Wisconsin: Federal Judges Weigh Case Challenging Redistricting | Wisconsin Public Radio

A panel of three federal judges are considering whether to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s legislative redistricting plan. The plaintiffs, a group of 12 Wisconsin voters, claim that the plan approved by Republicans in 2011 is an example of extreme partisan gerrymandering that creates voting districts unfairly benefiting one party. At a hearing in Madison Wednesday, Chicago attorney Michele Odorizzi said the plan drew partisan lines that violate a voter’s constitutional right to equal protection under the law. “You have a right to be treated equally by the election system and not have your vote diluted or be treated differently because of your political beliefs,” he said.

Florida: House passes new redistricting plan, Senate clash looms | Orlando Sentinel

With time winding down, the redistricting ball is back in the Senate’s court, after a divided House voted 73-47 Tuesday on its own proposal to redraw 40 Senate districts. The House and Senate have until Friday, the scheduled end of the special session, to work out the differences in their maps and avoid another costly stalemate over redrawing political boundaries. Eight Republicans joined all 39 Democrats in voting against the map. The move sends the redistricting plan back to the Senate, which passed its own version last week. The differing plans increase the odds that another redistricting special session will end in stalemate without a final map passing both chambers.

Maryland: No politicians would draw lines under final redistricting plan | Maryland Reporter

The governor’s Redistricting Reform Commission wrapped up its final report Tuesday calling for an independent, bipartisan commission of nine people to draw congressional and legislative district lines, with no politicians involved. All but two Democratic legislators on the 11-member reform group voted for the final report setting up the kind of independent commission Gov. Larry Hogan had called for. Good government groups in the Tame the Gerrymander coalition, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, applauded the outcome. The Maryland Democratic Party called the work “fundamentally flawed” and “predetermined by a small group of Republican insiders.”

Maryland: Supreme Court to Rule on Arcane Election Law Issue With Importance for Redistricting Cases | Election Law

Election law continues to be an important topic in national news. Indeed, every year the U.S. Supreme Court decides a few election law cases. This year is no exception. This term, the Supreme Court will decide Shapiro v. McManus and Evenwel v. Abbott. This post will discuss Shapiro. Shapiro v. McManus, which the Court is hearing arguments in tomorrow, concerns a group of Maryland citizens who sued the Chair of the Maryland State Board of Elections and its Administrator, arguing that a 2011 redistricting plan was, in fact, a partisan gerrymander. A partisan gerrymander occurs when the line drawers manipulate an electoral district’s boundaries to favor a certain political party—typically the majority party in power who is drawing the lines. After the case was filed, the defendants moved to dismiss the lawsuit under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a defense which asserts that the plaintiff failed to state a valid legal claim. The case, which was reviewed by one district judge, was dismissed, with the judge holding that the complaint did not sufficiently assert the presence of misconduct in the line-drawing process. The court analyzed the complaint under a standard set forth in two recent Supreme Court cases, Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal which in essence require a claim to be “plausible” to survive this preliminary stage of litigation The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

Ohio: Voters approve issue to reform Ohio’s redistricting process | The Columbus Dispatch

Voters overwhelmingly backed a plan to reform Ohio’s hyper-partisan process for drawing legislative districts, and supporters are already looking ahead to passing the same reforms for congressional districts next year. “Today’s win was an important first step, but it only got us halfway there,” said Carrie Davis, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “We need to take these new anti-gerrymandering rules that Issue 1 applied to the General Assembly and extend them to congressional districts, which are even more gerrymandered.” With 54 percent of precincts reporting, Issue 1, which will change the legislative redistricting process starting in 2021, when the lines are scheduled to be drawn again, was winning with 71 percent of the vote.

Arizona: Redistricting panel disputes GOP bias claim | Arizona Daily Sun

A Republican claim of bias in the legislative redistricting process does not stand up under scrutiny, according to an attorney for the Independent Redistricting Commission. In legal briefs filed at the U.S. Supreme Court, Mary O’Grady points out that challengers to the maps drawn by the five-member commission claim it purposely created unequal districts for partisan purposes. They charge that the panel “packed” Republicans into some districts in a deliberate effort to give Democrats an edge. O’Grady said that was not the primary purpose, a conclusion backed by the majority of a three-judge panel in a ruling last year. She said the real aim was to protect minority voting strength as required by the federal Voting Rights Act. Anyway, she said, if commissioners really intended to boost Democrat representation in the Legislature, they failed.

