Tim Storey writes at The Thicket: It is with deep sorrow that I report the passing of one of NCSL's great friends. Marshall Turner died yesterday in a Maryland hospital only a few short years after retiring from the U.S. Census Bureau. While at the Census Bureau, Marshall worked hand-in-hand with NCSL for nearly 30 years. He was instrumental in the development of the Bureau's redistricting data office and the implementation of the PL 94-171 law that governs census redistricting data. During his time at the Bureau, Marshall probably attended hundreds of NCSL meetings and conferences and was a constant source of information and wisdom. He must have given the "census 101" talk at least 50 times, yet he always cheerfully agreed to do it when called upon. Marshall was a leading authority on redistricting in the United States and was always available to legislators and legislative staff who had questions about the census or redistricting. And he never failed to look out for the interests of legislatures within the Bureau. -- Read Tim's whole post --> The Thicket at State Legislatures: NCSL loses a Friend

I first met Marshall when I was going to NCSL meetings on redistricting. I came away from hearing him thinking that the Census Bureau was one of the friendliest federal agencies. We once had a long talk as we sat waiting for our delayed plane in an airport somewhere. We talked about work, our families, how we got into what we were doing, and so on. He was a great guy to sit and talk to.

My condolences to his family and friends. But I am sure Marshall is already organizing the Great Census in the Sky.

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Travis Crum writes on Balkinization: The OpenRedistricting Project has two separate, but interdependent, components. The development of user-friendly, free redistricting software is a necessary step for bringing ordinary citizens into the process. Once that is completed, a social networking site dedicated to monitoring the 2010 redistricting cycle should be created. With these new platforms, the netroots will have a seat at the redistricting table.

Redistricting software, which currently costs several thousand dollars, is prohibitively expensive for average citizens, leaving decision-making in the hands of political professionals. Admittedly, some people are already working to solve this problem (see here and here). But these programs seek mathematical solutions for partisan gerrymandering. While this goal may be well-intentioned, it limits citizen involvement.

An ideal open source program would allow users to manipulate district lines using pre-programmed census data, demonstrating how simple shifts in boundaries can have profound impacts on a district's racial or partisan composition. Similar to for-profit programs, the open source software would use GIS technology, such as Google Earth, to display and compare proposals. For example, one could watch the South's transition from rotten boroughs in the 1960s to majority-minority districts in the 1980s and 1990s to coalition districts today. The program would permit users to experiment with their own preferences, as well as offer guidance in following redistricting requirements. Indeed, the Redistricting Game provides a useful -- albeit imaginary -- model. -- The OpenRedistricting Project -- Balkinization

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The Birmingham News reports: U.S. Department of Justice officials said Tuesday that they will not accept Calera's 2008 redistricting plan, which means the municipal elections were no good. ...

"Having reviewed these materials, I remain unable to conclude that the city of Calera has carried its burden of showing that the submitted changes have neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect," Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general, said in a letter Tuesday to the city's attorney, Frank "Butch" Ellis.

City leaders learned the day before the Aug. 26 election that the Justice Department would not approve the new districts, which city officials said were created to correct population imbalances stemming from the fast growth the city has experienced in recent years. Ellis said city officials did not have the authority to call off that election or the Oct. 7 runoffs.

During the August election, Ernest Montgomery, the black incumbent from District 2, lost his bid for re-election by two votes to Eric Snyder, who is white.

Although city leaders have said that African-Americans have become a smaller percentage of the city's population over the years, voter registration and school data show otherwise, according to the letter sent Tuesday. -- U.S. Justice Department voids Calera, Alabama's redistricting plan, which throws out 2008 city elections - al.com

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The Supreme Court has decided Bartlett v. Strickland, No. 07-689. The Justices divided 3-2-4.

The Three (Kennedy, C.J. Roberts, and Alito) "concluded that §2 does not require state officials to draw election-district lines to allow a racial minority that would make up less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the redrawn district to join with crossover voters to elect the minority’s candidate of choice. ... This holding does not consider the permissibility of crossover districts as a matter of legislative choice or discretion. Section 2 allows States to choose their own method of complying with the Voting Rights Act, which may include drawing crossover districts. See Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U. S. 461, 480–482. Moreover, the holding shouldnot be interpreted to entrench majority-minority districts by statutory command, for that, too, could pose constitutional concerns. See, e.g., Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900. Such districts are only re-quired if all three Gingles factors are met and if §2 applies based onthe totality of the circumstances."

The Two (Thomas and Scalia) said "the text of §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 does notauthorize any vote dilution claim, regardless of the size of the minor-ity population in a given district."

The Four (Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer) filed one dissent in which all joined and Justices Ginsburg and Breyer filed additional dissents. Justice Souter's opinion stated, "I would hold that ... a district may be a minority-opportunity district so long as a cohesive minority population is large enough to elect its chosen candidate when combined with a reliable number of crossover voters from an otherwise polarized majority."

Justice Ginsburg said, "Today’s decision returns the ball to Congress’ court. The Legislature has just cause to clarify beyond debate the appropriate reading of §2." [Can the introduction of a Voting Rights Act of 2009 be far?]

Justice Breyer's opinion asks, "Why not use a numerical gateway rule that looks more directly at the relevant question: Is the minority bloc large enough, is it cohesive enough, is the necessary majority crossover vote small enough, so that the minority (tending to vote cohesively) can likely vote its preferred candidate (rather than a consensus candidate) into office?" and proposes a a new test: "Suppose we pick a numeri-cal ratio that requires the minority voting age population to be twice as large as the percentage of majority crossovervotes needed to elect the minority’s preferred candidate.We would calculate the latter (the percentage of majoritycrossover votes the minority voters need) to take accountof both the percentage of minority voting age population in the district and the cohesiveness with which they vote."

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The Hill reports: As Republicans brace for a 2010 election cycle that begins their long road back to the majority, they do have one major weapon in their arsenal — redistricting. ...

The 2010 census could add multiple House seats to red-leaning states — as many as four districts to Texas and two each to Arizona and Florida. And it could subtract seats from blue-trending states like Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Most of the states slated to gain seats in reapportionment next cycle feature Republican-controlled state legislatures and governor’s mansions — the powerhouses that decide how to allocate congressional districts.

States expecting to lose seats are more of a mixed bag, with most facing split control in those branches of government, which generally results in compromise.

Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, said there will be a premium on total control of the redistricting process this time, since after the last round the Supreme Court showed reluctance to rein in extreme cases of gerrymandering. -- Redistricting is a hidden weapon for gloomy GOP

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The Washington Post reports: Charles "Chuck" Morgan Jr., 78, a civil rights lawyer who challenged the racist society of his native South and won numerous landmark cases for equal rights before the U.S. Supreme Court, died Jan. 8 at his home in Destin, Fla. He had Alzheimer's disease.

In a career full of significant cases, Mr. Morgan's most important might have been the "one-man, one-vote" ruling he won in 1964 from the Supreme Court. The case, Reynolds v. Sims, forced the Alabama legislature to create districts that were equal in population, giving black voters a better chance to elect candidates.

He also forced Alabama to integrate its prisons, successfully challenged the Southern practice of barring women and blacks from jury duty, and represented Julian Bond when the Georgia General Assembly tried to prevent the newly elected legislator from taking his seat after he spoke out against the Vietnam War.

"He was one of the most important people" in civil rights litigation, said Bond, now the chairman of the NAACP's national board. "He did in the South through the courts what Martin Luther King did in the streets."

The Reynolds case "ended gerrymandering," said Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "It was one of the seminal cases in the march for voting rights in this country and was the death knell for voting discrimination in the South. Chuck's work in voting rights cases and jury discrimination cases changed the landscape of the South completely." -- Charles Morgan Jr.; Lawyer Championed Civil, Voting Rights - washingtonpost.com

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The Mobile Press-Register reports: A proposed redistricting plan for the Mobile City Council would knock at least one potential contender out of next year's election before it even begins.

The would-be candidate said he believes dirty politics are at play, but city officials said it was just a coincidence.

Mobile Fire-Rescue Department Capt. Bryan Lee said he told Council President Reggie Copeland more than a year ago that he planned to run for Copeland's District 5 seat in the 2009 municipal elections.

But the proposed redistricting plan, which the council could approve Tuesday, would move Lee's home from District 5 to District 6. Lee said he will not run in District 6 because Connie Hudson, who represents that area, has been a strong supporter of the fire department and retired firefighters. -- Redistrict plan threatens candidacy - al.com

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The New York Times reports: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has spent more than $2 million from his campaign coffers to support a ballot proposition that could profoundly alter the composition, and perhaps the governing style, of the California Legislature. ...

Under the proposal, the responsibility for drawing the new boundaries for legislative districts — in both the Senate and the Assembly — would shift from the Legislature to a new 14-member commission comprising five Democrats, five Republicans and four independent or minor-party voters who would draw new maps every 10 years, corresponding with the census cycle.

California’s legislative districts, which resemble little oil spills when viewed on a map, are heavily gerrymandered. Not one of the 120 seats changed party hands in the last two elections, held two and four years ago.

The initiative, which was largely written by Common Cause and the AARP, is supported by Mr. Schwarzenegger, various former state officials and the League of Women Voters. -- Plan on California Ballot for New Districting Panel - NYTimes.com

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From a press release: Today, Americans for Redistricting Reform (ARR), a national nonpartisan umbrella organization committed to raising public awareness of redistricting abuses and promoting solutions that benefit voters and strengthen our democracy, announced its formation and launched a new website: www.americansforredistrictingreform.org.

ARR is comprised of groups from across the political spectrum that recognize the critical need to reform our nation’s redistricting process. Advisory Committee member organizations in ARR include: Brennan Center for Justice, Campaign Legal Center, Committee for Economic Development, Common Cause, Council for Excellence in Government, Fair Vote, League of Women Voters, Reform Institute, Republican Main Street Partnership, and U.S. PIRG. A number of civil rights groups are also involved in this project and have offered helpful advice and information on redistricting reform.

In conjunction with the web launch, numerous advisory committee member organizations sent a letter today to the House urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner to hold hearings on pending redistricting reform legislation introduced in the first year of the 110th Congress (the full letter is below).

The letter asks House Leadership to take action on reforming the redistricting process before the post-2010 census round of redistricting gets underway. The letter notes that redistricting reform will bring about more transparency and an expanded role in the process for our citizens, and will help ensure that competitiveness, accountability and fair representation remain healthy parts of our democratic process.

