Editorials: Ohio’s redistricting breakthrough | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

For over a decade, Ohio has been the nation’s most fiercely contested swing state, and its politics are as polarized as anywhere in the country. And yet, lawmakers from both parties somehow came together last week to approve a widely-praised plan aimed at making the state’s redistricting system fairer and less partisan. The state Senate voted 32-1 Friday in favor of the plan. If it passes a final vote in the House, as expected, it will go before voters next fall. The breakthrough comes amid growing, nationwide concern that rampant partisan gerrymandering threatens the legitimacy and responsiveness of our democracy, producing a shrinking number of competitive races and a House of Representatives whose partisan alignment is badly out of whack with voters’ preferences. So, can Ohio offer the rest of the country any lessons? Perhaps, but there certainly aren’t any magic bullets.

Ohio: Lawmakers strike deal on redistricting | The Columbus Dispatch

Legislative Republicans and Democrats forged a historic agreement early Friday morning to change Ohio’s hyper-partisan process for drawing legislative districts and, supporters hope, give voters a greater say in those elections. After days of closed-door negotiations, including talks that stretched to nearly 2 a.m. this morning, legislative leaders emerged in a rare showing of bipartisan harmony to announce the deal. Rep. Vernon Sykes, D-Akron, who negotiated on behalf of House Democrats, noted that he is finishing a 26-year legislative career, and “This is the most significant bipartisan activity that I’ve been involved in in my time here.” Shortly after 4 a.m., the Senate voted 28-1 to pass the plan, and the House is expected to vote on it when it returns to session on Wednesday. Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, voted against it. Both Sykes and Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, the No. 2 House leader and House GOP point person on redistricting, expressed confidence that their caucuses would approve the deal. The deal builds off a bipartisan redistricting plan that passed the House last week. The changes “really make it a better bill,” Huffman said.

Ohio: Bipartisan redistricting reform passes Senate in historic vote | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Ohio General Assembly made history early Friday morning when the Senate passed a House-backed redistricting reform plan before adjourning for the session. State lawmakers have debated how to change to Ohio’s process for drawing legislative and congressional districts since 1978 but have never come to an agreement. The Senate voted 28-1 just after 4 a.m. to accept an amended bipartisan plan passed by the House last week. House Joint Resolution 12 now goes to the House for final approval, which is expected next week. If approved, the plan would go before voters in November 2015 for approval to be added to the Ohio Constitution. Friday’s vote followed days of discussion behind closed doors with few signs a compromise would be reached before the Senate adjourned this week. The Senate recessed from the last planned session at 8:30 p.m. so members could caucus with their parties and redistricting language could be drafted. An agreement was reached shortly after 1:30 a.m. Friday.

Ohio: Faber says he’s 85% sure of redistricting deal | The Columbus Dispatch

Senate President Keith Faber said this morning he is 85 percent sure there will be agreement on a legislative redistricting plan that his chamber will pass on Thursday. The House last week passed a redistricting plan with broad bipartisan support that would create a seven-member commission to draw legislative districts. For the maps to take effect for 10 years, they would need approval from at least two minority party members on the commission. Otherwise, the maps must be redrawn again in four years. Under the current system, the party that controls the five-member board gerrymanders districts to its benefit. The House-passed plan provides new criteria on how legislative districts should be drawn, which supporters say reduces the ability to split up communities and gerrymander districts. It also says the commission should attempt to draw maps that do not favor one political party, and create a legislature that reasonably reflects the political makeup of the voting public, a concept known as representational fairness.

Ohio: Husted doesn’t want legislators to redraw their own district | The Columbus Dispatch

Secretary of State Jon Husted expressed optimism this morning that Ohioans will see a revamped process of redrawing legislative districts, although he is pushing for a key change in the current proposal under consideration. A measure passed almost unanimously by the Ohio House calls for a seven-member panel to redraw the districts. The group would include the governor, auditor, secretary of state, and four lawmakers — two from each major party. Only four votes would be required to approve a new map, but two of them must come from members of the minority party. That means the four legislators could draw the maps themselves, without any input from the statewide officials on the panel. “Essentially, the legislature is granting itself a new constitutional right to draw their own districts without any interference. That is probably my biggest concern about where it stands at the moment,” Husted said during a session this morning at the Ohio State University’s College of Law.