Florida: House panel tweaks Senate districts, sets up another redistricting clash | Orlando Sentinel

The House and Senate are again poised to clash over redrawing political boundaries after a House redistricting committee Monday changed a plan passed by the Senate last week to redraw 40 Senate districts. The most significant changes shift district lines in Miami-Dade County. Sen. Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, amended a “base map” drawn by legislative staffers that drew more compact districts there but that also kept him out of a district that included fellow incumbent Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami. House redistricting chairman, Rep. Jose Oliva, R-Miami, said he redrew the Senate map to include some changes sought by the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, the voters rights groups who brought the redistricting lawsuit. Because his map includes much of the Senate version and parts of the voters groups’ preferred map, he doesn’t see another “collision course” with the Senate.

Florida: House Redistricting Lines Veer Away From Senate Plan | News Service of Florida

The House redistricting committee voted along party lines Monday to approve its version of new districts for the state Senate, potentially setting up a battle with the upper chamber as a special session on the map entered its final week. On a 9-4 vote, the Select Committee on Redistricting’s Republican majority pushed through a proposal by Chairman Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, that sets aside a compromise on South Florida seats struck in the Senate last week. That compromise, which supporters say protected Hispanic voting strength but opponents said was a crass political move, helped boost a plan that passed the Senate on a narrow 22-18 margin.

Editorials: Criticisms of Maryland redistricting reform fall short | Baltimore Sun

Gov. Larry Hogan’s redistricting commission may have been doomed from the start — its intent to reduce or eliminate gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts running at odds with the intent of the Democratic majority within the General Assembly to keep that particular weapon in their political arsenal. But at least opponents should have the decency to offer intellectually honest critiques. Sen. Joan Carter Conway’s complaint voiced during Tuesday’s meeting of the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, as reported by the Capital News Service, failed to meet that standard. To put it in a nutshell, Senator Conway, a commission member, said a proposed nine-member panel that would be created to draw legislative boundaries — a group chosen at random from applicants vetted by randomly-selected state judges and with balance given to party affiliation so that no one party would dominate — would be “as far from independent” as legislators are. Really? To paraphrase a popular NFL pregame show, “Come on, ma’am.”

Ohio: Voters Set to Rein In Gerrymandering | Wall Street Journal

Ohio voters are expected to overhaul how election maps are drawn as states look for ways to make congressional and legislative districts more competitive and less confusing after decades of partisan gerrymandering. The Midwestern state will vote Tuesday on a constitutional amendment to change how Ohio is carved up into state House and Senate districts. Congressional districts won’t be affected by the changes, but advocates say they could be next. Attempts to change the map-drawing process have failed before in Ohio. But the amendment on the ballot Tuesday passed the Legislature with bipartisan support and has no organized opposition. The redistricting process, which takes place once a decade to account for population shifts, is criticized in many states for being used by elected officials to boost the chances of incumbents and expand the reach of the political party in power. “When you have more competitive districts, you have more collaboration, more compromise—and we feel better government,” said Vernon Sykes, a former Democratic state representative who pushed for the Ohio constitutional amendment with a Republican colleague.

Florida: House Pitches New Redistricting Senate Map | FlaglerLive

The chairman of the House redistricting committee Friday filed a new Senate map that would recast districts in South Florida, opening up a potential conflict with the Senate a week before a special legislative session on the lines is set to end. Rep. Jose Oliva, R-Miami Lakes, said in a memo to House members that his proposal for the 40 state Senate districts was inspired in part by a plan floated by the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause Florida. Those voting-rights organizations have helped lead a legal fight against congressional and Senate maps drawn by the Legislature in 2012, saying that the plans violated the anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” amendments approved by voters two years earlier.