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The Mobile Press-Register reports: This south Baldwin city will advance to the Aug. 26 municipal election using districts drawn in 2004, according to a vote by elected leaders this week.

That means more than 1,000 residents who live within 74 areas that have been annexed into Foley since 2004 won't be able to vote in City Council races as the five council districts' borders were established before the properties were part of the city.

Residents in those areas will, however, be able to vote in the mayoral race between incumbent John Konair and challenger James Wood.

The City Council voted unanimously to move forward with that plan after Koniar told officials at a special 5:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting that as of that afternoon, the U.S. Department of Justice hadn't approved the proposed 2008 map. That left city leaders no choice but to use the already approved 2004 map, Konair said. -- Districts from 2004 to be used for voting- al.com

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Legal Newsline reports: Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has voiced concern over a proposed constitutional amendment that would change how lawmakers draw legislative boundaries.

In a letter to the state Supreme Court, the Republican attorney general said Friday that a proposed ballot summary fails to adequately explain the proposal would require that congressional districts be comprised of contiguous territory.

That, he said, would outlaw the multi-member districts that are currently allowed. ...

The ballot initiative is being pushed by FairDistrictsFlorida.org, which is co-chaired by former Democratic Gov. Bob Graham and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

The group is essentially seeking to place on the 2010 ballot a constitutional ban against gerrymandering, where legislative boundaries are drawn to give political advantage to one party over another. -- LegalNewsline | McCollum criticizes redistricting proposal

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PolitickerPA.com reports: One reliable source in the state house has confirmed any redistricting reform is unlikely to happen this year, and if it were to happen at all, next year would be the most likely scenario. The problem is, any redistrict reform that involved moving the decision from the legislature to an independent board requires a constitutional amendment. For the matter to be put on the ballot for the public to approve, the same bill must be passed by two consecutive sessions. That means for there to be a change before the next redistricting occurs; a bill must be passed this summer. -- Redistricting reform most likely to happen next year, if at all | PolitickerPA

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Baldwin County Now.com reports: A letter from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division concerning Foley’s recently submitted redistricting plan has raised questions for now about the upcoming municipal election slated for Aug. 26.

Indeed, who would run the city should a mayor and council be prevented by the Justice Department from taking office is one of the points now being researched, according to City Administrator Perry Wilbourne.

Wilbourne, in comments made Thursday, said the city received a four-page, 11-point letter from the Justice Department on Monday afternoon, June 16, a letter he saw for the first time on Tuesday.

“Each will require a response from us,” said Wilbourne of the 11 points.

“This is where they’re questioning the (redistricting) plan, they’re then asking us to explain more of the methodolgies.” -- Municipal election up in air over redistricting - Baldwin County NOW - A Gulf Coast Information Source for South Alabama

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George Skelton writes in the Los Angeles Times: Here's an indication of how rotten Democratic-led gerrymandering is in California:

A national Democratic organization is branding us one of a "Dirty Dozen" states that has rigged elections and significantly suppressed voter participation. ...

Nationally, almost 11 million votes were suppressed by gerrymandering, Dunkelman asserts. Of these, 9 million were in the "Dirty Dozen" states. Besides California, they're Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. -- California is branded among a 'Dirty Dozen' on gerrymandering - Los Angeles Times

Hat-tip to Rick Hasen for the link.

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The Dallas Morning News reports: An unsuccessful school board candidate filed a federal lawsuit today alleging that the Irving school district’s system of at-large elections for trustees violates the law by denying representation to the school district’s Hispanic citizens.

Manuel Benavidez, who twice ran unsuccessfully for a place on the Irving school board, is the named plaintiff in the lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys for the Dallas firm Bickel & Brewer. The named defendants are Irving ISD and its seven elected trustees. -- Voting lawsuit filed today against Irving school district | Denton Record-Chronicle | News for Denton County, Texas | Latest News

Note: the case is not on Pacer yet. If anyone has the complaint, please email it to me for posting.

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AP reports: Democrats challenging Arizona s legislative districts are appealing a court ruling that leaves the map in place and sets a high legal bar for challengers to clear.

Lawyers for the challengers are asking the Arizona Supreme Court to review a state Court of Appeals decision overturning a trial judge s ruling and upholding the map drawn by a commission.

The petition filed Thursday said the Supreme Court should hear the appeal because there are major conflicts between prior Court of Appeals rulings on how redistricting must be done by a state commission and that errors need to be corrected "once and for all" before redistricting begins again in 2010. ...

The conflicts concern whether the commission must favor creating competitive districts or merely consider creating them, when it must do so in its process and whether it has powers and privileges of a legislative or an administrative body, the petition stated. -- State Democrats appeal legislative redistricting ruling

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The New York Times reports: The buzz these days is that American politics may be entering a “postpartisan” era, as a new generation finds the old ideological quarrels among baby boomers to be increasingly irrelevant. In reality, matters are not so simple. Far from being postpartisan, today’s young adults are significantly more likely to identify as Democrats than were their predecessors. Along with colleagues at the Brookings and Hoover institutions, we recently completed a comprehensive study of the nation’s polarization. Our research concludes not only that the ideological differences between the political parties are growing but also that they have become embedded in American society itself. ...

But polarization has proceeded even further than these shifts made necessary. The great majority of voters now fuse their party identification, ideology and decisions in the voting booth. The share of Democrats who could be called conservative has shrunk, and so has the share of liberal Republicans. The American National Election Studies asks voters a series of issues-based questions and then arrays respondents along a 15-point scale from -7 (the most liberal) to +7 (the most conservative). These data indicate that 41 percent of the voters in 1984 were located at or near the midpoint of the ideological spectrum, compared with only 28 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters clustering toward the left and right tails of the spectrum rose from 10 to 23 percent. ...

Our study shows that this geographical sorting worsens polarization in several ways. When counties become more homogeneous, it becomes harder to use redistricting to create more competitive Congressional districts. (Recent research indicates that gerrymandering accounts for, at the very most, one-third of noncompetitive districts in the House of Representatives.) When states become more homogeneous, presidential campaigns begin by conceding a large number of contests to the opposition, disheartening their supporters in those states and increasing the majority’s electoral advantage. Polarization feeds on itself. -- Vote Like Thy Neighbor

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The Arizona Republic reports: The boundaries of the state s legislative districts for this fall s elections will remain the same as they have been for the past three years.

That s the immediate impact of a state Court of Appeals ruling handed down Thursday in a redistricting dispute.

And it could spell the end of the seven-year legal battle, since any continued fight would only affect legislative elections in 2010. After that, a new census is taken and new lines are drawn.

The court rejected an appeal from a coalition of Latinos and Democrats who claimed the map outlining Arizona s 30 legislative districts was drawn without consideration of the districts competitiveness. -- State s legislative-district boundaries to remain same

The court's opinion is on its website, Arizona Minority Coalition v. Arizona IRC, CA-CV 07-0301.

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The Hattiesburg American reports: A decision on whether Hattiesburg s City Council wards should be redrawn now rests with U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett.

The trial of a 2006 lawsuit against the city ended Wednesday with the city s attorneys not calling any witnesses.

Starrett did not provide a date for a decision but gave attorneys for both sides 30 days to submit written arguments. The plaintiffs attorney is Ellis Turnage; representing the city is Jerry Mills. ...

The group of black residents who filed the lawsuit want Starrett to eliminate college students from the mix and redistrict the city in accordance with 2006 data that suggest blacks would comprise at least 55 percent of the total voting age population when transient students are excluded.

The lawsuit says the City Council unfairly included more than 3,000 transient University of Southern Mississippi students in the equation used to draw Hattiesburg s 2002 redistricting plan.

They argue that including the students in the city s voting age population dilutes the strength of black voters. -- Hattiesburg American - www.hattiesburgamerican.com - Hattiesburg, Miss.

The complaint can be downloaded here.

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Inside Bay Area reports: In a display of bipartisan unity, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Controller Steve Westly, a Democrat, went from table to table at a local restaurant this week, beseeching diners to sign a petition supporting a new redistricting initiative.

But where it counts — in campaign contributions — there is a more partisan tinge to the ballot drive than the image promoted by backers. Republicans, who would love to cut into the Democratic stranglehold on the Legislature, have been far more enthusiastic donors than Democrats.

Nearly all of the $542,500 raised so far by California Voters First has come from donors who typically give to Republican candidates and GOP causes, according to campaign finance reports.

"If they don't fix that, they're in trouble," said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State University who has served on the Voices of Reform board advocating redistricting reform. "If Democrats don't start contributing, people will say, 'Who's this helping and whose ox is being gored?'" -- Push to redistrict remains partisan - Inside Bay Area

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The Herald reports: THE first proposals for constituency boundary changes since devolution sent MSPs scurrying to their back offices with advisers yesterday. Who might lose? Who might gain? Which comrades might be rivals for a combined seat? ...

The secretary of the Boundary Commission for Scotland was much more sanguine. "MSPs' careers are really not my bag," explained Dr Hugh Buchanan, the calmest voice on the whole issue yesterday.

The reason for Dr Buchanan's calm at the centre of the storm of speculation is that the commission works to statute and the statute is pretty tight.

They work out what the average seat size should be, they try to fit these into local authority boundaries, then they deal with knock-ons from that until they have an overall plan they are prepared to put before the public. -- How The Flight To Suburbia Has Redrawn Scottish Political Map (from The Herald )

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The Rapid City Journal reports: The U.S. Justice Department has blocked Charles Mix County from putting in place a voter-passed redistricting plan that would have increased the commission from three to five members.

A letter from the Justice Department said the blocked plan likely would have allowed Native Americans to elect one commissioner out of five instead of one out of three.

The county failed to show that the redistricting plan, approved by voters in 2006, did not have a discriminatory purpose as defined in the federal Voting Rights Act.

The county has not demonstrated that the change would not have hurt voting rights based on race, according to the letter written by acting assistant attorney general Race Chung Becker. -- Justice Department blocks Charles Mix redistricting plan » RapidCityJournal.com

The ACLU's press release (including a copy of the DOJ objection letter) is here.

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports: Boosted by support from Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a bill to create an independent redistricting commission sailed through a Senate committee yesterday.

Currently, the parties that control the state Senate and the House of Delegates after a 10-year census get to draw district lines.

Supporters said a change in the redistricting method would increase competition seats, decrease partisan polarization and make government more accountable to the voters.

