Editorials: Texas Redistricting Fight Shows Why Voting Rights Act Still Needed | Ari Berman/The Nation

The last time Texas redrew its political maps in the middle of the decade, Texas Democrats fled to Oklahoma to protest Tom DeLay’s unprecedented power grab in 2003. Now Texas Republicans are at it again, with Governor Rick Perry calling a special session of the legislature to certify redistricting maps that were deemed intentionally discriminatory by a federal court in Washington and modified, with modest improvements, by a district court in San Antonio last year. Republicans want to quickly ratify the interim maps drawn for 2012 by the court in San Antonio before the court has a chance to improve them for 2014 and future elections. “Republicans figured out that if the courts rule on these maps, they’re going to make them better for Latinos and African-Americans,” says Matt Angle, director of the Texas Democratic Trust. The maps originally passed by the Texas legislature in 2011 personified how Republicans were responding to demographic change by trying to limit the power of an increasingly diverse electorate.

Texas: How Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act blocked a GOP power grab in Texas | MSNBC

In 2008, Wendy Davis, a city councilmember in Fort Worth, Texas, narrowly defeated a 20-term incumbent to win a state Senate seat. Davis, a Democrat, enjoyed strong support from her district’s black and Hispanic voters, who had largely been ignored by her Republican predecessor, and once in office she set about fighting for those who she felt lacked a voice. She worked to kick-start economic growth in poor neighborhoods, pushed for increased public-school funding, and cracked down on predatory lending practices targeting the poor. When Fort Worth kids were forced to crawl under idling trains to get to school, Davis won funding to fix the problem. But Texas Republicans were eager to win back Davis’ seat and increase their Senate majority. And in 2011, they used their control of the redistricting process to improve their chances.

National: Voting rights in the balance as Supreme Court about to issue decision | NBC

The Supreme Court is expected to soon announce its decision on a case which many Latino organizations are closely watching – whether Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act will be struck down.  Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires covered states and counties to obtain “preclearance” from the Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before implementing any voting changes.  NBC News Justice correspondent Pete Williams says this is “the most potent part of a law widely considered the most important piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress.” National civil rights organizations like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), National Council of la Raza, the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, argue that Section 5 has kept some counties and states from establishing voting laws or guidelines that make it more difficult for Latinos and other minorities to vote.  Last year civil rights groups took issue with proposed voting laws in Texas and Florida which would have required stricter voter ID or would have limited early voting days, for example.  Civil rights groups said these laws would have made it more difficult for Latinos and African Americans to vote.

Editorials: Striking down voting law will set back civil rights | Raul A. Reyes/NBC

Could a county in Alabama affect your ability to vote? Absolutely. Any day now, the Supreme Court will issue its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires states with a history of discrimination to get approval from the federal government before they change their voting laws. Most of these states are in the South. Shelby County, Alabama says this is unfair and wants Section 5 struck down. Section 5 is not just one part of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 is the heart of the Voting Rights Act. Getting rid of it would be a setback to civil rights. It would negatively impact Hispanic voters. And it would represent a troubling overreach by the Supreme Court into Congressional jurisdiction. The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution states that no citizen should be denied his right to vote on account of race or color. But Southern states for years found ways to prevent African Americans from voting. So in 1965 Congress passed Section 5, to ensure an end to poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means of obstructing access to the ballot box.

Alaska: Judge scolds Alaska Redistricting Board | Anchorage Daily News

A Fairbanks judge gave a stern rebuke to the Alaska Redistricting Board, saying in a decision Thursday that it was not worthy of the trust placed in it by the courts and accusing it of acting in a “dilatory” and “disingenuous” manner. Superior Court Judge Michael McConahy, the judge hearing challenges to the failed redistricting plan under which the 2012 election was held, said the board’s proposal to wait until August to begin crafting a new plan was unsatisfactory. He said the board had the computer power to draw new boundaries in a matter of days should it choose. “There is no reason to delay this process further,” he said.

Texas: Special session on redistricting is damage control | Associated Press

When three federal judges in San Antonio released interim maps in November 2011, Democrats jumped for joy at how many seats they’d gain in Congress and the Texas House. Their grand plans, though, were short-lived. The U.S. Supreme Court interceded and said the lower-court judges had gone too far. Since neither that court, nor the one hearing another case in Washington D.C. had made a final ruling, the San Antonio judges could only repair the most egregious constitutional violations in the Legislature’s maps for the 2012 election. The San Antonio judges therefore redrew their maps, and Republicans maintained unquestioned control over Texas politics. But earlier this year the court in Washington D.C. ruled that Texas Republican lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minorities in drawing their maps. That clears the way for the San Antonio judges to return to the drawing board, and led Gov. Rick Perry to call a special session on redistricting to do damage control.

