States See Growing Campaign to Change Redistricting Laws

NY Times ^ | February 7, 2005 | ADAM NAGOURNEY

[XHogPilot]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - The politically charged methods that states use to draw Congressional districts are under attack by citizens groups, state legislators and the governor of California, all of whom are concerned that increasingly sophisticated map-drawing has created a class of entrenched incumbents, stifled electoral competition and caused governmental gridlock.

snip

"It's a motherhood-and-apple-pie issue," said a Maryland state delegate, John R. Leopold, a Republican who this year found Democrats embracing his redistricting overhaul legislation after it languished for two years. "We have a situation in this state and this nation where the legislatures are creating our own voters. This is dangerous for our country."

Nathaniel Persily, an election law expert at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said: "Something has changed. Voter preferences are becoming more and more predictable. There is a problem when the turnover in the United States House of Representatives is lower than it was in the Soviet Politburo."

snip

"The drum beat is a lot louder for reform," said Tim Storey, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "But my sense is that very few members of Congress are going to be eager to change the rules on this. It's sort of the devil you know over the one you don't."

[XHogPilot]

Appointed commissions to decide redistricting sounds like more opportunity for corruption.

[Clemenza]

I wish the Californicators would wake up and realize that the best way to gain control of the redistricting process is to ELECT STATE REPS from your party! I LOVED gerrymandering when I lived in Florida, as Jeb and the Florida legislature have ensured GOP dominance throughout the state, despite it being divided in Thirds in terms of registration.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"I wish the Californicators would wake up and realize that the best way to gain control of the redistricting process is to ELECT STATE REPS from your party!"

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True, but it's a Catch-22 when the bad guys have rigged the system so that you can't elect majorities. The GOP has been able to take control of state legislatures that had been gerrymandered by the RATs (Georgia comes to mind) only because the RATs got greedy and tried to have supermajorities, assuming that conservatives would continue to vote RAT.

A good example is the 1992 GA congressional redistricting plan. In 1992, GA had 8 white Democrats, 1 black Democrat (John Lewis) and 1 white Republican (Newt) in its House delegation. Since GA had picked up 1 extra rep after the 1990 Census, it would now have 11 House members. Now, one would think that in a conservative state such as GA the RATs would have settled for, say, having 9 Democrats and 2 Republicans in its House delegation, but the greedy bastards tried to elect 11 Democrats and 0 Republicans! They tried to defeat Newt by making his district go into rural areas south of Atlanta, but it backfired when Newt moved north and won in a new North Fulton district and when Mac Collins won in Newt's old CD. They had to draw 3 black-majority districts because of the Voting Rights Act, and two of them were monstrosities that spanned half the state and were overturned by the courts in 1996---had they made them 50% black instead of 57% black, they could have made them more compact and perhaps they wouldn't have been overturned. The two new 57%-black CDs took Democrats out of adjoining districts, and by 1995 the state House delegation had 8 white Republicans, 3 black Democrats and 0 white Democrats. Even after the black population of several GOP-held districts was increased in 1996 when two of the black-majority districts were pared back (and made only 40% black), the GOP incumbents were entrenched and the GOP held an 8-3 majority for the rest of the decade.

In a state like California, though, the Democrats did not get greedy and overshoot, and instead drew a good number of heavily GOP districts and few districts that could give the GOP takeover opportunities. It will be very, very difficult for the GOP to be able to win back control of the CA legislature even if the GOP becomes the majority party in the state.

[Phsstpok]

The "citizens groups, state legislators" are undoubtedly all Democrats. Arnold is Arnold. I happen to believe that he genuinely dislikes the gerrymandering game, but he also probably doesn't want to play into the entrenched bureaucrats game.

The dims loved this system when they controlled most of the state legislatures that drew the grotesque districts designed to protect THEIR incumbents, but when they lose control of that tool to perpetual power they suddenly grow a conscience.

Bull.

[expatpat]

You didn't hear this until the 'rats started to lose control of state legislatures and governors.