Senate Bill 38, endorsed by the Privileges and Elections Committee, however, would leave a big loophole, giving the General Assembly the final say over the boundaries of congressional and legislative districts.

Still, its outlook remains dim in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates, where leaders dismissed its chances. -- Redistricting bill advances - News - inRich.com

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AP reports: Elections must be delayed in North Carolina because boundaries for dozens of state House and Senate voting districts are unconstitutional, a lawyer representing a group of Republican voters told federal judges Friday.

The voters' lawsuit accuses state lawmakers of intentionally using incorrect population figures when they redrew district lines in 2003, and asks that the maps be corrected before elections are held for the General Assembly this year.

The candidate filing season is supposed to begin Feb. 11. State attorneys supported the maps and said granting the voters' request would delay all the May 6 primary elections, which include races for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House, in addition to state legislative races.

"There comes a point when it's that close to an election and you just cannot stop the train," Alexander Peters, a special deputy attorney general said during 2 1/2 hours of arguments at the New Bern federal courthouse. "It's too late to stop the election, even if (the maps) are ultimately found to be unconstitutional."

The voters, who sued the state in November, said legislative leaders used incorrect census data when they knew updated data was available. The adjusted district boundaries have been used since the 2004 elections. -- FayObserver.com - AP Article Page

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The Auburn Citizen reports: A suburban village has been violating the Voting Rights Act by using an election system that leaves its rapidly growing Hispanic population without representation, a federal judge said Tuesday.

The decision against Port Chester, on the Connecticut border 25 miles from New York City, is expected to force a revision of the village's at-large election system, in which all voters cast ballots for each of the six trustee positions that run the village government.

The likely alternative is a district system, in which each district would elect one trustee. One district would be drawn around Hispanic neighborhoods to increase the chances that a Hispanic-backed candidate would be elected.

Judge Stephen Robinson, who held a trial last May when the village and the Justice Department could not settle the case, said the at-large system "prevents Hispanic voters from participating equally in the political process in the village."

The government had alleged that the at-large system allowed candidates preferred by whites to win all the trustee elections because whites tended to vote in a bloc. No Hispanic has ever been elected trustee or mayor in Port Chester, although the population is almost half Hispanic. The white population votes in greater numbers. -- AuburnPub.com

You may download the decision and order here.

Thanks to Steve Pershing for noting my faux pas in calling Port Chester "Port Arthur." Maybe it is because there is a Port Arthur in Texas and I was just reading that case recently, or I was thinking of Chester A. Arthur.

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The Daily Tar Heel reports: The N.C. NAACP is protesting a lawsuit that seeks to make North Carolina comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, claiming the suit undermines the act's intent.

The lawsuit, filed by a group of N.C. Republicans in November 2007, calls for the state's congressional [sic: legislative] districts to be redrawn before the 2008 elections are held.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People claims that the redistricting would concentrate minority voters into fewer districts, leaving the rest of the state primarily white and Republican.

Al McSurely, chairman for the legal redress committee for the N.C. NAACP, said the plaintiffs want to "black-pack" minority voters into one district, which would give them fewer opportunities to elect representatives. -- NAACP protests redistricting suit - State & National

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AP reports: It's another election season and North Carolina voters could again be confused by a redistricting lawsuit that alleges state legislative boundaries drawn by the General Assembly are illegal.

If a federal three-judge panel in New Bern sides this week with a group of Republican voters who sued after a state Supreme Court decision last year involving one state House district, the May 6 primary election could be delayed.

And not just the legislative races _ state law requires that primaries for governor, Council of State races, U.S. Senate and U.S. House also would have to be rescheduled for the same date. And the presidential primaries also set for May 6 would be in jeopardy.

Legislative redistricting litigation delayed two of the three previous even-numbered year primaries, in 2002 and 2004. -- Redistricting lawsuit threatens NC primary schedule again

The case is Dean et al v. Leake et al, No. 2:07-cv-00051-FL-AD-RC (E.D. N.C.). The court docket sheet shows this order on 17 Dec. 2007:

The instant dispute raises questions of federal and state law in the context of electoral apportionment in the North Carolina state elections process. A three judge court presides over the dispute as mandated by 28 U.S.C. section 2284. Section 2284 allows a "single judge [to] conduct all proceedings excepts the trial," with limited exceptions that do not apply here. The court conducted this conference at the United States Courthouse, New Bern, North Carolina, on 12/17/07, with plaintiffs appearing through counsel Robert N. Hunter, Jr., and defendants appearing through counsel Tiare Smiley & Alexander Peters. The court addressed a number of matters with the parties, and engaged in preliminary dialogue with Ms. Anita S. Earls, counsel for the proposed intervener, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP").The court memorializes the determinations madeat this conference below: 1. Request for hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction was allowed and hearing set for January 25, 2008 at the United States Courthouse at New Bern, North Carolina, pending final confirmation in the form of clerks office notice, confirming New Bern as the place for hearing and setting the specific time of hearing on January 25, 2008. and hearing set for January 25, 2008 at the United States Courthouse at New Bern, North Carolina, pending final confirmation in the form of clerks office notice, confirming New Bern as the place for hearing and setting the specific time of hearing on January 25, 2008.The court ordered today that any perceived need by the parties, particularly plaintiffs, for discovery or live witnesses which reasonably can be discerned upon the making of defendants' responsive pleading, due tomorrow, shall be presented to the court in telephonic format not later than Thursday, December 20, 2007. The court indicated in view of the expedited scheduleit dispenses with requirement for any written filing raising issues in discovery or the purported need for live witness testimony at hearing, and directed that the parties confer with it by the close of business Thursday through the offices of Ms. Rudd, the case manager. The court herein allows plaintiffs an additional fifteen (15) pages for the making of a consolidated reply not to exceed a total of twenty-five (25) pages except by leave of court. The parties will present to the court by Friday January 18, 2008, a joint report The parties will present to which shall roughly follow the form prescribed by Local Civil Rule 16.1, EDNC, for the making of proposed final pretrial orders. Signed by Chief Judge Louise Wood Flanagan on 12/17/2007.

The complaint is here.

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Runninonempty writes on Daily Kos about how the GOP may have screwed itself with its fancy "just enough Republicans to win" district-drawing strategy. Because the post has charts (including one animated one), it is best to view it in its original form. -- Daily Kos: Did GOP Gerrymander Itself Out of Power?

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The Birmingham News reports: The state House of Representatives won t redraw the boundaries of the 2nd congressional district in next year s regular session of the Legislature the House leader Speaker Seth Hammett predicted Tuesday. Hammett said he opposed redrawing the lines in the regular session which starts Feb. 5 and could last through May 19 because trying to do so would divide the House and waste time that could be better spent solving the everyday problems of the people of this state." The 2nd District incumbent U.S. Rep. Terry Everett R-Rehobeth announced in late September that he would not seek re-election next year sparking speculation at the State House that Democrats might try to redraw boundaries in a bid to make the district more Democratic. The position Hammett a Democrat from Andalusia is taking on the issue means the district boundaries almost certainly won t change before candidates run in the June primaries. The speaker has enormous power in the Alabama House to kill proposals he doesn t like. -- Alabama House Speaker Seth Hammett predicts House won t redraw boundaries of 2nd District in next regular legislative session- al.com

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AP reports: In the upcoming session it could be the House that is embroiled in a bitter political fight if Democrats try to redraw the lines of Alabama s Congressional districts -- a move that might make it easier for Democrats to win an open election 2nd Congressional District seat. The district which stretches across central and southeast Alabama from Prattville to Dothan has been held by Republicans since 1964 and is being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Terry Everett R-Rehobeth.

The Legislature will be required to redraw both legislative and Congressional districts after the 2010 U.S. Census but the buzz among Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature is that there might be an effort to redraw the Congressional districts before next year s elections.

House Minority Leader Rep. Mike Hubbard R-Auburn said he has warned House Speaker Seth Hammett that Republicans will "lock everything down" if there is an attempt to adopt a redistricting plan. --

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The Los Angeles Times reports: The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, California Common Cause and AARP proposed an initiative Tuesday that would change the way the state's legislative districts are drawn, taking the politically sensitive matter away from lawmakers.

Leaders of the organizations, saying they are frustrated with the political gridlock on redistricting, filed the proposed measure with the state attorney general as the first step toward putting it on the November 2008 ballot; coalition organizers said they hoped to collect 1 million signatures if the Legislature does not agree to submit the measure to voters. ...

If approved by voters, the measure would create a 14-person redistricting commission made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four others. The commissioners would be chosen through a public application process created by the state auditor. The review panel will narrow the pool of contenders to 60. After that, the four top legislative leaders would cut the pool to 36. Eight commissioners would be selected by random drawing from the 36 candidates, and those eight would select the other six commission members. ...

"Incumbent residences may not be considered; districts may not be drawn to protect incumbents," according to the ballot measure. The final map would not go into effect unless approved by at least three Democrats, three Republicans and three other commissioners. -- Groups propose redistricting plan for state lawmakers - Los Angeles Times

Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link to this story. Rick thinks this has a chance of being adopted. But I wonder if there will be a real change in the arrangement and balance of the districts if there has to be a tri-partisan agreement on the plan.

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The 11th Circuit released its opinion in Thompson v. Glades County Board of Commissioners, No. 05-10669, today. Here are the opening and closing paragraphs:

This is a vote dilution case. African American voters in Glades County, Florida, challenge the at-large method of electing members of the County Commission and School Board, claiming that it depreciates their right to vote on account of their race in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Following a bench trial, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida denied relief. The Plaintiffs now appeal the court's judgment. We reverse and remand.
...
The district court clearly erred in finding that District One of the Plaintiffs' illustrative plan constitutes an influence district. Thus, the court committed error in concluding that the Plaintiffs failed to establish a § 2 remedy. Furthermore, the court failed to explain with sufficient particularity that the totality of the circumstances weakens the Plaintiffs' vote dilution claim. In making those determinations, the court did not properly apply the relevant legal principles and grounded its findings in inaccurate perceptions of the law. We therefore reverse the district court's holding that the Plaintiffs' proposed remedial plan is insufficient under the first prong of the Gingles test and remand to the district court for reconsideration of the totality of the circumstances test.

The opinion is available from the Court's website.

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The Saipan Tribune: The CNMI Supreme Court yesterday heard the petition to reapportion legislative seats prior to the November 2007 midterm election and placed the matter under advisement.

