National: Independently Drawn Districts Have Proved to Be More Competitive | The New York Times

Buoyed by a Supreme Court ruling, opponents of gerrymandering want to get more state legislatures out of the business of drawing congressional districts. So it’s worth examining the performance of the independent redistricting commissions validated by the court on Monday. Arizona, via a ballot initiative in 2000, was one of the first states to entrust congressional boundaries to an independent commission, and California followed suit in 2010. Four other states have their congressional districts drawn by independent panels in an effort to make the process less partisan and yield more competitive districts. But those commissions were formed by their respective state legislatures and were not affected by Monday’s ruling.

Editorials: A new look at race and politics in redistricting | Lyle Denniston/SCOTUSblog

Twenty-four hours after giving constitutional backing for Arizona’s use of an independent commission to draw new election district maps for its members of Congress, the Supreme Court on Tuesday took on a case complaining that the same state agency wrongly used race and partisanship in crafting state legislative district boundaries. This was one of five new cases in which the Court granted review in the final round of regular orders before the Justices began their summer recess. Other cases dealt with public employee unionism, states’ immunity from lawsuits in other states’ courts, federal courts’ authority to hear securities cases based on state law, and Indian tribes’ rights in contracting with the federal government over public services for tribal members. All will be heard in the new Term starting in October.

Arizona: Supreme Court to Re-examine Arizona Panel That Draws Voting Maps | Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it would take another look at an independent panel that draws Arizona’s electoral maps, a day after the court ruled states can use such commissions for redistricting. The high court’s Monday decision, which came on a 5-4 vote, focused on allowing states to use commissions to draw district boundaries for federal elections. The new case examines whether Arizona’s panel violated the law in how it set boundaries for state races beginning in 2012. A group of state voters brought the challenge, arguing the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission created districts with varying numbers of voters that diluted the power of Republican districts in favor of Democrats.

Michigan: Supreme Court opens the door for independent redistricting, but it’s an unlikely idea for Michigan | MLive.com

The United States Supreme Court may have breathed new life into a quest for Michigan Democrats to change how districts are drawn. In a 5-4 decision Monday, the Supreme Court Justices ruled the independent redistricting commission created by Arizona voters in 2000 is legal. That commission takes power to draw district lines — creating the areas lawmakers represent — from the Arizona Legislature. Supporters say this limits partisan gerrymandering — the process of drawing electoral boundaries to the gain of one political party — while critics say it takes power away from state lawmakers who were assigned the task by the U.S. Constitution.

North Carolina: Supreme court decision may clear way for bi-partisan support for redistricting commission | Winston-Salem Journal

North Carolina – at least for now – is not likely to feel a ripple effect from Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Arizona’s right to have an independent commission handle congressional redistricting. The court ruling affected 13 states – none in the Southeast – that use commissions as part of their congressional redistricting process every 10 years. The goal of the commissions is limiting partisan influence. By comparison, North Carolina redistricting is handled by the General Assembly, which has received criticism for being partisan in developing map lines, depending on which party controls the legislature.

National: Redistricting litigation persists in key states despite court ruling | Politico

The Supreme Court may have knocked out the best-known challenge to existing congressional districts in a number of states on Monday, but maps still remain in flux for 2016 in three important, large battleground states: Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Continued redistricting litigation — spearheaded mostly by Democrats, who were in the legislative minority in the three states after the 2010 Census, and their allies — involves 51 of the nation’s 435 congressional districts and could allow Democrats to make a dent in the GOP’s near-historic House majority in next year’s elections.

Arizona: Supreme Court agrees to hear new challenge to redistricting commission | Arizona PBS

Just one day after it said the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission was legal, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will hear a challenge to the commission’s Statehouse district plans. The court agreed to hear a case brought by more than a dozen Arizona voters who accused the commission in 2012 of improperly drawing legislative district boundaries to favor Democrats. Specifically, the suit claims the commission “underpopulated” liberal-leaning districts while packing voters into GOP-leaning districts. That diluted votes in the “overpopulated” Republican districts, violating the one-person, one-vote rule, the lawsuit said. A lower court disagreed, but the Supreme Court said Tuesday it will review that decision after it reconvenes this fall.