[XHogPilot]

You didn't hear this until the 'rats started to lose control of state legislatures and governors.

My concerns regarding the process aside, I'd say you didn't hear this until the citizens started loosing control of their legislators.

[Clintonfatigued]

They would work if they were under constraints, like subjecting their work to laws requiring geographic compactness.

Voters should choose representatives, not the other way around.

Republicans would benefit because 'Rat voters are disproportionately concentrated in large, mono-partisan urban areas.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"They would work if they were under constraints, like subjecting their work to laws requiring geographic compactness."

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Who would decide what constitutes "compactness"? And why shouldn't states be allowed to create districts that include "communities of interest" that are not necessarily geographically compact? Condo-dwellers in Florida's Gold Coast have a lot more in common with other condo-dwellers living 50 miles to the south than with people living just a couple of miles inland. Let's face it, there is no way that we could set up rules to make redistricting "fair" and politically blind, and I'm not so sure that it would be a good idea even if we could.

[longtermmemmory]

The NYT would say this at a time when they will be on the recieving end of redistricting.

The other leftist area of demand is for PROPORTIONAL representation ala parlamentary procedures in other countries.

They are graspoing at straws.

[Reagan is King]

HA! This reminds me of the "homeless" that suddenly become a problem every time there's a Republican president but just disappear when there's a Democrat in the White House.

I don't remember the Democrats whining about redistricting when they were drawing the lines but NOW it's a big problem when the Republicans are doing it.

[expatpat]

Use a mathematical formula, such as "the perimeter of a district can be no more than (say) 8 times the square root of its area".

Thus, a rectangle 1x9 would be acceptable, a rectangle 1x16 would not; wiggles around certain areas would quickly use up the perimeter allowance.

[Kuksool]

The RATS drew those minority-majority districts beacuse the NAACP demanded more black liberals be sent to Congress. The RATS are kicking themselves for drawing those districts. Slate and other liberal opinion journals now decry minority-majority districts as being racist because they elect more Republicans. In 2012, watch the lawsuits fly around the country as liberals try to find liberal judges to deem GOP-friendly gerrymanders as a violation of the civil rights of gays, pro-abort women, and minorities. Getting those judges confirmed in the Senate is now more important than ever.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"The RATS drew those minority-majority districts beacuse the NAACP demanded more black liberals be sent to Congress."

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There was more to it than just that. The Department of Justice (under George H.W. Bush) had ruled that the Voting Rights Act mandated that states create a certain number of black-majority districts (based on the number of blacks in different areas of the state), and Republicans in many states were all too happy to help black Democrats draw black-majority districts.

Once it became apparent that Democrat redistricters would be unable to stop the creation of black-majority districts (remember that in NC a Democrat plan that would have created one black-majority district was struck down by the courts, which said that the VRA mandated that the state have 2 such districts), Southern Democrats should have told their white Democrat incumbents to stick it and created as many black-majority districts as possible, since it would be unlikely that districts chock full of white conservatives would keep electing white Democrats once the popular (but aging) incumbents stepped down. Had Democrat redistricters created two black-majority districts in each of South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, it would have allowed the Democrats to guarantee electing Democrats in those districts. But Southern Democrats were not interested in getting black Democrats elected, so they drew as many white-majority districts as allowed by the VRA, and now each of those states, which had virtually all-Democrat House delegations back in 1990, have one black Democrat and one longtime-incumbent white Democrat in their delegation, and when the white incumbents retire they will each have only one Democrat in the House. This was abundantly clear in Alabama in 2002, when Democrat redistricters chose to draw a 33%-black district that gave Bush 52% in 2000 for a white Democrat to win, and Republican Mike Rogers foiled their plans. Had they created two 55%-black districts (one in Birmingham and the western Black Belt and the other in black parts of Mobile and Montgomery and the rest of the Black Belt) instead of one 65%-black district and several districts with black populations between 25%-33%, two black Democrats would have been elected. However, electing black Democrats was not a priority for white Democrats in Alabama.