After listening to the arguments by parties involved in the petition, chief justice Miguel S. Demapan said the High Court recognizes that the issues presented are very critical to the Commonwealth, with a need to fast track the case.

“You will be expecting our decision very soon,” said Demapan, who presided over the petition with associate justices Alexandro Castro and John A. Manglona.

Sen. Maria Pangelinan and Tina Sablan filed the petition, asking the court to redistribute House seats based on the current number of eligible voters in the Commonwealth.

The petitioners propose to exclude the nonresident population from the computation and thereby reduce the House membership from 18 to 14. -- Justices place redistricting petition under advisement

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The Fayetteville Observer reports: The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected Fayetteville voters’ bid to create at-large City Council seats, according to council members.

The department called members of the council Monday afternoon to tell them a council with six single-member districts and three seats elected citywide — the 6-3 structure — was “not precleared.”

The proposed change was adopted in a referendum in February. The vote was split along racial lines, with whites largely favoring the new format and black voters opposed to the change. -- 6-3 proposal denied by Justice Department

The letter is here.

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A decision on changing the format of the Fayetteville City Council is expected today, city officials say.

The U.S. Department of Justice has been reviewing the city’s request to change the council from nine single-member districts to one with six single-member districts and three members elected citywide. ...

Voters asked for the change in a referendum in February.

Supporters said a 6-3 format would have more council members looking out for the entire city. Opponents say the change would hurt minority representation.

There are four blacks on the current nine-member council.

Under the proposed system, black residents would be in the majority in three districts. -- Justice ruling on 6-3 city council expected

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The Washington Times reports: Hans von Spakovsky, an embattled Republican nominee to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), yesterday told a Senate panel that his support of laws requiring voters to show photo identification and other election safeguards are being misconstrued as plots to disenfranchise black Democratic voters.

"I think voter ID is a good idea," he said at a Rules and Administration Committee hearing on his and three other nominations to the FEC. "I also believe very strongly that every eligible voter needs to be able to access the ballot box."

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, a member of the rules panel, praised Mr. von Spakovsky's sentiment but said it was "inconsistent" with his actions as counsel at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division from 2003 through 2005.

Mr. von Spakovsky, 48, who has been serving on the FEC board for 18 months as a recess appointment by President Bush, said he did not make final decisions on civil rights issues, such as the much-maligned decision supporting a Georgia photo-ID law that was criticized as disenfranchising black voters. -- FEC nominee defends support for voter IDs

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The Dallas Morning News reports: A nominee to the Federal Election Commission hit a wall over Texas redistricting during his confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Democrats accused Hans von Spakovsky of injecting politics into the Justice Department's analysis of a 2003 Texas congressional redistricting map when he was a top lawyer at the department.

Eight career lawyers and election law experts who served under Mr. Spakovsky in the civil rights division signed a letter urging senators to reject his nomination. They said he and other Bush political appointees had no good reason to overturn a unanimous staff recommendation to reject the Texas redistricting plan, which they said clearly violated minority voting rights in some districts – including the Dallas-based 24th District long held by Democrat Martin Frost.

Mr. Frost was among the half-dozen Texas Democrats who lost House seats after the remap orchestrated in the Legislature by Tom DeLay, who was U.S. House majority leader at the time. --

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NPR's Peter Overby reports: President Bush put Hans von Spakovsky on the Federal Election Commission via a recess appointment — no Senate hearings required — in January 2006. Now, von Spakovsky faces a confirmation hearing.

Senators likely will be interested less in his election-law rulings than in his previous job, where he hunted for voter fraud and promoted state voter-ID laws as a political appointee in the Justice Department's civil rights section. -- Voter-Fraud Activist on Election Panel Faces Hearing

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The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports: If plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city approve, Tupelo will keep its seven-ward system after the current term but will increase the minority voting-age population of two wards.

The plan was approved Tuesday by City Council leaders and submitted Thursday to the plaintiff's attorney as an alternative to the current ward system, which a judge had found unfair.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mills said the city's present system, which includes two at-large seats, violates the Voting Rights Act.

Plaintiffs' attorney, Ellis Turnage, said his initial reaction to the city's new plan is unfavorable but that he must consult with his expert before issuing an official opinion.

Under the new plan, the city's two at-large seats will be eliminated, and Wards 4 and 7 will gain black voters. -- Tupelo wards 4, 7 would get more minority voters

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The Gotham Gazette reports: Governor Eliot Spitzer has announced a package of reform proposals that could fundamentally change many aspects of elections in New York State. But despite its sweeping nature, the plan, coming in a flurry of activity in the closing days of April, received little if any fanfare.

The election changes include proposals for Election Day voter registration, altering the state’s redistricting process, uniform poll site hours, less burdensome signature requirements for candidates seeking office, and reform of the system for selecting candidates for judgeships. In announcing reforms, Spitzer said, “This package will effectively end the gerrymandering that has led New York to the highest incumbency rate in the country and preserved a status quo that for years has been counterproductive to the public interest. It will break down the barriers to voter registration and employ simple and effective methods to improve voter turnout and access to the polls.” -- Election Reform: Big Changes, Little Notice

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The Springfield Republican reports: A home rule bill that proposes a system of ward representation for the City Council and School Committee returns for a council vote on May 7, amended as suggested by a state senator.

City solicitor Edward M. Pikula said this week the bill still calls for changing the council from nine at-large seats, elected by citywide ballot, to a mix of eight ward seats and five at-large seats.

However, it has been amended so that each of the four ward seats proposed on the School Committee will consist of geographically connected wards. In the initial proposal, some linked wards were not physically connected.

The amendment was proposed by state Sen. Stephen J. Buoniconti, D-West Springfield, after the bill was forwarded to the Legislature for needed approval earlier this year. The School Committee will also have two at-large seats and the mayor will continue to serve as chairman, under the proposal. -- Ward representation bill changes

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The Orlando Sentinel reports: Osceola voters elected the first Hispanic county commissioner in more than a decade Tuesday, choosing former state Rep. John Quinones to represent a new Hispanic-majority district in the first election since a federal judge ordered the end to countywide elections of commissioners.

Quinones, a Republican, and political activist Armando Ramirez, a Democrat, squared off against two non-Hispanic candidates with no party affiliation in District 2 in a special election that was delayed for five months by a voting-rights lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against Osceola County.

Federal attorneys claimed that at-large elections effectively kept Hispanics from winning office in Osceola, where they make up about 38 percent of the county's population.

Quinones cruised to victory in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1. He tallied 56 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Ramirez. Mark Cross received 10 percent and Joe Day 3 percent of the 3,385 votes cast. -- Osceola voters pick Quinones in new district - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News Osceola voters pick Quinones in new district - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News

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Scott Keyes writes on Poltical Insider: Congressmen who hail from competitive districts are forced to run challenging reelection campaigns every two years, which in turn leaves them better prepared for the difficulties associated with a bid for higher office, right? That is, the closer a district's PVI is to zero, the better chance that congressman has of waging a successful bid for governor or senator because they must constantly win difficult elections and hone their campaigning skills in the process. Practice makes perfect.

However, looking at data from all the election since the 2000 redistricting, this does not appear to be the case. Congressmen from competitive districts do not appear to have any more success in their bids for higher office than those from non-competitive districts. Since 2002, 36 sitting congressmen have ran for higher office, half of whom won. However, representatives from competitive districts - those with a PVI of between D 5 and R 5 - were considerably less successful, winning just five of their thirteen races. Even in those states that swing states that Kerry or Bush carried with less than 55% of the vote, representatives from competitive districts won just three races and lost six. ...

Two possible reasons come to mind that would explain why representatives from competitive districts don't win their campaigns for higher office at a greater rate than other congressmen. First, if a representative must run a difficult race every two years, he or she has little opportunity to amass a large amount of money that would help in his or her bid for higher office. -- Political Insider: Competitive Districts Not a Stepping Stone for Higher Office

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beSpacific
The Congressional Research Services says: Among other provisions, H.R. 1433 (110th Cong.), the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007, would expand the U.S. House of Representatives by two Members to a total of 437 Members. The first of these two new seats would be allocated to create a voting Member representing the District of Columbia, and the second seat would be assigned in accordance with 2000 census data and existing federal law, resulting in the addition of a fourth congressional seat in the state of Utah. This report is limited to discussing only the constitutionality of the creation of an at-large congressional district. Based on the authority granted to Congress under the Constitution to regulate congressional elections and relevant Supreme Court precedent, it appears that federal law establishing a temporary at-large congressional district would likely be upheld as constitutional. -- Congressional Redistricting: The Constitutionality of Creating an At-Large District, March 20, 2007

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The Springfield Republican reports: A federal judge today suspended a voting rights trial while legislation to reform the election system in Springfield is pending in the Legislature.

U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor said he did not want to interfere with a home rule petition providing limited ward representation on the City Council and School Committee. The petition was approved by the council and mayor last year. If it clears the Legislature, the measure will be decided by voters in the November election.

"I think that process should go forward in its pure form," Ponsor said at a hearing in U.S. District Court today.

Ponsor said he will stay the trial until one week after the November election. Either side may move to lift the stay in the meantime. -- Judge suspends Springfield voting rights trial

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Capitol Media Services reports: Some former state lawmakers and their allies want voters to revamp a 7-year-old law on how congressional and legislative districts are drawn in hopes of creating some more competition at the general election ballot box.

But the head of the Arizona Republican Party said it's simply an effort by a well-heeled Democrat to get more members of that party elected.

An initiative drive formally launched Wednesday would revamp the Independent Redistricting Commission which actually draws the lines every decade, adding four new members. That change will ensure there are people from more parts of the state.

But the real change would be to require that the commission pay more attention to creating "competitive" districts -- those where the Democratic and Republican candidates have relatively equal chances of getting elected. -- More 'competitive' districts wanted in revamp of law | www.azstarnet.com ®

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AP reports: House and Senate Republicans held their weekly news conference, this time to talk about election-related bills. They highlighted measures that would create an independent redistricting commission, rotate the order of candidates on the election ballot and limit to four years the terms of House speaker and Senate president pro tempore. Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said it was up to Democrats - who control the Legislature and the Executive Mansion - to decide whether to support bills that he said would restore the public's confidence after recent scandal. -- Tuesday, March 20, 2007, at the North Carolina General Assembly - HendersonvilleNews.com - Times-News Online

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The Springfield Republican reports: Following eight days of testimony in a federal voting rights trial, a judge announced yesterday that he may halt the court battle pending the outcome of a related petition before state lawmakers.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor made the announcement on the heels of the plaintiffs' final witness. The judge asked lawyers in the case to research the status of a home rule petition that is before the Legislature and favors ward representation on the City Council. It was approved last year by the council and Mayor Charles V. Ryan.

