National: Supreme Court to consider redefining ‘one-person, one-vote’ principle | USAToday

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to define what it meant by “one person, one vote” a half century ago. The justices will consider a challenge brought by two rural voters in Texas who claim their state Senate ballots carry less weight than those cast in urban areas with large numbers of non-citizens ineligible to vote. Under the current system in nearly all states, state legislative districts are drawn with roughly equal populations. The standard dates back to decisions made by the Supreme Court in the early 1960s.

Editorials: ‘One Man, One Vote’ Keeps Changing | Noah Feldman/Bloomberg View

Does the Constitution guarantee one person, one vote? Or is it one citizen, one vote? This deceptively simple question is actually profound — and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide it in the term that will begin in October. The answer will define the nature of American democracy for generations to come. The legal nature of the question can be stated simply. In the 1961 case Reynolds v. Sims, the Supreme Court announced a principle that was then referred to as “one man, one vote.” Until then it had been up to state legislatures to allocate congressional districts according to whatever principle they wanted. There was no requirement that districts have roughly equal numbers of residents, which meant that some districts might have many fewer residents and voters than others. The court said this imbalance violated equal protection of laws because it diluted the votes of those who lived in relatively overpopulated districts.

California: Supreme Court could deal California ‘a one-two punch’ on redistricting | Los Angeles Times

In recent years, California voters have backed a series of changes to the state’s elections system to reshape its political landscape. Now, potential upheaval is brewing again, this time from the U.S. Supreme Court. Next month, the nation’s highest court will rule on a case challenging the legality of independent commissions to draw congressional districts. On Tuesday, the court said it would consider whether state and local voting districts should be based on total population or eligible voters. Both cases could have enormous implications in California, where voters first approved citizen-led redistricting panels nearly seven years ago and where the state’s burgeoning immigrant population has contoured the political map, regardless of eligibility to vote. Should the Supreme Court issue rulings overhauling the redistricting process, it would be a “one-two punch to the gut to California,” said Bruce Cain, professor of political science at Stanford University.

Texas: Supreme Court to hear challenge to Texas redistricting plan | The Washington Post

Decades after the Supreme Court set “one person, one vote” as the standard states must meet in creating legislative districts that equitably distribute political power, the justices agreed Tuesday to decide exactly which persons should count. The court, in accepting a Texas case brought by a conservative advocacy group, will consider whether states and localities may continue to use a place’s total population as the basis or must make redistricting decisions based on the number of citizens who are eligible to vote. A shift from using total population would have an enormous impact in states with large immigrant populations because of the greater numbers of children and noncitizens. It would most likely transfer power from urban areas to more rural districts. The court will schedule the case for the new term that begins in October.

Arizona: Legislature, Congress at odds on redistricting | Arizona Republic

Members of Congress are squaring off with the Arizona Legislature, seeking to stop it from shaking up Arizona’s political map — and possibly others across the country — before the 2016 elections. An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision could strip the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission of the authority to draw congressional districts and give that power to the Republican-led Legislature. If the court rules in favor of the Arizona Legislature, lawmakers might redraw the map at breakneck speed in the fall ahead of next year’s elections. They would likely add a Republican tilt to swing districts, hurting the re-election prospects of U.S. Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats. But the impact could be the opposite in other states, like California, where independent redistricting commissions could be challenged as well.

Virginia: Redistricting lawsuits could cost taxpayers big bucks | The Washington Post

Virginia taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $309,000 in legal fees racked up by Republican lawmakers in lawsuits over the makeup of the state’s congressional and House of Delegates districts. Two lawsuits funded by a national Democratic group argue that the maps must be redrawn because they illegally concentrate African American voters into some districts to reduce their influence elsewhere. One lawsuit could go to trial this summer; the other is awaiting court action. House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) hired E. Mark Braden, a former chief counsel to the Republican National Committee who is now with the firm BakerHostetler, to represent the House of Delegates in both cases.