California: Why the Supreme Court’s redistricting decision matters for California | Los Angeles Times

In one of its final decisions this term, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld the legality of Arizona’s citizen redistricting commission, which is responsible for redrawing congressional and legislative district lines. The case was closely watched by legal and political experts in California, some of whom feared that if the Arizona commission was struck down, California’s could be endangered, too. … Much like Arizona, California approved a ballot measure in 2010 that shifted redistricting authority for congressional seats from the state Legislature to an independent commission. Two years earlier, voters had created the panel, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, and given it the job of determining state legislative boundaries. If the court had ruled differently, the authority of California’s own redistricting commission would have come under question.

Ohio: U.S. Supreme Court ruling clears the way for Ohio congressional redistricting reform | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of Arizona’s redistricting commission means Ohio could act quickly to reform its process for drawing congressional district maps. Late last year, Ohio lawmakers passed revisions to the state legislative redistricting process with large bipartisan support in both chambers. Ohio Republicans then cited the Arizona case as the main reason for not also reforming the congressional redistricting process. Despite Monday’s decision, Ohio voters likely won’t vote on a congressional plan in November, when they will be asked to approve the revised state legislative redistricting process. Lawmakers plan to recess for the summer this week and don’t plan to return before the August deadline to put an issue on the November ballot.

Voting Blogs: The Arizona Decision: Constitutional Reasoning Within the Reform Model | More Soft Money Hard Law

The next few days of commentary on the Arizona redistricting decision will include the usual debate about which side had the better of the “legal argument.” And, in truth, both the majority opinion and the chief (Roberts) dissent can be defended. Each is effectively drawn, making the most of the materials available to it. Each also takes the usual liberties with the construction of precedent and the standards by which particular points—an example being the majority’s reliance on 2 U.S.C. §2(a)(c)—are deemed relevant. More interesting is the way that the majority weighs the reform objective. The majority in the Arizona case adheres to a model familiar in political reform arguments more generally, within and outside the Court. For this majority, the constitutional question cannot be considered apart from the reform objective served by the initiative creating the Independent Redistricting Commission. The “people” are seen to be taking urgent steps to protect against officeholder self-interestedness. So, as Justice Thomas points out in dissent, the Court here lauds the exercise of direct democracy, which at other times is given the back of its hand. The reason for the difference is simple: the objective that the tools of direct democracy have been in this case wielded to bring about.

California: State Senate tells U.S. Supreme Court not to mess with ‘one person, one vote’ | Los Angeles Times

The state Senate on Monday sent a strong message to the U.S. Supreme Court to not mess with the principal of “one person, one vote.’’ The resolution, which passed 36-0, comes just weeks after the Supreme Court announced it would consider a Texas case challenging the way electoral districts are drawn. At issue is whether voting districts should continue to be drawn by using census population data, which include noncitizen immigrants as well as children. Conservative challengers want the system changed to count only citizens who are eligible to vote. Senate President Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), author of the resolution, said he was “deeply concerned by the inexplicable decision” by the Supreme Court to hear the case. Since the Supreme Court established the principal of “one person, one vote” in 1964, it has ensured that all people in the country have received fair representation, the senator said.

Pennsylvania: Bill calls for redistricting reform | WHTM

A Pennsylvania lawmaker is proposing legislation to set new rules for mapping the state’s congressional and legislative districts. Under House Bill 1344, Pennsylvania citizens – not politicians – would be responsible for drawing the boundaries that equally divide the state’s population during the apportionment that follows each 10-year census.