Lawyers agreed to report back to Ponsor on Friday. Testimony has been suspended in the meantime. ...

The petition proposes to change Springfield's nine-member at-large City Council in favor of a hybrid of eight members elected by ward and five elected at-large. -- Voting rights trial may be halted

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The Springfield Republican reports: State Rep. Benjamin Swan, D-Springfield, testified during a federal voting rights trial today that he believes abolishing the city's at-large election system will provide more racial balance in local politics.

Swan, a seven-term Democrat who is black, was called by the plaintiffs in the case. They include Swan's nephew, the Rev. Talbert W. Swan II.

Local civil rights groups and black and Latino voters filed a lawsuit against the city in 2005 to gain a district-based City Council and School Committee. Currently, members are elected to those bodies through a citywide system, which the plaintiffs argue largely shuts out black and Latino candidates.

A nonjury trial began on March 6. Putting a string of black and Latino political candidates and civil rights leaders on the witness stand, lawyers for the plaintiffs have probed 20 years of race relations in Springfield. Civic leaders have portrayed the city's police force as brutal, its government detached, and the political landscape bleak for minorities. -- Breaking News: Rep. Swan testifies to bias in elections

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The Springfield Republican reports: Shifting population trends have complicated a federal voting rights trial, prompting a judge yesterday to question the wisdom of a proposed redistricting plan designed to benefit blacks and Latinos.

U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor yesterday peppered a witness with questions about a proposal to create nine voting districts across the city, wondering whether the plan would truly advance equal voting rights.

"It does collide with logic," Ponsor told witness Doug J. Amy, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, who did not design the proposal. "I'm, frankly, surprised to see a proposal in which ... five of the nine districts are overwhelmingly white."

Ponsor also wondered whether the so-called ward representation plan comes too late, now that blacks and Latinos represent a collective majority in Springfield. -- Realities muddle voting rights suit

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The Tri-Valley Herald reports: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez insists he will produce redistricting reform this year, taking away the authority to draw political boundaries from the Legislature and giving it to an independent commission. But roadblocks put up by his own party may test his optimism just as he begins to put pieces in place.

Nunez, D-Los Angeles, returned from a meeting with members of the Democratic congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., this week with a singular message in hand: In no uncertain terms, they told him an independent commission drawing congressional boundaries was unacceptable.

And for the obvious reason. Any losses to the Democratic congressional delegation from more competitive seats created by redistricting could threaten the Democrats' tenuous control of Congress.

"Originally, I was going to include congressional districts, but at this point, I'm not," Nunez said this week. "But I'm open to discussions with all groups and members of the Legislature. We're not drawing the line in the sand." -- Inside Bay Area - Nunez's redistricting dreams face new bumps in road

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American Constitution Society announces: ACS is pleased to distribute an Issue Brief by Nicholas Stephanopoulos entitled "Reforming Redistricting: Why Popular Initiatives To Establish Redistricting Commissions Succeed or Fail." In this piece, Stephanopoulos argues that election district lines have often been drawn -- in such a way that fundamental democratic values are subverted." He then closely examines one avenue for redistricting reform: popular initiatives to establish redistricting commissions. Given other solutions and their limitations - legislators often having a vested interest in preserving the status quo, and recent Supreme Court decisions (such as Vieth v. Jubelirer and LULAC v. Perry) limiting judicial review - Stephanopoulos suggests that redistricting initiatives are the only realistic way to curb political gerrymandering. The initiative, available in some form in 24 states, enables the general public to place statutory and constitutional proposals directly on the ballot. The author reviews each of the 12 redistricting initiatives launched over the course of American history and identifies several factors that appear to predict their success or failure. He finds that the most important reason for the frequent failure of these initiatives is the concerted opposition of the majority party in the state legislature. In fact, redistricting initiatives succeed only when some factor (e.g., favorable national developments, the enthusiastic support of the state's media establishment, or division between the majority party's executive branch officials and its legislators) defuses majority party opposition. Stephanopoulos concludes by drawing lessons for the future, specifically offering to proponents of redistricting initiatives a playbook for increasing their chances of success.

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The Denver Post reports: The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a final blow Monday to Colorado Republicans, ruling against their challenge to a congressional-redistricting plan.

The justices unanimously found that four Colorado Republican voters, who filed suit to supplant a court's redistricting plan with one subsequently passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature, did not have standing to bring their case. ...

The Denver District Court judge's plan, adopted from the Democrats, kept three congressional districts that lean heavily toward Republicans, three seats leaning Democratic and created one seat, the 7th Congressional District, that is fiercely competitive.

Republicans said the plan favored Democrats. And in 2003, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a new plan in the waning hours of the session that Democrats said favored the GOP. -- DenverPost.com - Redistrict challenge flops in high court

The opinion in Lance v. Coffman is here.

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The Amarillo Globe News reports: The two sides in the federal voting rights lawsuit are putting the case on hold. ...

The suit seeks a court order that would order a new election on the issue of single-member districts. The suit alleges the city should have allowed voters to vote separately on two proposed city charter amendments on single-member districts, instead of combining them.

If the single-member districting measure had passed, it would have drawn electoral lines across the city. The city's charter would have been amended to up the number of commissioners from four to eight and they would have been required to live within their districts and be elected by voters in their district. -- amarillo.com | Local News: Voting lawsuit on hold 03/02/07

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The Journal News reports: The federal government sued Port Chester in December, alleging that the election system violates the federal Voting Rights Act. It is asking U.S. District Judge Stephen Robinson to replace the "at-large" system with one in which the six village trustees are elected from different districts, including at least one majority Hispanic district.

It is also asking Robinson to stop the March 20 village election for two trustee seats until a district system is in place.

Two government expert witnesses testified yesterday, contending that the village's election system discriminates against Latinos and prevents them from electing their candidate of choice.

"I believe that the at-large system in Port Chester of electing trustees is diluting the minority vote," said Lisa Handley, an expert in voter data analysis and voting patterns among Hispanics.

Robert Courtney Smith, a college professor and an expert in discrimination against Hispanics, said Solomon's statement, along with some 35 speakers at the hearings and a handful of hecklers, point to a pattern of racial polarization in the village. -- Racial polarization in Port Chester cited in federal lawsuit

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The Casper Star-Tribune reports: Single-member commissioner districts would benefit Fremont County like the ward system benefits the elections of city council members in Riverton, the city's mayor said Thursday in federal court in Casper.

"The system works for city government," John Vincent said during testimony as the last witness in the ninth and final day of a voting rights bench trial before U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson. -- Riverton mayor favors single-member districts for Fremont County

AP reports on the opening witness for the defense: More harm than good would be done to American Indian-white relations by having Fremont County's five commissioners each represent a district, one of those commissioners said during a trial challenging the county's at-large system of electing commissioners.

"I'm worried this lawsuit will take us back 10 years in Fremont County in race relations," Commissioner Keja Whiteman, who is Indian, said Wednesday.

Five members of the Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes on the Wind River Reservation, which covers a large part of Fremont County, filed the lawsuit. They say the at-large system causes discrimination by diluting Indian voting strength.

They want the U.S. District Court to require the county to have districts. One of those districts would be the reservation land. -- Indian commissioner testifies against suit

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The Casper Star-Tribune reports: Five people told Michelle Hoffman during her unsuccessful campaign for superintendent of public instruction against Jim McBride in 2006 that she had three strikes against her: She was a Democrat, a woman, and lived on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

But Hoffman has heard and seen far worse discrimination against American Indians as superintendent of the Wyoming Indian School District in Ethete and as a Fremont County resident, she testified on Monday during the bench trial in which five reservation residents are suing the county for violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Some of the worst incidents, she said, have occurred during sporting events in Fremont County and elsewhere when students and adults from competing schools yelled comments such as "go back to the reservation," "white chocolate" in reference to students who are half Indian and half-white, "black Indian boy," and "prairie n ---- r."

Students have reported seeing floats in parades bearing phrases such as "teepee burners" and "sack the Indians," Hoffman said during questioning from Laughlin McDonald, who is lead attorney for the Indians and from the Atlanta office of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. -- Former candidate notes slurs

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The Capser Star-Tribune reports: Detamore and Laughlin McDonald, the Indians' lead attorney, hired statistical experts in voting practices -- Steven Cole for the Indians and Ronald Weber for the county -- to testify at the trial this week.

By studying the 1996, 2000 and 2006 general elections, both Cole and Weber found Indian cohesion, but Weber found less cohesion than Cole.

On Wednesday, Weber said he agreed with Cole generally but disagreed with Cole's analysis of racial polarization -- that Indians voted cohesively one way and non-Indians voted cohesively another way.

Cole, who testified Monday, cited one contest in Fremont County where three Indian-preferred candidates were on the ballot, but only one won.

Voters in Fremont County would have shown their voting patterns were not racially polarized if all three of those candidates won, Cole said.

Weber responded Cole set too high a standard, and the analysis should be done differently.

"I think it should be candidate-by-candidate," Weber said. -- Indians, county spar over voting analysis

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AP reports: Rampant poverty tends to depress participation by Wind River Indian Reservation residents in Fremont County politics, a University of Wyoming professor said in the first day of testimony in a federal civil trial challenging the county's system of electing county commissioners.

The lawsuit claims that the at-large system violates the voting rights of residents of the reservation, which covers a large part of Fremont County.

County residents Patricia Bergie, Pete Calhoun, Gary Collins, James E. Large and Emma Lu-cille McAdams - all members of either the Eastern Shoshone or Northern Arapaho tribes - say that not having commissioners represent certain areas of the county dilutes American Indians' voting strength. ...

Garth Massey, a UW sociologist, was among several experts called by the plaintiffs Monday. Massey said that not even casino gambling would help the reservation's conditions much in the long run. ...

Massey was questioned by one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, Laughlin McDonald, of the Atlanta office of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Inc. -- Rocky Mountain News - Denver and Colorado's reliable source for breaking news, sports and entertainment: Local

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San Jose Mercury News reports: Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez insisted Thursday he is ready to hand over the Legislature's power to draw political boundaries to an independent commission, casting the battle over reform as a test of whether lawmakers can trust citizens to remake the political landscape.