Florida: With Senate redistricting lawsuit pending, court releases disputed documents | Tampa Bay Times

The Florida Supreme Court on Monday thrust into the limelight yet another secret email that reveals the role of political consultants in the redistricting process that could have bearing on the pending lawsuit over Senate redistricting. Tom Hofeller of the Republican National Committee wrote to Rich Heffley, a consultant to the Republican Party of Florida, which appeared to underscore the consultants’ role in the redistricting process. “Congratulations on guiding the Senate through the thicket,” Hofeller wrote on April 27, 2012, after the Senate maps were complete. “Looks as if, so far, the Democrats have not realized the gains they think were [sic] going to get. Tom.” While the email won’t affect the congressional districts, which the Legislature revised and the courts have upheld, it could play a role in the lawsuit over Senate redistricting. Heffley responded: “Thanks. Big win.” He then correctly predicted the Senate composition after the 2012 elections: “Worse case minus 2. 26-14.”

Ohio: Bipartisan deal to redraw maps becoming reality | Toledo Blade

Lawmakers may actually be nearing a long elusive bipartisan compromise to change the highly partisan way Ohio redraws state legislative districts every 10 years. But don’t look for a solution anytime soon on how legislators redraw congressional districts as the newly strengthened Republican majority in Washington has frowned on changing a system that has worked to its advantage. The Ohio House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a proposed constitutional amendment to increase minority input into maps for 99 state House and 33 state Senate districts and improve the chances that races will be more competitive. The Senate president has introduced his own plan in the upper chamber that is also in position for a potential vote this week, likely the last before lawmakers wrap up the two-year session and head for the Statehouse doors for the holidays.

Ohio: Proposed revision of redistricting is progress, expert says | The Columbus Dispatch

A bipartisan House plan to change the way Ohio draws legislative districts drew high marks from an election-law expert who three weeks ago had no kind words for the House Republicans’ initial proposal. The compromise plan “would be a very significant improvement over the status quo,” said Dan Tokaji, professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. Unlike the current system, in which the party that controls at least three of the five seats on the apportionment board can rig the legislative districts to protect its majority and create a host of noncompetitive districts, Tokaji said the new plan contains a number of improvements. “Redistricting reform goes to our fundamental right to vote,” he said. “If lines are drawn in such a way that virtually every general-election contest for the legislature is meaningless and we know the outcome in advance, that destroys voters’ faith in the system.”

Editorials: The Pernicious Effects of Gerrymandering | Norm Ornstein/NationalJournal

Almost invariably, whenever I speak about our polarized politics, the first or second question I get is about redistricting. Most Americans who know that our political system is not working the way it is supposed to don’t know what specifically is wrong. But gerrymandering is something that clearly stands out for many. That is true even for Bill Clinton, who spoke about polarization and dysfunction at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative and singled out gerrymandering as a prime cause. The reality, as research has shown, is that the problem is more complicated than that. The “big sort,” in journalist Bill Bishop’s term, where Americans increasingly concentrate in areas where they are surrounded by like-minded people, is a major factor in the skewing, and the homogeneity, of districts. Other partisan residential patterns, including the fact that Democrats tend to live in more high-density urban areas, while Republicans tend to cluster in suburban and rural enclaves, matter. And the Senate, which represents states, not districts, is almost as polarized as the House. (Indeed, according to the National Journal voting records for the last Congress, it is more polarized—there was no overlap between the parties, meaning that the most conservative Democratic senator was to the left of the most liberal Republican senator.) Senate primaries, just like House ones, skew heavily toward each party’s base, and senators respond. And the permanent campaign pushes lawmakers to stick with their team, even if some of the team’s votes go against an individual member’s more moderate or bipartisan grain.

Ohio: Redistricting reform passes Ohio House in bipartisan vote | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Republicans and Democrats reached agreement Thursday evening to change how the state draws legislative districts. The Ohio House passed the bipartisan plan in an 80-4 vote Thursday night after hours of deliberation behind closed doors and weeks of deliberation among both parties and chambers about how to improve what has become a hyper partisan process yielding uncompetitive districts. Rep. Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican who sponsored the legislation, said the current process has allowed the majority to abuse its power every time it held the pen. “What this process does is provide a series of disincentives to the majority to do that,” Huffman said. The proposal now goes to the Senate, which is considering its own redistricting reform plan.

