at least one district will cross Tampa Bay when the legal fight ends. The coalition, which includes the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida, announced the move one day before the groups and the Legislature are set to file briefs with Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds objecting to each other’s maps. The state Senate has submitted a single map that would cross the bay. Reynolds is supposed to recommend one of the plans to the Florida Supreme Court as the best way to follow the anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” redistricting standards approved by voters in 2010, after the Legislature agreed in a legal settlement that the current map would be found in violation of those rules.

North Carolina: Redistricting challenged in court | Associated Press

Attorneys representing the state and registered voters argued before a three-judge panel on Monday about the impact of a lawsuit filed over North Carolina’s legislative district maps on the state’s 2016 primaries. The plaintiffs say the lines drawn by Republican lawmakers for nearly 30 House and Senate districts are illegal because they relied too much on race. They don’t want the districts used in 2016 and want candidate filing delayed until updated boundaries are set. Attorneys for the state say the judges should delay any decision until other redistricting litigation is resolved. There are three pending redistricting cases. The boundaries have never been struck down and were used in the 2012 and 2014 elections.

Editorials: Indiana redistricting under review | LWV/Journal Review

Few political processes are more important or consequential than that of defining or drawing districts for legislative bodies. Whoever controls where district lines are drawn wields immense power to determine voters’ choices at the polls, election outcomes and whose interests are more or less effectively represented in our legislative bodies. Little wonder then that legislative districting is an issue of great concern to the League of Women Voters and all citizens interested in open, fair and effective representative government. The U.S. Constitution gives the power to regulate the time, place and manner of Congressional elections to the individual state legislatures. The Indiana Constitution, as is true of most states, gives the power and responsibility to define the state’s legislative and congressional districts to the General Assembly. Thus, not only does the state legislature define districts for congressional elections, but it also determines the make up of its own members’ districts. For more than two centuries, members of state legislatures, the legislative political parties and other special interests have used the districting process to advance their own political objectives. Incumbent legislators want districts they can win. The majority party in a legislative chamber wants to maintain its dominance by drawing districts to its advantage. Special interests, if they are powerful in the state, try to protect themselves by influencing the districting process.

Florida: Maps shuffled in state Senate redistricting fight | Florida Politics

The plaintiffs in the state Senate redistricting case have reshuffled their proposed maps to redraw the state’s 40 senatorial districts, saying they want to “narrow the issues for trial.” Part of their reason was the much-maligned “jumping the Bay,” or districts that cross the water from Hillsborough County into Pinellas County to capture a Democratic voting base in southeast Pinellas. On Tuesday, the League of Women Voters of Florida, Common Cause and others withdrew two maps and submitted a new “corrected” map, after filing six versions of a redrawn district map last week. In a notice filed by attorney David King, they took away one map that “includes a fourth Hispanic district in South Florida (District 38) and an African-American district in Hillsborough County that does not cross Tampa Bay into Pinellas County (District 19).”

Editorials: Redistricting jury should pick Florida’s new plan | J.H. Snider/Sun Sentinel

After a regular and two special sessions of Florida’s Legislature failed to pass a legislative redistricting map compliant with Florida’s Constitution, Florida’s courts are now in charge of the redistricting. Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds has scheduled a Dec. 14-18 trial to begin the process of choosing a map from those submitted to him. His recommendation will then be passed on to Florida’s Supreme Court. Legislators have an inherent conflict of interest in drawing legislative districts because in doing so they are picking their voters, which violates the democratic principle that voters should pick their representatives. This conflict results in a gerrymander.

Colorado: Taking party politics out of mapping Colorado’s electoral districts | The Colorado Independent

Three of the last four attempts to map the state’s congressional and legislative districts have wound up in court with both Republicans and Democrats wagging fingers, accusing each other of carving up the state to favor one party over another. A bipartisan group, including two former governors and three former secretaries of state, wants voters in November 2016 to weigh in on reforming how this mapping works. The political bickering, they say, needs to stop. Last week the group submitted a ballot measure, Initiative 55, that would create a 12-member commission made up of four Democrats, four Republicans and four unaffiliated voters, that would take over the mapping from the legislature. The nonpartisan legislative legal staff of the General Assembly would still develop the maps for the commission to consider. After three tries, if the staff were unable to come up with a map to the commission’s liking, the ballot measure says, the map would go to the state Supreme Court.