He also declared he is determined to put a redistricting measure on the ballot as early as Feb. 5, 2008, the same spot on the calendar where legislative leaders are hoping to move the state presidential primary. He said it won't be tied to a change in term limits that he and other Democrats want. ...

The proposal, which won't be formally introduced as a bill for several weeks, didn't touch on contentious subjects such as who will pick the commission members or whether congressional boundaries would be included, leading critics to wonder whether it was starting out on a shaky foundation. -- MercuryNews.com | 02/02/2007 | Núñez vows to push redistricting

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AP reports: A bipartisan commission would draw congressional and legislative district boundaries based on population, not politics, under a constitutional amendment that cleared its first hurdle Tuesday.

Though the measure passed the first obstacle, there's a long way to go before the partisan way district lines are drawn could change. Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, has introduced the same proposal since 2002 without success, and on Tuesday, it advanced with the support of just one Republican. ...

The amendment would change Virginia's constitution to put redistricting in the hands of a 13-member commission made up of two appointments each by Senate and House leaders, the minority leaders of each house and the state Democratic and Republican party chairmen. The 12 partisan members then select the 13th member, and if they can't agree, the Supreme Court make the choice.

The "radical" part of the bill, according to Deeds, is that the only demographic consideration that can be made in drawing district lines is population. -- Amendment would let bipartisan commission draw district lines

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The Mobile Press-Register reported on Sunday: Democrats in the Alabama Senate are exploring the possibility of redrawing districts in the state early in hopes of boosting their chances of winning more seats in the Legislature and Congress.

The senators, who said they got the idea from Republicans in Texas, approved rules this month that simplified passing redistricting bills in the Legislature's upper chamber before the 2010 Census. ...

Democratic Sens. Zeb Little of Cullman and Roger Bedford of Russellville said they do not have specific plans, but said they passed the new rules with the intention of keeping their options open. ...

Little, the Senate majority leader, said Democrats' goal would be to create districts in Alabama that were more favorable to their party. He said their main goal would be maintaining Democratic power in the 35-member Senate. -- Alabama Democrats exploring redistricting

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The Hudson Valley News reports: Assemblyman Peter Rivera of the Bronx and community leaders, Monday unveiled a proposal that would ban at-large elections and force the 932 towns and 554 villages in the state to adopt a modern district elections system. ...

The proposed law would expand the federal Voting Rights Act by forcing communities that continue to rely on at-large elections to adopt district or ward elections by the fall of 2009. This move alone will allow minority communities and all communities in areas that use at large elections with greater access to the ballot, both as candidates for office and as voters, Rivera said. -- Hudson Valley News story

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Daily Southtown reports: Chicago Heights has spent 20 years and more than $3 million defending a voting-rights lawsuit that has become the oldest in the federal court system.

And that's just one of more than a dozen federal lawsuits the city of 40,000 residents will defend this year.

City attorney Thomas "TJ" Somer said he's optimistic a final ruling will come later this year on the voting-rights case filed in 1987 by Kevin Perkins, who is now an alderman in the city's 3rd Ward.

Perkins and others alleged the city's then-commission-style of government diluted the voting strength of black and Hispanic voters.

A $3 million legal bill seems large considering Chicago Heights has an annual budget of about $22 million. -- DAILY SOUTHTOWN :: News :: Chicago Heights has hands full with lawsuits

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AP reports: Former House Speaker Thomas Finneran resigned on Tuesday night from his $416,000-a-year job as president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, days after he pleaded guilty to obstructing justice during a voting rights redistricting lawsuit.

The council's board said it accepted his resignation, effective immediately, during an evening conference call, a day after it had met to discuss his future and it appeared he was losing support. ...

Finneran took the job with the council that represents the state's life sciences industry in 2004 after resigning his legislative position. He was seen as an effective lobbyist for the group, and the board had backed him after his federal indictment in 2005. -- Finneran Resigns From Bio-Tech Job - Politics

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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports: [Democratic whip, Sen. Michael A. O'Pake] suggested a second idea that would need a constitutional change. He wants to have the new congressional districts redrawn, after the 2010 census, by a nonpartisan group called the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, which already redraws the state House and Senate district lines.

Currently, congressional district lines are redrawn by the majority party in the Legislature. The last time, after the 2000 census, Democrats complained that Republicans redrew the congressional lines to try to ensure re-election of GOP incumbents. The current system lets the majority party in the Legislature "redraw congressional districts with a partisan bias," Mr. O'Pake said.

A third idea wouldn't need a constitutional change. Mr. O'Pake wants to make it easier for state residents to block "robo-calls" by politicians seeking election -- the automated phone calls by office holders or their supporters urging people to vote for them. He would let people add such calls to the state's Do Not Call list, an idea first proposed last fall by Rep. Michael McGeehan, D-Philadelphia. He also is vowing to push for it again.

The changes to the constitution would first have to be passed in the 2007-08 session, which just started, and then again in the 2009-10 session in order to get on the November 2009 statewide ballot, at the earliest. -- Dem leader wants to reduce size of Pa. legislature

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The Eleventh Circuit today affirmed the dismissal of a partisan-gerrymander challenge to the legislative redistricting. The opinion is unpublished.

The case had been heard by a three-judge court in the Southern District of Alabama. It ruled that the plaintiffs were barred by claim preclusion (res judicata). When the plaintiffs appealed to the 11th Circuit, the defendants argued that the Circuit Court did not have jurisdiction to hear the appeal because the case should have been appealed to the Supreme Court. The Circuit Court rejected that argument.

On the claim preclusion issue, the court affirmed and held that the plaintiffs were virtually represented by different plaintiffs bringing similar suits a few years earlier.

Disclosure: Jim Blacksher and I represented Speaker of the House Seth Hammett, a defendant-intervenor in the case.

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AP reports: Former House Speaker Tom Finneran is expected to plead guilty today to obstruction of justice charges.

The once-powerful Beacon Hill Democrat is accused of lying during his testimony in a voting rights lawsuit. -- WHDH-TV - New England News - Source: Ex-House speaker to plead guilty in redistricting case

And the Boston Globe reports: As former House speaker Thomas M. Finneran heads this morning to federal court, where he is expected to plead guilty to obstruction of justice, he faces the almost certain loss of his $30,000-a-year pension because of a decision last year by the state Supreme Judicial Court.

The state's highest court ruled unanimously in March that Boston Juvenile Court Clerk-Magistrate John P. Bulger forfeited his pension when he admitted that he lied to two federal grand juries investigating the disappearance of his brother, fugitive mobster James J. "Whitey" Bulger.

Alden Bianchi, cochairman of a Boston Bar Association committee on pensions, said Finneran's case appears to be a more obvious violation of the Massachusetts law that bars employees from receiving a pension if convicted of a "criminal offense involving violation of the laws applicable to his office or position." -- Finneran faces loss of state pension

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Election Data Services reports on its website: New Census Population Estimates document for the first time the significant loss of population in Louisiana due to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The loss of population will also lead to a loss of representation in Congress, according to a study by Election Data Services Inc. that was released today. Louisiana is now projected to lose a congressional seat, based on the new data.

The 2006 population estimates shift two more seats between four states, compared to last year’s study of the 2005 estimates (see Election Data Services Inc., “Five States Would Gain Seats if Congress Were Reapportioned with 2005 Population Estimates,” December 22, 2005). “Changes affecting three of the four new states were expected,” noted Election Data Services’ president, Kimball Brace, “but Louisiana’s loss was a new twist in the numbers.”

Overall, the 2006 estimates show that seven congressional seats in 13 states have already changed at this point in the decade, if the U.S. House of Representatives was reapportioned with the updated numbers. Six states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Utah—would each gain a seat and Texas would gain two seats if the House was reapportioned with census population estimates for July 1, 2006, according to Election Data Services’ analysis. Seven states would lose seats—Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The states of Georgia, Nevada, Louisiana, and Massachusetts are new states on the list of changes, compared to the 2005 study. --

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The Orlando Sentinel reports: For the first time in more than a dozen years, black leaders are actively organizing to get county and city officials to take notice of their needs.

They say they are frustrated with a system that treats blacks like second-class citizens. Multimillion-dollar pedestrian bridges are being built in generally affluent areas while black communities are left to deal with poor drainage, crumbling or simply dirt roads and lax policing, they say.

Even when improvements are made, they are more likely to be funded with federal block-grant money, not local tax dollars, they say. ...

What's needed is a change in the way Seminole County commissioners are elected, Clayton said. Now, the five commissioners are elected countywide; single-member districts would provide the best chance for blacks and other minorities to have a voice, he said.

NAACP members are gathering information on single-member districts from surrounding counties, including Osceola, where a federal judge ruled the current system of countywide elections violates the U.S. Voting Rights Act because it dilutes the county's Hispanic vote.

A plan for Seminole County will be presented soon, Clayton said, and he hopes his group can work with county officials to get a single-member-district plan on the ballot. -- Black leaders in Seminole want county to listen - Orlando Sentinel : News Black leaders in Seminole want county to listen - Orlando Sentinel : News

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The Rapid City Journal reported last Thursday: A federal judge has ordered the city of Martin to redraw the boundaries of its city-council districts because the existing districts violate the voting rights of American Indians.

In a decision issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier of Rapid City said Martin must submit a proposal for redrawing the council-district boundaries by Jan. 5. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the city on behalf of two Indian voters, will have until Jan. 25 to file its response to the city's plan.

The judge will then make the determination of whether the city's plan is a legally acceptable remedy.

Martin is in Bennett County, which is adjacent to Rosebud Sioux and Pine Ridge Indian reservations in southern South Dakota.

The judge said evidence shows that about 36 percent of the city's voting-age population is Indian, and those Indian voters are spread evenly among the existing three council wards. However, candidates preferred by Indians rarely win city council elections in Martin, Schreier said. -- The Rapid City Journal

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The Orlando Sentinel reports: A 17-month-long battle over how Osceola elects county commissioners could come to a close in federal court today.

The remaining issue before U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell is whether the county's proposal to create a system of at-large and single-member seats by increasing the size of the board to seven commissioners will pass legal muster.

Presnell issued an injunction halting commission elections in June and ruled in October that the "racially polarized" county's at-large voting system penalizes Hispanics in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

On Wednesday, commissioners voted 4-0 to accept a redistricting plan drafted by the U.S. Department of Justice, rather than a plan drawn up by county experts, after Presnell this week rejected a key part of the county's proposal. Commissioner Paul Owen was absent. -- Federal judge will decide merits of Osceola vote plan - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News Federal judge will decide merits of Osceola vote plan - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News

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The ACLU announces on its website: The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded a federal district court decision in favor of Native American voters in Martin, South Dakota. The decision, which was released late yesterday, orders city officials to redraw city council district lines to correct violations of the Voting Rights Act that prevented Native Americans from having an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice.