Florida: Miami-Dade plans to finish redrawing voter precincts in advance of 2016 presidential election | Miami Herald

At long last, Miami-Dade County plans to finish drawing new voter precincts, a once-a-decade task that contributed to waits of up to seven hours outside the polls on Election Day in 2012. Later this year, the Miami-Dade elections department plans to send updated registration cards to the county’s nearly 1.3 million voters. About 12 percent of them will find they’ve been moved to a different polling place, under a proposal scheduled for county commissioners’ approval Tuesday. That’s far less than the 55 percent of voters Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley said last year would be displaced in 2015. Her office redrew a minimal number of precinct boundaries — only the ones of the most crowded precincts — to displace as few voters as possible before the 2014 gubernatorial election.

Florida: Senate offers to fund private lawyers in redistricting challenge | Tampa Bay Times

Faced with subpoenas for information in a second redistricting lawsuit, the Florida Senate is offering to reimburse 21 senators up to $5000 to allow them to hire private lawyers to defend themselves in public records requests. The $105,000 allocation is on top of the more than $1 million taxpayers are already paying to defend the Senate in redistricting challenges brought by the League of Women Voters, and a group of Democrat-allied citizens, which challenged the congressional plan and are awaiting trial on a lawsuit challenging the Senate map. There are 8 Democrats and 13 Republicans who have been subpoenaed in the case and 28 districts are under dispute by the plaintiffs.

National: Why the Democratic path to a House majority may run through a courtroom | The Washington Post

Many Democrats are bullish on their chances of winning back the Senate next year, and most sound confident they can hold on to the White House. Few think they have a prayer of taking back the House of Representatives. So now they’re playing the long game – turning to the courts to help deliver what the ballot box won’t. Top Democratic attorneys are arguing before state and federal courts that district maps drawn in a handful of states violate the Voting Rights Act by improperly packing African American voters into a small number of districts, limiting their influence.

North Carolina: State Supreme Court sets August hearing in challenge to legislative and congressional redistricting | The Charlotte Observer

The N.C. Supreme Court issued notice on Thursday that it would hear arguments in August on the challenges to the 2011 redistricting maps outlining legislative and congressional districts across North Carolina. The notice comes nearly three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to North Carolina’s highest court with instructions to reconsider a December decision that upheld the maps. The challengers of the maps had requested a hearing in June, but the scheduled ruled on Thursday sets arguments for Aug. 31.

New York: Lawyers want $6.9M from Albany County for redistricting case | Times Union

The lawyers who successfully sued the county to scrap its 2011 redistricting map are asking a federal judge to award them nearly $7 million in legal fees and related costs — a claim County Attorney Thomas Marcelle blasted as “so unreasonable as to almost border on unethical.” But the attorneys countered in their court filing that the bill is entirely county leaders’ fault — first for shortchanging minority voters and then for twice failing to approve settlements that would have capped the bill “because of political bickering among themselves.” The county “cannot escape the inarguable reality that each and every dollar of any fee award to plaintiffs’ counsel is a product of defendants’ recalcitrance,” they wrote.

Editorials: While we focus on candidates, we lose sight of threats to democracy | Los Angeles Times

Over the past few days, the field of declared 2016 presidential candidates has picked up a few more names, each announcement quickly detailed and closely analyzed. Does getting bounced from her seat running Hewlett-Packard, and conducting a solitary and abysmal U.S. Senate campaign, make Carly Fiorina a serious contender? What about Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and TV host who already failed in his first bite at the presidential apple? Is former neurosurgeon Ben Carson in over his head? For those who follow politics like a spectator sport, these incremental news items are tidbits to be savored. For most of the rest of the country, they are tedious and irrelevant developments in an endless cycle of campaigning. But to the New York Review of Books’ Elizabeth Drew, the campaign minutiae distract from the more important story of the “three dangers” threatening the American electoral system: “voting restrictions, redistricting, and loose rules on large amounts of money being spent to influence voters. In recent years, we’ve been moving further and further away from a truly democratic election system.”