Ohio: House Republicans, Democrats come to redistricting agreement | The Columbus Dispatch

After weeks of public debate and hours of closed-door negotiations, House Republicans and Democrats reached agreement today on changing the process for drawing legislative districts in Ohio. Supporters say the plan would create clearer criteria for drawing maps, give incentive for the majority party to work in a bipartisan manner and make it more difficult to gerrymander districts. “I think it represents some big compromises on the majority’s part,” said Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, before the 80-4 vote. “The majority will not be able to do the kind of things that have happened in the last several years.” Critics say the current system of drawing legislative and congressional districts allows the majority party to rig the districts to their benefit, which solidifies its power, creates a more partisan and dysfunctional government, and dilutes Ohioans’ voting power. “Now, we have a redistricting system that does not require any balance,” said Rep. Mike Duffey, R-Worthington. “I think that has been destructive to the legislative process.” Rep. John Patrick Carney, D-Columbus, called it an imperfect plan but “certainly better than what we have.”

Ohio: Senate to vote Thursday on legislative redistricting plans | The Columbus Dispatch

The Ohio Senate president said he anticipates a vote on Thursday on a plan that would change the way the state draws legislative districts. But Democrats already say it won’t go very far to end the partisan gerrymandering that allows the majority party to rig the election system to its benefit. Arguing that discussions are not progressing quickly enough on an already-introduced redistricting plan, Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina, rolled out a new plan yesterday that would not alter the current process for creating the congressional map. Faber has said he is reluctant to change the congressional mapping process while there is a case out of Arizona pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on how involved a legislature must be in drawing those districts. Reportedly there has been private push-back from Ohio’s congressional delegation on making changes to the current process, which has provided most members with safe seats. Asked about conversations with U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, Faber would say only that he has spoken to various members of the congressional delegation and there are varying opinions.

Editorials: New Florida voting map tough to unravel | Joe Brown/The Tampa Tribune

Recently released documents related to the decennial redistricting process in Florida show that the firm in charge, Data Targeting, made a concerted effort to benefit the state’s Republican Party and keep it all out of the sunshine. One email even made note of the need to converse over the phone instead of by email. I’m not surprised. Back in July, Circuit Judge Terry Lewis ruled that Republican operatives “made a mockery of the Legislature’s proclaimed transparent and open process of redistricting.” The 538 pages of records show that’s exactly what happened. While redistricting always has been a kind of behind-closed-doors process, what was different this time around was Florida’s Fair Districts amendment passed by 63 percent of voters. Not only were the state’s open-government laws violated, the amendment states in part that “congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party.” The next step is up to the Florida Supreme Court. The groups that filed the original challenge will argue that the revised map approved by Judge Lewis after last summer’s special legislative session doesn’t fix the many violations of the amendment. Oral arguments are set for March 4.

New York: Dispute over election delay derails redistricting settlement | Times Union

County lawmakers scrapped a vote Tuesday to settle a three-year-old voting rights lawsuit after the ruling Democrats failed in a closed-door caucus to muster enough support to withstand County Executive Dan McCoy’s veto and just hours after McCoy sued to stop them. The chief sticking point was a provision that would have delayed next year’s legislative elections until 2016 ostensibly to accommodate redrawing the county’s political map to include a fifth district in which minority voters are a majority. A coalition of minority residents sued the county in 2011 alleging the redistricting plan violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voting power. But McCoy, a Democrat also up for re-election next year, said he saw no justification for stalling the races when the new district has already essentially been drawn and ballot petitioning won’t begin for seven months.

North Carolina: Redrawn political lines create sparse choice for voters | Citizen-Times

In the ideal view of American government, voters choose the leaders who will guide their states and country. But some say the way U.S. House and state legislative districts are drawn has turned that idea on its head: Every 10 years, the party in power picks which voters incumbents will face in the next election. Results of this year’s general election have once again fueled concerns about North Carolina’s redistricting process, one in which the state General Assembly draws lines for U.S. House and legislative districts once a decade. Exactly half of all 120 state Houses races in November featured only one candidate. In the Senate, 19 of 50 races had just the one candidate. Only 30-40 of the remaining seats in the two chambers were truly “in play,” meaning either candidate had a realistic chance of winning, according to state political experts.