Maryland: D.C. law student takes case against Maryland gerrymandering to Supreme Court | The Washington Post

Steve Shapiro recently pulled his first all-nighter in years. He worked until about 1 a.m. last month on an assignment for a class at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he is a first-semester 1L. From then until dawn, he pored over his brief due at the U.S. Supreme Court, where his battle against Maryland’s often-criticized gerrymandered congressional districts will be heard this week in a case that bears his name. At age 55, Shapiro is not the typical law school newbie; he’s more often mistaken for a professor. It was his decades-long fight with Maryland’s political leadership over redistricting that, in part, fueled his decision to leave his job as a career federal employee and enroll full time in law school.

Ohio: Voters weigh overhaul of redistricting | Toledo Blade

On Tuesday, voters will be asked for the third time in a decade to overhaul the inherently political process of how Ohio redraws state legislative districts every 10 years. Voters said “no” the first two times. This time a broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats, and business, labor, government watchdog, and voting-rights groups that have often aligned on opposite sides of the issue have come together to urge voters to say “yes” on Issue 1. Many are already looking ahead at a similar bipartisan approach with congressional remapping if this one affecting only state House and Senate maps passes. “Fair districts mean fair elections,” said Catherine Turcer, policy analyst with Common Cause Ohio. “Issue 1 creates greater transparency, keeps communities together, and establishes a bipartisan plan. I look at Issue 1 as a reform decades in the making. There is general agreement that this is the proposal that will make a real change.”

Florida: Tensions flare as Senate narrowly passes redistricting map | Miami Herald

The personal and political conflicts that have divided Florida Senate Republicans for months reached the boiling point on Wednesday as the Senate narrowly approved a redrawn redistricting map 22-18 and two powerful senators used the opportunity to point to each other for the chamber’s mistakes. Democrats united against the map, predicting it would be struck down by the court as a violation of the anti-gerrymandering rules of the Florida Constitution. They were joined by Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, and three other Republicans. The vote came halfway through the three-week special session the Legislature called to redraw the Senate map after agreeing in July that it had violated the constitutional Fair Districts standards when approving the redistricting map in 2012.

Maryland: Redistricting reform commission reaches consensus on new independent process | Maryland Reporter

The Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission met Tuesday to craft recommendations for ways to fix gerrymandering in Maryland, focusing on establishing an independent group to redistrict both congressional and legislative districts. The commission hashed out intricate rules to limit partisan influence and ensure the independence of the new panel. The commission will recommend that any new independent commission apply current state standards for legislative districts to congressional redistricting. When drawing congressional boundaries in the current system, Maryland’s governor leads the process, which follows a more general federal standard.

Editorials: Ohio wants a fair map. Sound familiar, Illinois? | Chicago Tribune

Tired of talking about how Democrats in Illinois rigged the legislative maps to elect more Democrats? Let’s talk about how Republicans in Ohio rigged the legislative maps to elect more Republicans. And about how Ohio voters are trying to fix it. In the 2012 election — the first using new maps based on the 2010 U.S. Census numbers — Republican candidates for the Ohio House of Representatives got 49 percent of the vote and won 60 percent of the seats. Republicans running for Senate got 68 percent of the vote and won 83 percent of the seats. Those maps weren’t drawn to ensure that voters had their say. They were drawn to benefit the politicians who controlled the redistricting process. Using sophisticated software and voter history data, Republicans drew grossly misshapen districts, surrounding their allies with friendly voters and busting up communities to disadvantage their enemies. It worked.

Michigan: Redistricting reform and frustration | Michigan Radio

The League of Women Voters has been holding a series of forums on redistricting reform. Everyone who has studied the issue and has any sense of fairness knows that our present system of gerrymandering has badly crippled democracy in this state. Peoples are frustrated, angry, disillusioned, and less and less likely to vote, because they think their votes don’t matter and nothing they can do will have any effect. What’s even worse, they are mostly right. In Michigan their votes mostly don’t matter, not for state government, anyway. Though more voters chose Democratic candidates for Congress and the state house of representatives last year, Republicans once again won huge majorities. Twenty-five years ago, that would have meant a government that might have been unrepresentative, but which would at least been able to get things done. We don’t even have that. The combination of term limits and one-party districts has resulted in a legislature full of craven extremists who have no interest in bipartisan cooperation or solving long-term problems.