Editorials: Ohio suffers from extreme gerrymandering | The Columbus Dispatch

Last Tuesday’s Dispatch editorial, “ Clinton off-base on Ohio voting rules,” and the Friday letter “ Clinton did not mention Ohio, Kasich” from Randall Morrison brought attention to the important issue of voter suppression. However, voter suppression is broader and more insidious than the length of early-voting rules. The real “elephant in the room” of representative democracy is gerrymandering, and Ohio represents one of the worst cases in the country. Rigged Ohio House and Senate and U.S. House district lines have resulted in Republicans controlling 12 out of 16 U.S. House seats and huge majorities in the Ohio House and Senate.

Texas: In Voting Rights, Who’s a Person? | The Texas Tribune

When most people hear the phrase “one person, one vote,” they don’t stop to think about who counts as a person. The U.S. Supreme Court gets to answer that in a case — Evenwel v. Abbott — that started here in Texas. The plaintiffs contend their votes don’t count as much as those of voters in other state Senate districts because the districts are designed to have the same number of humans in them, not the same number of voters. It’s a simple idea, but changing who’s counted — the voters, instead of the humans — would wreck the country’s political maps, particularly in states like Texas where large numbers of people are not eligible to vote.

National: States Await Court Ruling on Arizona Voting-District Maps | Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on an Arizona tool designed to strip politics from the drawing of congressional voting districts, in a decision that could end or expand attempts in several states to address partisan gerrymandering. Arizona voters chose in 2000 to set up a bipartisan independent commission that would draw voting districts. California voters in 2008 approved a similar commission, and several other states have given nonelected bodies some level of control over district boundaries. The goal is to curb the ability of a state’s majority political party to carve out voting districts that make their seats safer. Arizona’s commission draws both state legislative and U.S. congressional boundaries and is made up of five members—two Republicans, two Democrats and an independent chairman.

Arizona: Republicans Planning Redistricting Push After SCOTUS Decision | Morning Consult

The U.S. Supreme Court is nearing a decision over the constitutionality of independent commissions created to draw district lines, but lawmakers in Arizona aren’t waiting for the outcome to start radically redrawing the state’s political boundaries — for their own gain. House and Senate leaders have already begun discussing how and where to redraw lines, and they are likely to come to some sort of agreement over the summer, sources close to Republican leaders in both chambers said. Once an agreement is close, Gov. Doug Ducey (R) would call a special legislative session to dispense with the new maps.

Virginia: Another lawsuit coming in redistricting fight | Daily Press

Virginia’s General Assembly districts, already under attack from a federal lawsuit, will face a new challenge in coming months: A lawsuit in the state courts questioning their fitness under the state constitution. The federal challenge alleges that the assembly’s Republican majority packed minority voters into a handful of districts to dilute their strength – and boost GOP fortunes – in neighboring ones. This new suit will focus instead on the idea of compactness. Like many modern-day districts, a number of Virginia House and Senate districts stretch into amoeba-like ink blots as they meander across the map, picking up known pockets of Republican or Democratic voters.

Washington: Senate bill would let cities hold district elections | Yakima Herald

The state Senate is considering new legislation to give localities more authority to hold elections by district. Senate Bill 6129, filed Tuesday by Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, would change state law to allow all counties and cities to hold district elections for their councils or commissions if local officials or voters so choose. State law currently only allows charter cities such as Yakima to change their elections systems, but a number of nonchartered localities with increasing minority populations, such as Pasco, have sought to create districts to improve minority representation. Yakima is one of just 11 charter cities in the state.

Virginia: Why the fate of Virginia’s congressional map matters | MSNBC

When voters in Virginia went to the polls in 2012, a narrow majority backed President Obama’s re-election bid, just as they’d done four years earlier. In a closely watched U.S. Senate race, the commonwealth’s voters also elected Sen. Tim Kaine (D) over former Sen. George Allen (R) by about six points. But just a little further down on the ballot is where things get tricky. If you add up all the votes case in each of Virginia’s U.S. House races, roughly 49% of Virginians voted for Democratic candidates, while about 51% supported Republican candidates. The state has 11 congressional districts, so if there was some kind of parallel between voter preferences and partisan results, we might expect to see five Democrats head to Congress from the state, along with six Republicans.