"Yesterday's decision vindicates the long, hard struggle for Native American voting rights in the City of Martin," said Bryan Sells, a staff attorney with the ACLU Voting Rights Project and lead counsel in the case. “This ruling will enable Indian voters to enjoy the right that many other South Dakotans take for granted; the right to have a say in their local government. The decision also benefits everyone by promoting fairness and a more democratic city government."

The ACLU brought the lawsuit in April 2002 on behalf of two Native American voters who say the redistricting plan adopted by the city that year had the purpose and effect of diluting Native American voting strength. Native Americans made up approximately 45 percent of the city's population but would have been unable to elect any candidates of their choice to the city council because the redistricting plan ensured that white voters controlled all three city council wards. -- American Civil Liberties Union : Federal Court Sides with Native American Voters in South Dakota

The ACLU has a link to the opinion on its site.

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The Journal News reports: The village is challenging the federal government's claim that its election system illegally disenfranchises Hispanic voters, possibly paving the way for an expensive legal battle.

The Board of Trustees voted unanimously last night to notify the Department of Justice that it does not believe the village's at-large election system violates Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, as the Justice Department contends.

The board reached the decision after reviewing data the Justice Department provided the village. ...

Last night's decision came in response to an April 20 letter from the Justice Department to Village Attorney Anthony Cerreto that threatened to sue the village unless it switched to district voting. The letter called for a districting plan that includes a majority Hispanic ward and concluded that "voting patterns in Port Chester are polarized by ethnicity."

Though nearly half of the village's population is Hispanic, no Hispanic candidate has ever been elected to village office. Hispanic residents are about 22 percent of the citizen voting-age population, or 3,058 of 13,980 eligible voters. -- Port Chester is challenging the Justice Department over voter rights

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The Columbus Dispatch reports: A clear majority of Ohioans who voted in the Nov. 7 election preferred a Democratic congressional candidate.

So did Franklin County voters, where Democratic House candidates drew in excess of 10,000 more votes than Republicans.

The result?

While Democrats won nearly 53 percent of the congressional votes statewide, only about 39 percent of Ohioans will be represented next year by Democrats in Congress.

That’s the biggest so-called "wrong winner" disparity in the country from the 2006 midterm elections, says the nonpartisan FairVote.org.

Aided by gerrymandering — the drawing of districts to favor one party — Republicans captured 11 of the state’s 18 congressional seats, assuming that GOP Rep. Deborah Pryce, of Upper Arlington, survives a recount in the 15 th District. If she does, all three House members representing Franklin County will be Republicans. -- The Columbus Dispatch - Local/State

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The Salt Lake Tribune reports: Many Park City residents say they have more in common with Salt Lake City voters 35 miles to the west than their neighbors in Kamas, 10 miles to the east.

In recognition of that reality, legislative members of a state Redistricting Committee relaxed their dedication to mixing rural and urban Utah neighborhoods in four proposed congressional districts enough to create a purely urban district Wednesday.

Lawmakers approved a single map that links northern Salt Lake County with the Snyderville Basin and Park City in a new 2nd Congressional District. The remaining three districts will blend urban parts of the Wasatch Front with more rural communities to the north, east and south. -- Salt Lake Tribune - Final map a result of major give and take

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The Monterey County Herald reports: Trustees of Monterey Peninsula College will revisit the issue of district elections in January after hearing Wednesday from supporters of new trustee districts.

Board members heard from local representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who stood steadfastly behind dividing the district into five trustee areas.

One ACLU representative sent information on the trustee districts to the group's national demographer, who works on the Voting Rights Project in Atlanta. The ACLU demographer concluded that five areas would be best for the college district.

Board president Jim Tunney expressed concern that the trustees don't have enough information to determine what format would work best.

In a controversial move, trustees voted in July to switch to one trustee area in Seaside and the other four to at-large seats from the rest of the district. They rescinded their decision Nov. 4 because they said it caused confusion in the community and they want what's best for the district. -- Monterey County Herald | 11/30/2006 | Board delays trustee decision

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The Daily Herald reports: Brent Waldrop was one of two people to argue with the legislative redistricting committee at its public hearing in Provo on Monday morning. On hand were the bigwigs of Utah government; at stake was a possible fourth seat for Utah in the U.S. House of Representatives and a shake-up of who represents whom. ...

Legislators, Waldrop and Brandon Plewe of Spanish Fork debated for about an hour at the hearing, throwing out new maps and different ideas, waving population distribution graphs and debating where to put a few thousand Davis County residents, and wondering out loud where Democrat U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson lives.

The public hearing is part of a process to get Utah a fourth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives by adding two more seats, the other of which will go to Washington, D.C. Utah designs the districts, all of which need to have about 588,000 residents, the Legislature picks a map and then it goes to the House for discussion.

Ten plans have been conceived; three were on the agenda to be discussed and a fourth, plan G, was amended and added for discussion. Waldrop said he supported plan G, which creates a huge district that's largely rural, except for St. George and south Utah County, two urban districts and one with a mix of the two. ...

The public hearing is part of a process to get Utah a fourth seat in the U.S. House of Representatives by adding two more seats, the other of which will go to Washington, D.C. Utah designs the districts, all of which need to have about 588,000 residents, the Legislature picks a map and then it goes to the House for discussion. -- Daily Herald - Carving up Utah's congressional boundaries

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The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports: Now that Tom DeLay is politically dead, an East Texas Democrat wants to kill his ghost, too.

State Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, introduced a proposed constitutional amendment Wednesday that would prohibit congressional and legislative redistricting more than once a decade unless the courts order otherwise.

House Joint Resolution 31, to be considered when lawmakers return to Austin in January, is intended to forever forbid a repeat of the maneuver engineered by DeLay in 2003 when he was the Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.

DeLay insisted that the GOP-dominated Legislature scrap the congressional redistricting plan enacted by the federal courts in 2001 and replace it with one that would maximize Republican advantage in the Texas congressional delegation. The effort prompted two extended walkouts by legislative Democrats and kept lawmakers in session nearly all summer in 2003. -- Star-Telegram | 11/16/2006 | Redistricting limit proposed

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CQPolitics reports: Democratic Rep. John Barrow, according to Georgia’s secretary of state, has won a second term in the state’s 12th District, defeating former one-term Republican Rep. Max Burns (news, bio, voting record) by just 864 votes in the rematch of their close 2004 race.

But it is not yet clear if the state’s certification of the outcome is the last word on the race: Barrow’s winning percentage is less than the 1 percentage-point threshold below which the trailing candidate can request a recount. ...

The election board also officially certified the win by another embattled Democratic incumbent, Rep. Jim Marshall (news, bio, voting record), who won a third House term with a slim 1,752-vote edge over former six-term Republican Rep. Mac Collins in the 8th District.

In a year when Democrats retained all the House and Senate seats they held prior to the election — and most by comfortable margins — the close contests faced by Barrow and Marshall were anomalies. ...

But Barrow and Marshall faced a big new obstacle in their 2006 races, in the form of a mid-decade redistricting map — implemented by the Republican-controlled state legislature — that took away key portions of their previous constituencies and boosted the number of GOP voters. -- Count in Georgia 12 Favors Democrat, But Challenge Is Possible - Yahoo! News

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Central Florida News 13 reports: Tonight, Osceola County Commissioners hope to get comments from people on how the board members should be elected.

A federal judge has determined that Hispanics are penalized in the county, which is in violation of the Voting Rights Act. ...

The new plan would set up single member districts and add two commissioners. -- Central Florida News 13,

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AP reports: Attorneys said Wednesday they expect a state commission will appeal the latest court ruling that again overturns as unconstitutional the district map used to pick state lawmakers since 2002.

The Independent Redistricting Commission plans to consider appealing Tuesday's ruling by Judge Kenneth Fields of Maricopa County Superior Court when it meets later this month. Fields found that the commission did not put required emphasis on creating districts winnable by both Democrats and Republicans when it drew the lines. -- Appeal likely for latest ruling tossing legislative district map

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AP reports: With half of North Carolina's legislative seats uncontested on Election Day, two former congressmen said Tuesday the General Assembly should change how district boundaries are drawn to promote voter choice.

"With little competition, accountability is lacking and voters start feel to discouraged and apathetic," said Republican Bill Cobey, who with Democrat Tim Valentine urged the creation of an independent redistricting commission at a news conference.

The state House and Senate perform their once-a-decade redistricting of their own seats and those of North Carolina's congressional delegation, based on U.S. census figures. ...

Cobey, also a former state GOP chairman and 2004 gubernatorial candidate, and other coalition members want lawmakers next year to create an independent panel that would make district decisions so that boundary lines aren't drawn to protect incumbents or their politically similar successors. -- CITIZEN-TIMES.com: Ex-congressmen, reformers wanted redistricting process changed

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The Athens Banner-Herald reports: The Georgia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments today in the legal fight to overturn a 2006 redistricting that split Athens into two state Senate districts.

The General Assembly, at the request of state Sen. Ralph Hudgens, shifted district lines for three state Senate districts early this year. The change unified Madison County into one district, but split Athens' Democratic-leaning voters into two Republican districts.

A handful of local voters sued dozens of election officials to try to stop them from following the new maps during July primaries, though a visiting Superior Court judge dismissed their claim in June.

Attorneys for the voters appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing that the Georgia Constitution allows legislators to redraw district lines only when a 10-year census shows the population has shifted, leaving too few voters in one district and too many in another. -- OnlineAthens.com | News | Arguments on districts heard today 10/16/06

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AP reports: A judge who had been due to rule on the constitutionality of Arizona's legislative district map has been granted a 60-day extension to review evidence from a trial conducted nearly three years ago.

Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor signed an order dated Sept. 15 authorizing the extra time for Judge Kenneth Fields of Maricopa County Superior Court to review evidence from a nonjury trial conducted over a month's span in late 2003.