Editorials: North Carolina Supreme Court should move quickly on voting maps | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court’s order remanding the N.C. Supreme Court’s flawed decision on voting district maps officially arrived in Raleigh on Tuesday. With that, the clock gets ticking for the state Supreme Court to make up for its disturbing delay in deciding the case. It should accelerate the process the second time around. Redistricting cases have a special urgency, and this one has been handled with intolerable foot-dragging. The state’s previous redistricting case in 2002 was resolved within five months. In the current case, a consolidation of Dickson v. Rucho and the NAACP v. The State of North Carolina, the lawsuits filed in November 2011 have waited more than three years and five months without resolution. Typical of the pace was the state Supreme Court’s taking 11 months after hearing oral arguments before issuing its 4-2 ruling in December upholding the maps.

North Carolina: State Asks For More Time In Redistricting Case | WFDD

The architects of the state’s electoral maps want more time to respond to a Supreme Court-imposed review. It’s just the latest twist in a long-running dispute over how North Carolina’s political districts are drawn. Now the state officials responsible for drawing the maps have asked the court not to expedite the schedule, saying they need more time to prepare. They argue justices should allow at least two months to file opening briefs and replies.

Editorials: Big Dangers for the Next Election | Elizabeth Drew/The New York Review of Books

While people are wasting their time speculating about who will win the presidency more than a year from now—Can Hillary beat Jeb? Can anybody beat Hillary? Is the GOP nominee going to be Jeb or Walker?—growing dangers to a democratic election, ones that could decide the outcome, are being essentially overlooked. The three dangers are voting restrictions, redistricting, and loose rules on large amounts of money being spent to influence voters. In recent years, we’ve been moving further and further away from a truly democratic election system. The considerable outrage in 2012 over the systematic effort in Republican-dominated states to prevent blacks, Hispanics, students, and the elderly from being able to vote—mainly aimed at limiting the votes of blacks and Hispanics—might have been expected to lead to a serious effort to fix the voting system. But quite the reverse occurred. In fact, in some of the major races in 2014, according to the highly respected Brennan Center for Justice, the difference in the number of votes between the victor and the loser closely mirrored the estimated number of people who had been deprived of the right to vote. And in the North Carolina Senate race, the number of people prevented from voting exceeded the margin between the loser and the winner.

California: State’s independent redistricting panel is at risk | The Orange County Register

Last November, California elected many new legislators due in large part to California’s independent redistricting commission and its creation of competitive districts, resulting in legislators who will be more accountable to their constituents. As a result of Proposition 11 in 2008 and Prop. 20 in 2010, California politicians can no longer draw their own legislative or congressional districts, which in the past has virtually guaranteed re-election. This new accountability has created a powerful incentive for legislators to work together to deliver for their district and not just for themselves. But the tremendous success of California’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is under threat. Like California, Arizona voters used their initiative process to authorize state and congressional redistricting by an independent commission. And now, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission awaits a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on a lawsuit that contends the Constitution permits only legislative bodies, not independent commissions, to draw congressional districts.

North Carolina: Lawmakers tell state Supreme Court no need to hurry in redistricting case | NC Policy Watch

In papers filed with the state Supreme Court yesterday, lawmakers told the justices there was no reason to expedite proceedings in the North Carolina redistricting case, Dickson v. Rucho, sent back here last week by the U.S. Supreme Court — at least not within the time frame that challengers to the state’s redistricting plan want. That order by the nation’s highest court came on the heels of its earlier decision in a similar case out of Alabama, in which the justices held that the Voting Rights Act required lawmakers to assess whether minorities had the ability to elect a preferred candidate of choice and to draw voting lines in order to facilitate that goal — not, as Alabama had done, to achieve specific numerical minority percentages. North Carolina lawmakers operated under the same mistaken premise when designing the state’s 2011 plan, according to challengers.