Florida: Redistricting process under scrutiny | The News Service of Florida

Previously secret testimony and documents about the 2012 redistricting process, released this week by the Florida Supreme Court, provide the most detailed information yet about an alleged plan by Republican political consultants to funnel maps through members of the public to conceal the origins. The effort itself is not a surprise; revelations at a redistricting trial about a map submitted under the name of former Florida State University student Alex Posada had already indicated some maps submitted through the Legislature’s system to gather public ideas were not drawn by the people whose names were attached to them. But the records and testimony released this week provide the clearest view yet of the breadth of the scheme and how the consultants tried to explain it away. “The documents that these political operatives worked so hard to hide from the public, along with their testimony given in closed proceedings, reveal in great detail how they manipulated the public process to achieve their partisan objectives,” said David King, a lawyer for voting-rights organizations challenging the state’s congressional districts.

Alabama: Case shows redistricting damage | Montgomery Advertiser

There are many things about this country that make us great: our economy, our military and our people, to name a few. But perhaps our greatest accomplishment has been democracy. Democracy is our most precious and cherished blessing, and it is the foundation of our freedom. As Americans, we have a fundamental birthright to control our government and determine who serves as our leaders. For more than two centuries, men and women have risked and sacrificed their lives to protect that right. But in one House district, District 89, more than 200 Alabamians were denied this basic right. Not intentionally or maliciously, but because of the convoluted manner in which our new legislative districts were drawn. Our districts, which are now being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court because of the questionable manner in which they were gerrymandered, have no shortage of faults. But there are two main arguments that have fueled the debate: the “packing” of black voters into certain districts and the division of “communities of interests.”

Ohio: Lawmakers work toward map-making compromise | Associated Press

State Republicans and Democrats are working to coalesce around a new system for drawing congressional and legislative districts with hopes they can reach the resolution they have promised the public by year’s end. States alter political maps to reflect population shifts identified by the U.S. Census once every 10 years in a process called redistricting. Both parties have acknowledged flaws in Ohio’s setup, which has state lawmakers drawing congressional lines and a state Apportionment Board drawing the districts of state legislators. A panel studying changes to Ohio’s state Constitution had seemed to be zeroing in on a proposal for a new system to put before voters. But some legislative leaders say they don’t want to wait any longer.

Editorials: GOP operatives had outsized role in Florida redistricting | Aaron Deslatte/Orlando Sentinel

To hear Republican operative Pat Bainter tell it, he’s a victim of voters’ anti-gerrymandering zeal. When Florida in 2010 passed reforms barring the intentional re-crafting of legislative and congressional districts to help candidates or political parties, it theoretically benched highly paid brains such as himself behind politicians such as Mike Haridopolos and Daniel Webster. In the witness testimony from last summer’s redistricting trial, the Gainesville consultant whose firm banked $2.9 million in 2011-12, declares himself a “second-class” citizen, unable to openly participate in Florida’s historic and flawed first stab at carrying out the Fair Districts reform. “The amendments themselves created a second class of citizen, including myself,” Bainter said in court testimony previously sealed. “They basically made it impossible for someone like me, that was interested in the process, to participate in that process without fear of some retribution, such as this.”

Florida: Redistricting records: GOP-led process was an ‘illusion’ | Orlando Sentinel

Long before the first public maps were released, critics say Florida Republican political operatives were creating an “illusion” of non-partisanship over the once-a-decade redistricting process with a “wink and a nudge toward their collaborators in the Legislature.” That illusion was outed Tuesday when the Florida Supreme Court released thousands of pages of emails, testimony and sealed court records related to the GOP political consulting firm Data Targeting, which was at the center of the two-year legal fight over lawmakers’ attempts to implement anti-gerrymandering reforms passed by voters. The Gainesville-based company’s president, Pat Bainter, has been fighting to block the release of over 500 pages of emails, maps and other records from 2011 and 2012. The records provide some insight into the lengths to which the political operatives went to influence the 2012 redistricting process in which the Legislature had been tasked for the first time with drawing new legislative and congressional maps without partisan intent.