Florida: Senate OKs redistricting map; but its future is clouded | Palm Beach Post

A sharply divided Florida Senate approved a redistricting map Wednesday that left critics predicting it will be rejected by a wary House or struck down by courts. The 22-18 vote included unanimous opposition from Senate Democrats, along with four Republicans. The proposed boundaries, which cut one seat from Palm Beach County, head to the House, which won’t review the plan until next week but has condemned maps earlier drawn by senators. Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, said the plan is doomed on similar grounds, arguing it was designed to protect incumbents and favor ruling Republicans.

Maryland: Is redistricting reform a waste of time? | Maryland Reporter

To some politicians and pundits, the governor’s Redistricting Reform Commission is a waste of time. Certainly covering its hearings and deliberations as much as MarylandReporter.com has done is seen as a huge waste of time and space. These stories are not widely read, although Todd Eberly’s testimony to the commission on how “Redistricting should restore representative democracy” was read by almost 5,000 people, one of our top stories of the past two months. Probably anything the redistricting reform commission proposes will not pass the legislature next year or the year after that. It will probably not pass until the first year of a Hogan second term — a reelection Democrats will do their damnedest to prevent from occurring.

Virginia: Fleeting victory on district boundaries | Virginian-Pilot

The slit decision last week upholding the constitutionality of certain Virginia House of Delegates districts is hardly confirmation of good government in action. The federal court panel’s decision does, however, stand in contrast to a ruling more than a year ago that declared Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District boundaries illegal. That determination, ultimately upheld after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a similar case from Alabama, has led the judicial branch to assume responsibility for crafting congressional boundaries that pass constitutional muster. A court-appointed special master has spent weeks considering alternate plans and is scheduled to submit his remedy to the 3rd District’s lines – and others’ – by Friday.

Florida: Senate modifies redistricting map by altering Miami-Dade districts | Miami Herald

Faced with a close vote on a leadership-backed map to redraw state Senate districts, the Florida Senate agreed to modify three minority-based districts in Miami-Dade County on Tuesday, hoping to win the crucial votes needed to send the proposal to the House and win support for the revision in court. The sponsor of the amendment, Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Coral Gables, argued that change was needed to make the districts more compact, in compliance with the anti-gerrymandering provisions of the Florida Constitution, and to preserve the voting strength of Hispanic voters. He argued that the original map, which was drawn by House and Senate staff and approved on a party-line vote last week by the Senate Reapportionment Committee, diminished the ability of Hispanics to elect a candidate of their choice.

Virginia: Plaintiffs appeal to US Supreme Court in redistricting case | Associated Press

A group of Virginians who unsuccessfully challenged the state’s legislative boundaries in federal court is appealing a recent ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The group, which is backed by lawyers who frequently work for the Democratic Party, filed its notice of appeal Monday. Last week a panel of federal judges rejected the allegations that the Republican-led Virginia House of Delegates illegally packed black voters into a dozen legislative districts.

Florida: Senate girds for redistricting debate | Orlando Sentinel

Senators on Tuesday will debate a plan to redraw 40 Senate districts that could shift the partisan make-up of the chamber, the leadership of the body and the political futures of the members. Republican legislative leaders are hoping to avoid another rebuke from the courts as well as another stalemate between the House and the Senate, as happened in August when the two chambers didn’t agree to a plan redrawing congressional districts. But the new redistricting plan has sparked plenty of disagreement within the Senate itself. Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who is currently battling with Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, to become Senate President after the 2016 elections, issued a strong critique of the new plan for not drawing enough incumbents into districts with each other. He suggested the courts could again strike the maps down because they could be seen as being drawn to protect incumbents. “Unfortunately, I see in this plan today . . . I see history repeating itself,” Latvala said during a hearing Friday.

Maryland: Governor’s Redistricting Commission Faces Deadline | WBAL

One week from today, the governor’s commission on congressional redistricting is scheduled to issue a final report to the governor to create an independent commission that would draw the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts. Governor Larry Hogan favors the commission, as an alternative to the current system where the governor appoints a panel to create the boundaries and the legislature approves the plan in tact. Hogan and other critics have said the current system favors the Democrats and creates oddly shaped districts that divide communities.