Virginia: Evidence fight points to secret redistricting talks in Virginia | Daily Press

Virginia House Republicans are fighting to keep hundreds of pages of documents secret as attorneys for Democratic groups push for full access, hoping to find something useful in an ongoing lawsuit over state election maps. The lawsuit targets 12 districts in the House of Delegates, and it follows the same argument that invalidated Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District earlier this year: That the General Assembly’s Republican majority focused on race as it drew maps, packing minority voters into a handful of districts and diluting their voting power in neighboring ones.

Illinois: Group starts new bid to put redistricting on 2016 ballot | Associated Press

A coalition of business, clergy and civic leaders has launched a petition drive and fundraising efforts for a 2016 ballot question aimed at changing how Illinois draws political boundaries, an initiative group officials said Tuesday builds on a previous failed attempt. Independent Maps, which wants to take the mapmaking process out of the hands of politicians and give it to an independent commission, said the state’s once-a-decade process of redistricting is too political. The group bills itself as nonpartisan and board members include former Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons, former White House chief of staff Bill Daley, the Rev. Byron Brazier of Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God and former Playboy Enterprises CEO Christie Hefner.

Georgia: Think Congress has a gerrymandering problem? It has nothing on Georgia | The Washington Post

Want to know how badly gerrymandered American politics is? Take a look at the Georgia general assembly. There are 236 seats in both the state House and the state Senate. Precisely three of those 236 seats are held by people who aren’t in the same party as the presidential candidate who won the district in 2012. The lone exceptions are the in state House, where three non-Democrats represent districts that President Obama won. Republican state Reps. Gerald E. Greene and Joyce Chandler and independent state Rep. Rusty Kidd are the exceptions. Kidd’s district went for Obama by a hair, while Chandler’s went for him by two percentage points, according to data shared with The Fix by the election reform group FairVote.

Editorials: Stop the Texas gerrymander | San Antonio Express-News

Texas has a sordid history of gerrymandering, and the state has been called out for it over the years by the Justice Department and federal courts because of discrimination against minority voters. Constitutional amendments are being considered in the Legislature — proposed by Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas — that would bring more equity to the redistricting process. The need is clear. Political realities work against these measures’ approval, but the Legislature should go there as a matter of fairness and democratic principle. Redistricting maps drawn in 2011 based on the 2010 census were no exception to the Texas gerrymandering rule. After legal challenges, these were improved a bit by a San Antonio federal court in 2013. The problem: Those maps were still based on the clearly discriminatory maps drawn two years previous. They do not adequately reflect the more diverse representation that should have occurred; minorities were nearly 90 percent of the increased population that gained Texas four new congressional seats in the last census.

North Carolina: US Supreme Court tosses NC high court decision on GOP-drawn voting district maps | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that had upheld the state’s Republican-drawn legislative and congressional districts. The nation’s highest court ordered the state’s highest court to reconsider whether legislators relied too heavily on race when drawing the 2011 maps, which shape how state and federal elections are decided. In an order released Monday, the U.S. justices ordered North Carolina’s highest court to reconsider the 2011 maps in light of a recent decision the court made in a similar Alabama case.

Arizona: Races stuck in idle over redistricting case | Politico

Many of the most vulnerable House incumbents have already attracted challengers for 2016 — but not in Arizona, where races are largely on hold thanks to a Supreme Court case that’s threatening to erase the state’s congressional map. The case, which pits Arizona’s Republican-dominated Legislature against its Independent Redistricting Commission, could invalidate maps that were drawn by the commission in 2011 and that give the Legislature power to reshape the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2016 election. Republicans in the Arizona Legislature would be able to draw more GOP voters into the state’s three most competitive districts, potentially undercutting Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema and aiding newly elected GOP Rep. Martha McSally.

Cayman Islands: Opposition says no to election changes | Cayman Compass

Leader of the Opposition McKeeva Bush, speaking to about 100 supporters in West Bay on Tuesday night, urged Cayman Islands Democratic Party voters to reject a move toward “one man, one vote” and single-member districts. Mr. Bush, joined by fellow MLAs Bernie Bush and Eugene Ebanks at the Sir John A. Cumber Primary School hall, said the proposed changes to local elections threatened Cayman’s democracy. “This is not something you play with. This is your democracy,” he said. He urged the supporters to attend the Electoral Boundary Commission meeting in West Bay next week. The commission is in the midst of a tour of the islands collecting comments on redistricting for single-member voting districts.