Florida: Redistricting records unsealed; revealing apparent scheme to funnel maps through members of the public to conceal the origins | Florida Times-Union

Previously secret testimony and documents about the 2012 redistricting process, released Tuesday by the Florida Supreme Court, provide the most detailed information yet about an alleged plan by Republican political consultants to funnel maps through members of the public to conceal the origins. The effort itself is not a surprise; revelations at a redistricting trial about a map submitted under the name of former Florida State University student Alex Posada had already indicated some maps submitted through the Legislature’s system to gather public ideas were not drawn by the people whose names were attached to them. But the records and testimony released Tuesday provide the clearest view yet of the breadth of the scheme and how the consultants tried to explain it away. “The documents that these political operatives worked so hard to hide from the public, along with their testimony given in closed proceedings, reveal in great detail how they manipulated the public process to achieve their partisan objectives,” said David King, a lawyer for voting-rights organizations challenging the state’s congressional districts.

Ohio: Conservative and liberal groups agree Ohio’s redistricting process is ‘badly broken’ | Cleveland Plain Dealer

A conservative think tank and liberal advocacy group usually at odds with each other are on the same page on one issue — redistricting reform. State legislators are considering proposals to change how Ohio draws its congressional and legislative boundaries, a process that has become bitterly hyperpartisan as the party in power draws lines favoring their incumbents. Opportunity Ohio CEO Matt Mayer and ProgressOhio Executive Director Sandy Theis released a joint statement Tuesday calling on Ohio lawmakers to adopt “meaningful redistricting reform” by June 2015. “This reform must eliminate the gerrymandering of congressional and state legislative districts, which is more about empowering political parties and less about empowering voters,” Mayer and Theis said.

Florida: Emails show GOP consultants’ ‘almost paranoid’ mission to circumvent gerrymandering ban | Miami Herald

The Republican consultants had to be hush-hush — “almost paranoid” in the words of one — because of their high-stakes mission: Get go-betweens to help circumvent a Florida Constitutional ban on gerrymandering. The plot was spelled out in a newly released batch of once-secret emails that show how the consultants surreptitiously drew congressional and state legislative maps. They then recruited seemingly independent citizens to submit them in an effort to strengthen the hand of Florida Republicans when the GOP-led Legislature redrew lawmaker districts in 2011. The year before, Florida voters overwhelmingly amended the state’s constitution to prohibit legislators from drawing legislative and congressional districts that favor or disfavor incumbents or political parties. Citing the new amendments, a coalition of voting-rights and liberal groups called the Fair Districts Coalition sued the Legislature over its maps. The emails, under court seal until this weekend, played a key role in a recent court victory to force the Legislature to redraw some of Florida’s congressional districts. The correspondence will take center stage in a related case challenging the state Senate maps.

Ohio: Republicans go head-to-head on redistricting reform | Cincinnati Inquirer

A race for redistricting reform appears to be on for Senate and House Republicans, leaving one to question whether legislators will be able to come together and make good on a promise to pass reform by year’s end. Redistricting discussion ramped up this past week as testimony began on a pair of joint resolutions by Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, that would change the district mapmaking process for state and federal legislators. As voter advocates blasted Huffman’s plan, saying it would be the worst redistricting process in the country, the Senate began moving on a redistricting plan that’s effectively been on hold since it was voted out of committee in June 2013.

Editorials: Gerrymandering is a Texas tradition whose time has come and gone | Micahel Li/San Antonio Express-News

Texas gets a new set of statewide elected officials next year — but one thing that won’t have changed is that the state will find itself embroiled in complicated and expensive redistricting litigation, just as it has in each of the last four decades. In fact, it is very likely that sometime next year, the Supreme Court will take up yet another major Texas redistricting case. In some ways, Texas’ penchant for breaking ground in redistricting law isn’t surprising. Texas long has been among the nation’s fast-growing states — one with a complicated ethnic mix, and lots of jockeying and jostling for power and representation. The fights over district lines often have been no-holds-barred, with the leaders of the day, be they Democrats or Republicans, pressing for maximum advantage and letting the courts decide if they went too far. The result has been frequent, head-spinning map changes.