Alaska: Judge to Alaska Redistricting Board: Get back to work | Alaska Dispatch

As the Alaska Redistricting Board sits mostly idle despite a December 2012 state Supreme Court decision that ordered all 40 voting districts to be redrawn, a Fairbanks Superior Court judge Thursday offered up a verbal smackdown to the board, chastising the inaction and ordering public hearings related to the next redrawing process. “Alaskans are no closer to having constitutional voting districts today” than they were in December, said Superior Court judge Michael McConahy.  Every 10 years, Alaska’s voting lines are ordered to be redrawn according to the latest U.S. Census data. In Alaska, not only are there state requirements to be met, but any redistricting plan must also appease the federal Voting Rights Act. Alaska is among several states requiring Department of Justice confirmation that minority groups aren’t subject to discrimination by proposed voting changes.

Texas: Court’s briefing schedule on demographic and election data, admissibility of D.C. record | Texas Redistricting

A good part of today’s redistricting hearing in San Antonio centered around the admissibility of three key pieces of evidence that African-American and Hispanic plaintiff groups would like the court to consider – namely, updated ethnicity estimates from the Census Bureau, the results of the 2012 election, and record excerpts from the preclearance case before the D.C. court. The State of Texas said it did not object to consideration of updated demographic and election data as long as use of the data was limited to the drawing of remedial maps.

Texas: GOP lawmakers poised to quickly OK legislative, congressional maps | The Dallas Morning News

After leaving it on the backburner for their regular session, lawmakers are going into overtime to consider one of the most contentious issues in politics: redistricting. The goal of Republican leaders appears to be to quickly adopt the court-ordered boundaries for congressional and legislative districts that a court put in place last year. That would set a ceiling for how well Democrats can do in next year’s elections and beyond. Most analysts expect the Legislature to ram though the maps in a matter of days, though the session could last longer if Gov. Rick Perry adds other matters. The districts, while not what Republicans had hoped for when the once-a-decade process started in 2011, are more palatable than what minorities and Democrats might score in the legal arena. Courts found “intentional discrimination” against minority voters in the Legislature’s original maps, and minority groups and Democrats say the interim maps, which have never been pre-cleared by the Justice Department, contain similar problems.

Texas: GOP lawmakers poised to quickly OK legislative, congressional maps as redistricting session looms | The Dallas Morning News

After leaving it on the backburner for their regular session, lawmakers are going into overtime to consider one of the most contentious issues in politics: redistricting. The goal of Republican leaders appears to be to quickly adopt the court-ordered boundaries for congressional and legislative districts that a court put in place last year. That would set a ceiling for how well Democrats can do in next year’s elections and beyond. Most analysts expect the Legislature to ram though the maps in a matter of days, though the session could last longer if Gov. Rick Perry adds other matters. The districts, while not what Republicans had hoped for when the once-a-decade process started in 2011, are more palatable than what minorities and Democrats might score in the legal arena. Courts found “intentional discrimination” against minority voters in the Legislature’s original maps, and minority groups and Democrats say the interim maps, which have never been pre-cleared by the Justice Department, contain similar problems. Last year, in striking down temporary maps that would have benefited Democrats, the Supreme Court ruled that the will of the Legislature should be the starting point when developing electoral boundaries.

Texas: Gov. Perry Calls Special Session To End Controversy Over Voting Districts | CBS Dallas/Fort Worth

Governor Perry wants lawmakers to approve the voting maps drawn by a federal court in Washington, DC that were already used for Congressional and state legislative districts last year. But don’t tell that to Rene Martinez, Director of LULAC’s North East Texas District. Martinez says, “The Latino community has no faith or trust in whatever the Governor’s going to do or the State Legislature as is presently elected.” But Tea Party member Katrina Pierson and Republicans disagree, and say the existing maps would bring consistentcy to the process.