New York: Federal judge OKs Albany County’s new political map | Times Union

A federal judge on Tuesday blessed Albany County’s new political map, effectively ending a nearly four-year voting rights lawsuit triggered by a plan that shortchanged minority voters. Senior U.S. Judge Lawrence Kahn approved the map over the objections of the leadership of the Bethlehem Democratic Committee, which hoped to file a motion Wednesday arguing that the county used the court-ordered do-over to gerrymander at least one Democratic challenger out of an incumbent’s district. The new map was ordered by Kahn’s March 24 ruling that the county’s 2011 redistricting plan violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting African-American voting power — the third time in three decades the county has been forced to redraw its lines in the face of a Voting Rights Act challenge.

Florida: Subpoenas issued in challenge of state Senate districts | The Tampa Tribune

More than 60 people, including sitting lawmakers, have received subpoenas as part of a long stalled lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Florida’s state Senate maps. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2012, but has sat dormant as a separate lawsuit challenging the state’s congressional lines worked its way through the courts. That lawsuit resulted in lawmakers having to redraw the state’s 27 congressional districts and an appeal is still pending before the Florida Supreme Court. The lawsuit challenging state Senate lines is being spearheaded by the League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause, which were both involved in the Congressional lawsuit. The group will also be represented by David King, the same attorney involved in the congressional lawsuit.

North Carolina: Supreme Court Revives Challenge to North Carolina Redistricting | Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived a challenge to North Carolina’s election map, which civil rights groups complain illegally concentrates black voters in a handful of districts. The North Carolina Supreme Court in December had upheld a redistricting map set by the Republican-controlled state legislature following the 2010 census. But in March, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated a similar lawsuit against Alabama’s map, which also had previously passed muster with a lower court. Monday’s decision, issued without comment, ordered the North Carolina high court to reconsider its ruling in light of the March opinion. The Alabama ruling required a lower court to consider that packing more minority voters in a district than necessary to give them political strength could violate the Voting Rights Act, by reducing the number of districts where minority voters could wield influence.

California: Ruling could change California’s redistricting commission | Press Enterprise

What’s good for Arizona Republicans could spell trouble for their California counterparts if the U.S. Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs in a lawsuit over political redistricting. Before its term ends in June, the high court is expected to issue a ruling in a case brought by Arizona’s GOP-controlled legislature, which is challenging the legality of the state’s redistricting commission. The plaintiffs contend the U.S. Constitution gives legislators the sole authority to approve congressional district boundaries. The commission’s supporters maintain that Arizona’s voters, who approved the commission at the ballot box, have the right to choose who draws those districts.

Arizona: Court cuts political map-drawers some slack | The Arizona Republic

The big U.S. Supreme Court decision affecting redistricting in Arizona, regarding whether drawing the lines for congressional districts has to be returned to the state Legislature from the independent redistricting commission, is still to come. But a decision handed down a couple of weeks ago (Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama) changed the game regardless of who next draws the lines.

New York: Albany GOP backs redistricting map that spares suburbs | Times Union

The two Republican members of Albany County’s redistricting commission have submitted a proposal that they say would draw five majority-minority districts — as ordered by a federal judge — without changing any suburban districts. The plan — which was drafted by activist Aaron Mair, an expert witness against the county in the voting rights lawsuit the county lost last month — has voting age minority populations that range from 50.3% to 52.7% in districts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. Keep in mind, Senior U.S. Judge Lawrence Kahn directed the county to create an additional, fifth majority-minority district based solely on residents who identified as black. Once Hispanic residents are included — something the plaintiffs argued in favor of in the lawsuit — the majorities are even larger.