Florida: Senate redistricting committee passes district map | Sun Sentinel

The Florida Senate’s redistricting committee has approved a map that will go to the Senate floor for a vote next week. The new state Senate districts have been randomly numbered, which now makes it a “legal reality” that all senators will have to run for re-election in 2016, according to the committee chair, Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton. Galvano had previously maintained that senators not up for re-election would not have to run as long as the new district populations were somewhat similar to the old and the districts were numbered the same. But that contentious theory has now been put aside.

Florida: Senate moves on map but rocky redistricting road ahead | Orlando Sentinel

With grudging support, a Florida Senate panel approved a plan Friday that would put all 40 seats in the chamber on the ballot in 2016. The panel passed a new map redrawing district boundaries and renumbering all the districts. Under normal circumstances, only the 20 senators with odd-numbered districts would be up for election next year. That was a point of contention among members earlier in the week when Senate lawyers suggested senators whose districts shift wouldn’t have to seek re-election. But the new map still faces other objections from senators and possibly tough sledding when it goes to the Senate floor next week.

Virginia: Questions remain on conflicting district rulings | WTOP

Disparate rulings on whether Virginia violated federal law by drawing state House and congressional district maps based on race might pave the way for a grand decision from a higher court. The latest ruling from a special three-judge panel, issued Thursday, threw out a Democrat-backed challenge to Virginia’s House of Delegates district lines. State Republican leaders say the lines, and those that shape the 3rd Congressional District that a similar federal court panel found to be unconstitutional, are legal. “Today’s decision validates our consistently held view that the House (of Delegates) districts were drawn in accordance with the Constitution, all state and federal laws, and in a fair and open process,” House Speaker Bill Howell said in a statement Thursday.

Florida: Senate redistricting map gets 4-3 approval but its fate remains murky | Tampa Bay Times

A bitterly divided Florida Senate committee gave preliminary approval to a redistricting redo pushed by Republican leaders Friday that would split Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and force all 40 senate districts onto the ballot next year. The Senate Reapportionment Committee voted 4-3 along party lines to bring a Republican-leaning map offered by Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, to the floor next Tuesday but its prospects for passage remained cloudy. All three Democrats on the committee said they objected to the Galvano map, and two of the committee’s four Republicans warned that they may not support it next week because they fear it could run afoul of the state Constitution’s anti-gerrymandering provisions. “It is defiant. It is unnecessary. It is recalcitrant and I hope that our colleagues at the other end of the hall will recognize the fatal flaw that was placed on the record by our lawyers,’’ said Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon. He said the Senate’s lawyers ordered staff to ignore the allegations in the lawsuit that forced lawmakers into special session to fix the Senate map when they drew the map, a decision that could lead the court to reject the plan and become “another black eye” for legislators.

Virginia: House map constitutional, federal judges rule | The Washington Post

A panel of three federal judges ruled Thursday that the 12 House of Delegates districts that Democrats challenged in federal court are constitutional, giving Republicans a win for now in Virginia’s fraught political map-making battle. The 2-to-1 ruling comes four months after a separate three-judge panel sided with Democrats in a similar case centered on the state’s redistricting of its congressional map four years ago. The contrary rulings ensure that the redistricting battle in Virginia will continue for some time. Democrats on the losing side Thursday said they were likely to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, as Republicans already have in the case decided against them in June.

Florida: Chairman releases redistricting plan amid numbers controversy | News Service of Florida

The chairman of the state Senate committee charged with redrawing districts for the 40-member chamber released his proposed draft of the map late Wednesday, as Republican discontent with a plan for whether and when members would have to run for re-election continued to brew. The complicated dance during a special redistricting session highlighted the delicacy of the issue among lawmakers most affected by the process and underscored fissures within the GOP majority over a lingering battle for the Senate presidency following the 2016 elections. The draft proposal released by Senate Reapportionment Chairman Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, came after an at-times contentious meeting of Galvano’s committee aimed at finding a way forward with a new map that would satisfy the voter-approved “Fair Districts” amendments, which ban political gerrymandering. The Senate settled a lawsuit with voting-rights organizations after determining it was likely to lose a court battle over the lines.