Texas: Special session imminent for state Legislature | Houston Chronicle

Texas’ redistricting battle is about to heat up again. As the Legislature’s regular 90-day session winds to an end, state lawmakers are girding for Gov. Rick Perry to call a special session that could start as early as Tuesday on congressional and legislative election maps. Meanwhile, a federal court is putting its gears back in motion to again take up a lawsuit by minority and voting rights groups challenging Republican-drawn redistricting maps passed by the Legislature in 2011. A hearing scheduled for Wednesday in San Antonio will mark the first time the three-judge panel weighs in on the case in about a year. The flurry of action on the state level on redistricting comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling next month on a case involving Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Florida: Appeals court shields lawmakers from testifying, showing draft maps in redistricting lawsuit | OrlandoSentinel.com

A divided appeals court ruled Wednesday that Florida legislators should not be questioned under oath about whether they “intended” to gain partisan advantage when they re-drew congressional maps last year. Two sets of groups have challenged the lines for Florida’s 27 U.S. House seats, including some voting-rights groups such as the Florida League of Women Voters, the National Council of La Raza, Common Cause and others. The legal fight is one front of multi-pronged litigation against both the congressonal and state Senate maps lawmakers re-drew following the 2010 U.S. Census.

Wisconsin: Settlement reached in lawsuit over state’s redistricting records | Journal Sentinel

Groups suing the state over redistricting have reached a settlement with the law firm hired by lawmakers to help draw legislative and congressional maps, according to documents filed in court Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not made public. Whether there will be any further action in the case remained unclear Wednesday. Every 10 years, states must redraw legislative and congressional maps to account for population changes. Republicans controlled all of state government in 2011 and were able to draw maps that helped their party.

Colorado: Democratic-backed elections reform bill heads to Governor | Colorado Statesman

The Senate on Thursday backed sweeping elections reform legislation that has polarized the legislature, resulting in marathon debate that kicked off Tuesday when Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, moved for the entire 126 pages to be read at length. The Democratic-controlled Senate passed House Bill 1303 by a party-line vote of 20-15, despite the stall tactic. Amendments were later approved by the House, which sent the bill to Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, for his signature. Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, and House Majority Leader Dickey Lee Hullinghorst of Boulder and Assistant Majority Leader Dan Pabon of Denver sponsored the measure. Senate Reading Clerk Max Majors on Tuesday during second reading read the bill for about two and a half hours, with help from staff. Long-time Capitol observers could not remember another time when such a long bill was read at length. During the redistricting debate of 2003, the reading clerk was asked to read Senate Bill 352, but the measure was only 20 pages. Republicans, who debated the bill on Tuesday into Wednesday morning for nearly seven hours, view its passage as a power grab. One by one they took to the well, drawing out debate on the measure, while Democrats mostly sat at their desks, choosing not to speak during the Republican filibuster.

Texas: Beaumont voting rights case sparks heated debate in Washington court | Houston Chronicle

Beaumont lawyers are engaged in a bitter legal batter far from home in Washington, D.C. While filing their briefs for a D.C. case alleging voting rights violations, lawyers for some school board candidates have filed a separate suit over the canceled May Beaumont election, alleging the school board did not have legal authority to cancel the election. Due to the D.C. Circuit Court’s decision last week to hear a case on the Beaumont Independent School District (BISD) elections, judges held up an injunction requested by the Department of Justice.

North Carolina: Prepare for a Special Election in the Craziest-Shaped Congressional District in the Country | National Journal

President Obama’s decision to tap Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency ensures that, if confirmed, he will be playing a pivotal role in housing policy. But it also spotlights the awkwardly shaped congressional district he will be vacating, one of the most gerrymandered in the country. The district was originally drawn to connect scattered African-American precincts in towns from Gastonia 160 miles south to Raleigh-Durham. It now covers a smorgasbord of disconnected metropolitan areas, including parts of the cities of Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Lexington, Salisbury, and High Point.

Alaska: Supreme Court clarifies ruling on drawing new districts | Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

The Alaska Redistricting Board will have to draw a map in line with the state constitution, but its final plan doesn’t necessarily have to be dramatically different from the one that ended up in court, the Alaska Supreme Court has affirmed.
The court issued an order on April 24 in response to questions posed by the board regarding the process it was expected to use in the latest court-mandated revision of the redistricting map. The order requires the board to first draw a map that complies with the Alaska Constitution before making changes to meet the federal Voting Rights Act that requires protection of Alaska Native voters. It’s a process that was set out by an earlier lawsuit and is known as the Hickel process. The court had already found the board failed to comply with the Hickel process in rulings last year.