North Carolina: 2 sides argue in federal court over timing of redistricting lawsuit on legislative primaries | Associated Press

Attorneys representing the state and registered voters argued before a three-judge panel on Monday about the impact of a lawsuit filed over North Carolina’s legislative district maps on the state’s 2016 primaries. The plaintiffs say the lines drawn by Republican lawmakers for nearly 30 House and Senate districts are illegal because they relied too much on…

Florida: Senate sends combination map to high court | News Service of Florida

The Florida Senate on Wednesday recommended to a Leon County judge a plan for the chamber’s 40 districts that was never voted on by either the House or Senate during a recent special redistricting session. The proposal to Circuit Judge George Reynolds, who will ultimately decide which map to suggest to the Florida Supreme Court, would essentially combine two “base maps” that were drawn by legislative aides in the run-up to the special session. Legislative leaders say that process insulated the base maps from political pressures that could have led to violations of the anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” amendments approved by voters in 2010. The special redistricting session, prompted by a legal settlement between the Legislature and voting-rights organizations that challenged the current Senate map, ended in failure after lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to redraw the map to fix districts that violated the Fair Districts standards.

Editorials: A needed plan to bar partisan maps in Colorado | The Denver Post

With any luck, Colorado next year could join a growing list of states that have taken redistricting for Congress and the legislature out of the hands of partisan activists and their lawyers and put it with nonpartisan experts who draw competitive boundaries acceptable to the fair-minded everywhere. Goodbye gerrymandering — that centuries-old practice of rigging the political game by drawing district lines that guarantee single-party dominance. Every decade after the latest federal census, the two parties in Colorado lock horns in a contest to dominate and distort the redrawing of political maps. To halt this spectacle, a bipartisan group that includes former governors, secretaries of state, and speakers of the House released a ballot proposal this week that would create a 12-person redistricting commission comprised of four Republicans, four Democrats and four unaffiliated members.

Florida: Redistricting challenger file six new maps with variations on Miami and Tampa Bay | Tampa Bay Times

Leon County Circuit Court Judge George Reynolds was handed seven options for drawing the Senate maps on Wednesday, giving him the opportunity to be the “seamstress” he suggested might be needed to stitch together various pieces of the proposals. Six of the proposed maps come from challengers to the lawsuit, a coalition of voters and voting groups led by the League of Women Voters. Each of their proposals is a modification of what they presented to Florida Senate during the special redistricting session that ended two weeks ago but the variations offer the judge a menu of options to two district areas: Miami Dade County and Tampa Bay. The variations between the maps boil down to whether they create a fourth Hispanic district in Miami Dade County, or leave it at three, and whether they cross Tampa Bay to create an African American-majority district in Hillsborough.

Editorials: A Sacramento consultant, the Florida court, and control of Congress | Dan Morain/The Sacramento Bee

Charlie Crist, the ex-Republican, ex-governor and current Democrat from Florida, was working the crowd at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club last week and running for Congress. He didn’t know it, but Sacramento campaign consultant Steve Smith helped open his path to a comeback. I happened to be in the room as the well-tanned politician schmoozed. Political junkie that I am, I introduced myself. Good politician that he is, he treated me like a confidant and dished a little about one of his old rivals, Marco Rubio. Crist was elected Florida governor as a Republican in 2006, lost the U.S. Senate race to Rubio as an independent in 2010, endorsed Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, and as a Democrat failed to unseat his successor, the climate change-denying Gov. Rick Scott, last year. Although the election is a year away, Crist is said to be the front-runner in the race for Florida’s 13th Congressional District, which encompasses St. Petersburg, where he has a waterfront condo. The reason has everything to do with a topic that Californians have come to know well: redistricting intended to make congressional lines less partisan.

Indiana: A new study committee set to make a fair Redistricting | WLFI

A new study committee will change the way districts are drawn in Indiana by 2021, aiming to make the lines more fair by the next redistricting. Patsy Hoyer with the League of Women Voters says current districts in Indiana are drawn in an imbalanced way. “If you look at the map of how the districts are laid out it makes you wonder, a few of them, well how did that get defined?” said Hoyer. With redistricting necessary based on the 2010 Census results, Hoyer hopes lawmakers take action to stop gerrymandering.