Arizona: Redistricting plan begins ahead of court decision | Arizona Republic

The meter’s running … Work has already begun on drawing new congressional maps at the Legislature, even as the political world awaits a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether that would even be needed. The House and Senate leaders inked a $65,000 contract with National Demographics Corp. in late May. The Glendale, Calif.-based firm is no stranger to Arizona: It did the redistricting duties for the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission in 2001. Back then, the Legislature had no quarrel with the IRC, unlike this decade, when it took the commission to court, challenging its authority to draw congressional boundaries.

Virginia: District Court Strikes Down Virginia Congressional Maps | National Journal

A federal court ruled Friday that Virginia legislators will have to redraw the state’s congressional lines after misinterpreting Voting Rights Act requirements, but an attorney for the defendants said it’s likely that they’ll appeal to the Supreme Court. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled for the second time that legislators unnecessarily “packed” African-American voters into certain congressional districts, ostensibly to follow a requirement that minority voters maintain their control of certain districts—but also limiting their ability to affect other districts’ elections. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the Republican-controlled legislature had packed an excessive number of minorities into a single district, represented by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, when it drew the congressional map in 2012.

Virginia: Federal judges again strike down Virginia redistricting plan | Associated Press

A federal court on Friday concluded for the second time that Virginia’s congressional boundaries are unconstitutional because state lawmakers packed black voters into one district in order to make adjacent districts safer for Republican incumbents. In a 2-1 ruling, a judicial panel ordered the General Assembly to draw new boundaries by Sept. 1 to correct the flawed 2012 redistricting plan. The court first struck down the plan in October, but the U.S. Supreme Court ordered reconsideration in light of a ruling in an Alabama redistricting case.The judges in Virginia again ruled that race was the predominant factor — not just one of many considerations — in crafting the plan, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Virginia: House of Delegates Must Turn Over Redistricting Docs | Courthouse News Service

The Virginia House of Delegates must produce the majority of documents sought by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit claiming a 2011 redistricting plan was crafted to disenfranchise black voters, a federal judge ruled.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Payne’s May 26 ruling was a victory for the 12 plaintiffs who claim “bizarrely-shaped” house voting districts included in the plan were drafted based on a “purely racial classification of voters” that was both arbitrary and unconstitutional. Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell denied the allegations intervened in the case to argue that documents requested by the plaintiffs to bolster their case are protected by legislative and attorney-client privilege.

Editorials: The Costs of Partisan Redistricting | NewsAdvance

Partisan, legislative redistricting, since the dawn of the Republic, has been the bane good-government advocates. Districts drawn to benefit incumbents and the party in power are a disservice to citizens and voters and undermine confidence in the political process. We’ve long advocated Virginia should adopt a nonpartisan — or at least bipartisan — redistricting process, giving the job of redrawing districts for the Virginia Senate, House of Delegates and the U.S. House of Representatives to an independent commission.

The costs of partisan redistricting are high, as we alluded to earlier. Few races are competitive in the general election. Oftentimes, the incumbent faces only token opposition, if he faces any opponent at all. With no robust discussion of the issues pertinent to the particular race, voter turnout is usually on the low side. The public’s cynicism toward politics only increases, leading to a further downward spiral of confidence and indifference. But then there are also the very real monetary costs of partisan redistricting gone bad. And those are costs the taxpayers usually wind up shouldering.