Alaska: Redistricting Board asks Supreme Court to clarify ruling | Anchorage Daily News

The Alaska Redistricting Board has gone once again to the Alaska Supreme Court, this time asking the justices to clarify whether an earlier ruling requires it to redraw all of Alaska’s legislative districts from scratch. But while the board waits to hear if the court responds, it is doing little else. An attorney representing opponents of the previous redistricting plan has accused the board of wasting so much time that the 2014 election may have to be held under the same interim districts that yielded one-party rule in Juneau in the 2012 election. “They should get started sooner rather than later,” said Fairbanks attorney Jason Gazewood, representing two Fairbanks-area voters who successfully challenged the board’s 2012 districts in their area and fear a new plan will once again have constitutional flaws.

Voting Blogs: Taking on American Political Dysfunction without Changing the Constitution | FairVote.org

In his draft paper on Political Dysfunction and Constitutional Change, University of California-Irvine professor Rick Hasen makes a powerful case for the need for out-of-the-box thinking on American political reform. But he also makes a curious omission. Fair voting alternatives to winner-take-all elections do not receive a single mention in the paper, even though they were promoted in one of Hasen’s major sources, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein’s 2012 book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks. Hasen has a well-deserved reputation as one of our most thoughtful law professors, and his paper has generated considerable reaction in the political blogosphere. It posits three basic claims: 1) The government of the United States is currently dysfunctional, 2) that dysfunction could be solved by switching to a parliamentary system of governance – that is, government where the executive is chosen by the legislature, and 3) switching to a parliamentary system is the only way to end the dysfunction if the problem does not eventually solve itself.

Texas: Republicans, Democrats clash on redistricting | Abilene Reporter-News

Texas Republicans proposed legislation Thursday that would adopt the current political maps, but Democrats promised to fight the effort. Amarillo Sen. Kel Seliger offered a redistricting bill to the Senate State Affairs Committee that would formally adopt interim maps drawn by a federal court in San Antonio last year. The maps for congressional, state Senate and House districts were used for the 2012 election while a federal court in Washington, D.C., reviewed maps drawn by the Legislature after minority groups filed a lawsuit to block them.

California: Bills seek updates to voting, election systems | San Jose Mercury News

In use for the first time last year, California’s online voter registration system proved so popular that lawmakers want to build on its success this year. Wider promotion of the system and a push toward online voting are among several election-related bills under consideration as the Legislature approaches a midyear bill deadline. Other changes under consideration would shine more light on campaign financing and update how elections are run. About 800,000 Californians used the online registration system to join the state’s voter rolls, according to state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who authored the original bill. An analysis of turnout figures by Political Data Inc. indicated that those who registered online were significantly more likely than other voters to cast a ballot last November. This year, Yee’s SB44 is proposing that all state websites link to the secretary of state’s voter registration page in an effort to publicize the system. Others want the state to move even further online and are pushing for a pilot program to test the casting of ballots over the Internet. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, has put forward AB19 to review the security of online voting software and eventually create a pilot program for counties.

North Carolina: Soucek Says College Voter Proposal Is About Fairness | The Watauga Democrat

State Sen. Dan Soucek of Boone said he supports fairness and equity in voting when asked about his co-sponsorship of bills that would impact college students and where they vote. Soucek responded to several questions about Senate bills 666 and 667, which would bar parents from listing their children as dependents on state tax forms if the children register to vote at a different address. The state typically grants tax deductions ranging from $2,000 to $2,500 per child dependent. Soucek said that his co-sponsorship of the bills means he wants to be in on the discussion of a proposal that interests his district — “but this isn’t my bill,” he said. The senator said his support for the bill is motivated by basic principle and by a specific event. “(It’s about the) basic fairness and equity of voting, and what standards does a voter need to have to vote in a community?” he said.

Mississippi: Voter card mailout not without hiccups | The Daily Leader

Election officials want to ensure Brookhaven voters know where to cast a ballot during upcoming municipal elections in the hope of reducing confusion at the polls, but those officials have already encountered a few headaches themselves. In a mass mailing of voter registration cards sent during the last week of March, several Brookhaven areas did not receive the cards. These areas included the Deer Run and Moreton Estates neighborhoods, but City Clerk Mike Jinks has asked other residents to inform him if they did not receive a copy of their voter registration card by mail. The voter registration cards indicate the city ward and county district a given voter lives in. Mailing cards to each registered voter in the city is intended to help inform those voters if they have been moved into a new ward due to redistricting.