Editorials: Fix this ridiculous map | Cincinnati Inquirer

The fed-up, frustrated mood of Ohio voters in this year’s elections can be traced in large part to an issue that voters themselves have traditionally ignored: gerrymandering. It’s largely why all 16 of Ohio’s U.S. representatives were easily re-elected earlier this month despite near-record-low approval ratings of 14 percent for a body frozen by gridlock. The 15 who had an opponent won with an average of 66 percent of the vote. While Republicans have seemingly benefited the most from districts last drawn in 2011 – holding three-quarters of U.S. House seats and a super-majority of General Assembly seats in a politically balanced state – they realize change is needed. “Gerrymandering is the leading cause of dysfunction in both state and federal legislatures,” state Sen. Frank LaRose, an Akron-area Republican, told The Enquirer. “Reforming this is one of the most impactful things we can do for the future of our democracy.” We agree, and there’s no question that change is needed before district lines are redrawn in 2021.

Florida: U.S. Supreme Court asked to block redistricting document release | SaintPetersBlog

Attorneys for a Republican political consultant have turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in their effort to block the release of emails and documents from Florida’s redistricting process. Lawyers for Pat Bainter and his Gainesville-based firm Data Targeting filed an emergency petition on Thursday to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asking that the documents remain sealed until at least February. The documents were cited by a circuit judge as a reason why he ruled this summer the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature violated a state law that says congressional districts cannot be drawn to favor any political party or incumbent. State legislators were forced to hold a special session in August to redraw the districts although the changes won’t take effect until the 2016 elections. But the emails and documents have remained sealed as lawyers paid by the Republican Party of Florida have asserted that disclosing them would violate First Amendment rights and trade secrets.

Ohio: Redistricting reform for congressional maps unlikely this year, lawmaker says | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The lead lawmaker on redistricting reform in the House said Thursday changes to the process for drawing congressional districts likely won’t happen before next year. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing whether Arizona can hand its redistricting pen to an independent commission with some members selected by lawmakers instead of the Legislature. The U.S. Constitution states the “times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” Most Ohio politicians agree the state’s map-drawing has become hyperpartisan and allowed the majority party to ignore input from the minority party. Ohio lawmakers have proposed allowing a panel with the governor, secretary of state, auditor and four state lawmakers — two each from the minority and majority parties — to draw both congressional and state legislative boundaries.

Editorials: The SCOTUS Should Reject Alabama’s Legislative Districts | Jim Sleeper/The Washington Monthly

With roughly 80% of Alabama whites voting Republican and 90% of African-Americans voting Democrat, it’s been easy for the state’s legislative leaders to deny they had any explicitly racial intent in compressing black voters into a few electoral districts and “whitening” the neighboring districts to elect more Republicans. Districting along party lines is the prerogative of whatever party controls the process, and if citizens are voting in racial blocs, what can a loyal Republican or Democrat line-drawer do but follow that pattern — and perhaps even intensify it when “voting rights” laws facilitate the design of “majority-minority” districts to enhance non-white voters’ opportunities to elect “candidates of their choice”? That’s the gist of Alabama’s defense this week in a suit brought by the state’s Legislative Black Caucus. The Supreme Court must decide whether the line-drawers acted racially, and therefore unconstitutionally, or for purely partisan purposes. But poor leadership on both sides of this question has intensified racial polarization even when voters have tried to transcend it, even in the Deep South. The Court should rebuff line-drawers in a way that points beyond both racialism and partisanship in districting.

Editorials: ‘Sweet Spot’ Elusive in Voting Case | Marcia Coyle/National Law Journal

Race and voting once again appeared to badly divide the U.S. Supreme Court as it struggled on Wednesday over what to do with an Alabama legislative redistricting plan challenged as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The justices heard expanded arguments in two consolidated cases in which the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and the Alabama Democratic Confer­ence contend that the Republican-led Legislature packed black voters into districts in which minority voters already comprised a majority to make other districts more white and Republican. Under Supreme Court voting rights decisions, state lawmakers cross a constitutional line if race is the predominant motive in their redistricting plans. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — before a high court ruling last year — prohibited so-called covered states, including Alabama, from drawing plans that impede minority voters’ ability to elect candidates of their choice. The combination of both directives, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said, requires legislatures to “hit the sweet spot” between using some race in redistricting but not too much. Some justices appeared sympathetic to Alabama’s argument that it was attempting to comply with the Voting Rights Act and other requirements for drawing constitutional lines. Others said the number of black voters shifted into majority-black districts told a very different story. And some suggested the case ought to be sent back to the district court to determine the motive behind each legislative district.