Editorials: The Most Important Redistricting Case in 50 Years | Sean Trende/RealClearPolitics

In a pair of cases decided in 1964, the Supreme Court of the United States famously established the “one person, one vote” test, which held that all congressional districts must have the same number of people, as must all state legislative districts. The consequences of those decisions were both immediate and far-reaching. A wave of mid-decade redistricting swept the country, as virtually every congressional and legislative district had to be, at a minimum, tweaked to account for population discrepancies. Rural districts in particular lost representation, while the depopulation of urban centers helped usher in the rise of the suburbs in Congress. Last week, the Supreme Court shocked watchers by agreeing to hear a case that could have consequences of a similar magnitude. In 1966, in a follow-up to the Reynolds v. Sims decision, the court had held that states did not necessarily need to use persons as the basis for their representation schemes. Since then the court has at times been asked to adopt various different metrics. It generally resisted these entreaties, although Justice Clarence Thomas has, at times, urged the court to take up these cases.

Editorials: In Supreme Court redistricting case, it’s the ‘whole number of persons’ | Bruce Ackerman, Ian Ayres/Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court agreed to take a case this week that will shape the future of American politics. Although the Warren court’s famous “one person, one vote” mandate requires states to draw up election districts with roughly equal populations, the court is only now going to determine the relevant population that must be counted. It has two basic options. It can stick with what most states do now and require each district to contain an equal number of inhabitants: This will favor urban Democratic areas with many immigrants and children. Or it can instead insist that districts include an equal number of eligible voters, and thereby favor rural Republican regions. While the new case, Evenwel vs. Abbott, deals with state and local districting, its logic will predictably control reapportionment for the House of Representatives in 2020, with major consequences for states such as California, New York and Texas.

Editorials: ‘One person, one vote’ should stay that way | Los Angeles Times

Five decades after the Supreme Court ruled that legislative districts must be drawn on the basis of “one person, one vote,” the justices have agreed to consider a claim that representation should reflect the number of eligible voters in a district, not the overall population. They should reject such a radical interpretation, which would undermine the principle that legislators must be attentive to the needs of all of the people living in the areas they represent. That includes children and the noncitizens who in many parts of this country — including Southern California — form a significant and productive part of the population.

Editorials: Two Supreme Court cases threaten to unravel California election reforms | Contra Costa Times

For more than two decades, Californians have struggled to reform the state’s electoral process, to make it less partisan and public officials more responsive. After fits and starts beginning in 1990, state voters approved an independent redistricting commission, open primaries and term limits that now allow state legislators to serve up to 12 years. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court could significantly undermine the reform effort with its review of two redistricting cases, one out of Arizona, the other out of Texas, and both with profound implications for California and the nation.

Editorials: Only Voters Count? Conservatives ask the Supreme Court to restrict states’ rights and overturn precedent. | Richard Hasen/Slate

For the second time in a year, the Supreme Court has agreed to wade into an election case at the urging of conservatives. In both cases it has done so despite the issue appearing to be settled by long-standing precedent. In a case expected to be decided next month, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, conservatives asked the court to bar states from using independent redistricting commissions to draw congressional lines. In a case the court agreed to hear Tuesday, Evenwel v. Abbott, conservatives asked the court to require states to draw their legislative district lines in a particular way: Rather than considering the total population in each district, conservatives argue, the lines should instead divide districts according to the number of people registered or eligible to vote. Most states use total population for drawing districts, which includes noncitizens, children, felons, and others ineligible to vote. In both Supreme Court cases, there is great irony in the fact that they are being brought by conservatives, who usually claim to respect precedents and states’ rights. The challengers are not only asking the court to revisit issues that seemed to be settled by decades-old precedent. If successful, these cases will undermine federalism by limiting states’ rights to design their own political systems.

North Carolina: Voters file lawsuit challenging state’s latest redistricting | Greensboro News & Record

A group of voters from throughout North Carolina have filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that the state’s legislative districts were racially gerrymandered in violation of the 14th Amendment. The lawsuit is only the latest legal action challenging a 2011 redistricting. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the N.C. Supreme Court to take another look at how the legislative districts were drawn. The state Supreme Court in December had ruled in favor of the current legislative districts in a lawsuit that was originally filed in Wake County Superior Court.