National: Supreme Court rejects call to change voting district head counts | Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court has rejected a conservative challenge to the common practice of counting everyone, not just U.S. citizens, when adjusting the size of voting districts across the nation. Without comment, the justices let stand a redistricting rule that benefits urban areas like Los Angeles and Chicago that have a higher percentage of noncitizens as residents. Since the 1960s, the court has said that election districts should be equal in size under the so-called one person, one vote rule. Under this rule, U.S. representatives, state legislators, city council members and county board members usually represent about the same number of people. But the court had not ruled directly on whether these districts should be counted based on the number of persons who live there or on the number of citizens who are eligible to vote.

Arizona: Federal judges hear GOP challenge to AZ redistricting map | Arizona Capitol Times

Federal judges hearing a civil suit brought by Republican voters who claim the state’s new legislative maps were illegally drawn to benefit Democrats questioned lawyers Friday about whether some members of the commission that made the maps were free of political influence. That’s the heart of the case brought against the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission by 11 Republican voters, including the wife of Arizona Senate President Andy Biggs. They allege the two Democrats and one independent on the commission improperly shifted Republican voters from some districts to make them more likely to elect Democrats to the state Legislature on the premise of complying with the federal Voting Rights Act.

Texas: Greg Abbott Wants To Make Texas’ Interim (And Still Probably Unconstitutional) Redistricting Plan Permanent | Dallas Observer

As you may recall, Texas’ 2011 plan to redraw political boundaries was so brazenly partisan, so undeniably bent on reducing minority influence, and the evidence was so mountainous and convincing that a federal court didn’t even bother cataloging it all in its ruling against the state. “The parties have provided more evidence of discriminatory intent than we have space, or need, to address here.” You could practically hear emanating from between the lines a judge chortling, “Can you believe the cojones on these guys?” Texas is, of course, one of a handful of southern states with a history of racial bias that must get pre-clearance from the Feds before enacting redistricting plans.

Arizona: Election Maps Said to Dilute Republican Votes | Bloomberg

A Republican Party consultant testified at a trial over Arizona’s election redistricting that the state’s redrawn maps were the result of a “deliberate policy of underpopulating some districts” to benefit Democrats. Republican voters, in the federal court trial in Phoenix, accuse the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission of “a pattern of discriminatory intent” by concentrating Republicans in districts that exceed the average population while leaving Democrats with pluralities in a disproportionately large number of underpopulated districts. “What you saw manifested is that all of the potential voters in districts overpopulated have had their votes diluted and potential voters in underpopulated districts have had their votes enhanced,” Thomas Hofeller, testifying for opponents of the plan, said yesterday. Hofeller, a redistricting consultant for the Republican National Committee, said that the five most underpopulated districts were what he called Hispanic districts. That would be consistent with an attempt to under-populate Hispanic districts, and it wouldn’t be a logical outcome if it hadn’t been a goal to under-populate them, he said.

Arizona: Redistricting challenge heads to US court today | Arizona Daily Star

Republican interests head to federal court today hoping to realign the state’s legislative districts more to their liking. Challengers are pinning their hopes on the fact that 30 districts crafted by the Independent Redistricting Commission are not all equal in population. Attorney David Cantelme contends the differences were done “deliberately, intentionally and in violation of the one-person/one-vote principle.” The goal of the commission, he charges, was to cluster as many Republicans as possible together in districts, leaving the other, underpopulated districts with more Democrats than otherwise would occur, giving Democrats an unfair and illegal advantage in electing their own candidates to the Legislature. Attorneys for the commission do not dispute the population disparities.

California: Nonpartisan Districting Ousts Life Incumbents | Bloomberg

In the 1980s, a joke that ran through California political circles was that more turnover occurred in the Soviet Union’s Politburo than in the state’s U.S. House delegation.  The laugh-line still worked well after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. From 2002 to 2010, the partisan re-election rate for California House seats was 99.6 percent. Only once in 265 House races in general elections during those years did a district’s representation flip parties, going from Republican to Democratic. That stability ended last year after California (STOCA1) voters in 2010 gave a citizen’s panel the power to redraw the House districts. The impact, combined with a new primary system, was immediate. One out of four of the state’s 53 congressional incumbents departed through retirements or defeats in the 2012 primaries and elections. “You’ve had voters shoehorned into districts for the sake of maintaining incumbency and we aren’t doing that in California anymore,” said Kim Alexander, founder and president of California Voter Foundation. “It was a big shakeout. That’s probably what would happen everywhere if you had fair redistricting.”