Fields ruled in early 2004 that the legislative map was unconstitutional, but the Arizona Court of Appeals in 2005 overturned his ruling and ordered him to use different legal standards when considering the case again.
After further proceedings, Fields took the case under advisement after a hearing July 21 and had been due to rule within 60 days, a period that ended Tuesday. McGregor granted Fields' request for an extension until Nov. 15. -- District-map ruling delayed | www.azstarnet.com ®

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The federal court in the Middle District of Alabama has ordered Chilton County to develop a new election plan to be used in the 2008 election. The order stems from a suit brought by two white voters to dismantle the cumulative voting plan used in the county since 1988. The CV plan was agreed by the plaintiffs and defendants and put into effect by a consent decree.

The court's opinon and
order may be downloaded here.

Note: James Blacksher and I represent the plaintiffs in this action. We have already appealed the decision setting aside the 1988 injuntion.

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The Salt Lake Tribune reports: Utah's lone Democrat in Congress may get carved into a Democratic-leaning district under a plan Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and legislative leaders are pushing as a way to drum up support for Utah to get a fourth congressional seat.

Huntsman, House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine - all Republicans - endorsed a map Wednesday for four congressional districts, in which Matheson would represent northern Salt Lake County and Summit and Morgan counties.

Matheson was first elected in a district that was wholly within Salt Lake County, but was gerrymandered into a more Republican district stretching from Salt Lake City's Avenues all the way to the Utah-Arizona state line.

The state leaders' move comes as an attempt to assuage congressional Democrats' fear that if they vote to give Utah a fourth U.S. House seat, Matheson would be merged into a district more Republican than his current rea. A bill awaiting action in Congress would grant Republican-dominated Utah another House seat as a way to counterbalance a seat for the Democratic haven of the District of Columbia, which currently has no voting member of Congress. -- Salt Lake Tribune - GOP pitches congressional district plan

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The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports: City leaders will sit for days in courtrooms next month for two major trials coming just weeks apart.

Tupelo's redistricting case will be heard in federal court in Oxford beginning Oct. 10 before U.S. District Judge Mike Mills, city attorney Guy Mitchell III said Friday.

A second high-profile case, on Tupelo's annexation plan, goes before retired Chancellor Charles Thomas of Pontotoc at the Lee Justice Center on Oct. 23. ..

Thirteen days after the case begins in Oxford, Tupelo officials will be back in court to press for the annexation of 10.2 square miles to meet growth needs. Lee County supervisors and a group of citizens are fighting the move, fearing it will raise their taxes. The case may last several weeks.

Earlier this week, a group of African-American residents announced they also are fighting the annexation. Their lawyer Kenneth Mayfield of Tupelo filed papers claiming it will dilute black voter strength. -- djournal.com

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The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: The city might redraw ward boundaries while also contesting a federal lawsuit that accuses the city's existing election system of keeping black candidates out of office.

Council President Ed Gudenas has drafted legislation that would give City Council the authority to propose new districts to ease a "statistical imbalance in population" in time for the 2007 election. The legislation is listed on the agenda for Monday's council meeting.

Hilary Taylor, the attorney representing the city in the Department of Justice lawsuit, said City Council might lack the authority to adopt a redistricting plan without voter approval. ...

The city has struggled to compromise with the Justice Department ever since a three-year investigation concluded that too many at-large council seats and districts that cover a large geographic area have diluted minority voting strength. -- Euclid council drafts law to propose new districts

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AP reports: A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a judge’s decision that redrew the boundaries of three legislative districts in an attempt to give American Indian voters a chance to elect more Indian candidates to the South Dakota Legislature.

U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier of Rapid City was correct when she ruled that the Legislature’s 2001 redistricting plan violated the voting rights of Indians in an area that includes the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The appeals panel also upheld Schreier’s ruling that redrew the boundaries of the legislative districts in south-central South Dakota. The new districts established by Schreier are being used in this year’s legislative elections. -- The Rapid City Journal

More: The opinion in Bone Shirt v. Hazeltine, No. 05-4010 (8th Cir. Aug. 22, 2006), is available here.

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Winburn, Jonathan., Wright, Gerald. and Masket, Seth. "The Limits of the Gerrymander: Examining the Impact of Redistricting on Electoral Competition and Legislative Polarization"

Abstract: Redistricting is often blamed for both declining electoral competition and increasing partisan polarization in the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures. Using election returns and roll call voting collections from Congress and state legislatures, we examine the extent to which redistricting is actually responsible for these trends. We find first that redistricting has had only a modest impact, if any, on the polarization of legislative districts; both state and federal districts have polarized more between redistrictings than during them in recent decades. Additionally, legislatures in states with partisan redistricting schemes are roughly as polarized as those in states with court- or commission-drawn legislative districts. While increasing legislative polarization and declining electoral competition may be defining features of modern American politics, our research shows that redistricting has had only a marginal impact on either of these trends. -- Download file

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AP reports: One of the nation's largest labor unions, joining with other Democratic-leaning groups, is forming a political committee to raise millions of dollars for redistricting fights with the GOP.

The formation of the political group Foundation for the Future, called a 527 because of the part of the tax code section that governs it, was at least partially a response to aggressive redistricting tactics by Republicans. ...

The committee expects to spend about $17 million over the next five years on redistricting at the state and federal level, with more than half of that money provided by AFSCME, Scanlon said Thursday.

The committee is being formed by AFSCME along with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and the National Committee for an Effective Congress. -- Union backing redistricting fights - Yahoo! News

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Dan Smith emailed this paper to me. Here is a bit of it:

Mass Support for Redistricting Reform: Partisanship and Representational Winners and Losers by
Caroline J. Tolbert, University of Iowa; Daniel A. Smith, University of Florida; John C. Green, University of Akron

This paper examines popular support for altering electoral institutions in two bellwether American states—California and Ohio. On Tuesday, November 8, 2005, a majority of voters in each state decisively struck down statewide ballot initiatives that would have created nonpartisan redistricting commissions. ...

Riker (1962, 1986) argued that political elites act strategically, manipulating institutions for their electoral benefit. Building on the literature, we find compelling evidence that the mass public may also act strategically when making decisions about institutional change, as electoral losers are significantly more likely to support or vote for modifying electoral institutions. We find support for redistricting reform is contingent on loser status at the statewide legislative level and district level. While the findings are mixed regarding district level representation (stronger findings from Ohio), in general, we present evidence that “losers” statewide and at the district level are more likely to support efforts to create more competitive elections through redistricting reform. While it may be in the self-interest of statewide legislative losers (Democrats in Ohio and Republicans in California) to support changing the way redistricting is determined, some of these individuals (in particular, African Americans) may benefit at the district level from the current method of gerrymandering, which dampens their support for broader institutional change. Beyond defining losers by candidate preferences in the last election or perceptions of being an electoral loser, we find evidence that individuals who are electoral losers (represented by elected officials of a different political party at the statewide and district levels) are significantly more supportive of institutional change. We also find evidence that race and loser status may interact, shaping voting behavior. The analysis adds weight to a growing body of literature suggesting that strategic voting matters, especially in terms of “reforming the republic” (Donovan and Bowler 2004). As such, the research may have implications for future attempts to reform American electoral institutions in other states.

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The Rocky Mountain News reports: Federal judges have thrown out the last remaining challenge to a 2002 congressional redistricting plan, though attorneys for the plaintiffs said Monday they will appeal.

The ruling by a three-judge panel said the state Supreme Court's earlier decision in a separate lawsuit had resolved the issue, and the plaintiffs could not revive it.

After a split legislature could not agree on a plan, a state judge in 2002 drafted the redistricting plan currently in place. The following year a Republican-controlled legislature drafted a new plan, but the state Supreme Court threw it out, saying the state constitution only allows redistricting once per decade. -- Rocky Mountain News: News

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Medianews reports: The governor and his Democratic opponent are calling for a change in the way legislative maps are drawn. The legislative leaders of both parties also are on board. And polls show widespread public support.

So why is it, with a deadline looming, that the Legislature still has not passed a redistricting bill? The short answer is that redistricting is all about political power -- and the current proposal is all about giving it up.

Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, the principal author of the reform measure, is recommending that the power to draw political boundaries be taken away from the Legislature and handed over to an independent commission, eliminating what reformers say is a political system that protects incumbents.

Just six weeks ago, a Democratic caucus killed the bill, but Lowenthal is back with an amended version that requires more diversity on the commission, among other changes he hopes will appease opponents. -- ContraCostaTimes.com | 08/09/2006 | Deadline looms to redraw districts

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The Ledger reports: The city of Lake Wales is considering a redistricting of its voting boundaries because of changes caused by recent growth.

The city has grown from 10,651 residents in the 2000 census to an estimated 12,500 today, with much of that growth coming in areas north of the city, including Lake Ashton. The city was last redistricted in 2002.

The result is that some commission districts may now be larger than others, said Assistant City Manager Judy Delmar.

Under state law, commission districts must be similar in size.

Meanwhile, some black residents have asked the city to consider single-member districts in an attempt to ensure that black residents continue to be represented on the commission. In recent years, two of the city's five commissioners have been black. -- City May Realign Governing Districts | theledger.com

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The Chicago Tribune reports: City Hall isn't obligated to pay more than $246,000 in legal fees owed by 23 current and former aldermen who sued the city over the 1992 redrawing of aldermanic ward maps, according to a ruling Monday from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision reverses a lower court's ruling that ordered the city to pay that amount plus $168,000 in interest to attorneys for Ald. Ed Smith (28th) and other aldermen.

The city immediately appealed the 2003 ruling and never paid the judgment amount.

The appeals court ruled that while taxpayers should pay the legal fees of aldermen who are sued, they shouldn't be required to pay for aldermen to sue the city. -- City wins its appeal on remap legal fees | Chicago Tribune

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Reuters reports: A U.S. Court redrew the boundaries of five south and west Texas congressional districts on Friday to restore political power to Hispanic voters.

The three-judge panel, appointed by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, vacated primary elections of candidates in the districts and said primary elections would be held simultaneously with the general election on November 7, according to the decision. ...

Most affected by the change, according to political analysts is Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla's 23rd District, which saw the number of Democratic voters increase by 8 percent under the congressional district map issued on Friday. -- Court Redraws 5 Texas Congressional Districts - New York Times

Note: The Lone Star Project has maps, statistics, and more about the old plan and the court-ordered plan on its home page (but this may move to the Texas redistricting page).

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The Dallas Morning News reports: The lone Hispanic Republican in Texas' delegation to Congress, Rep. Henry Bonilla, probably faces a tougher fight under a voting map three federal judges said Thursday they are drawing themselves. It will be released soon, the judges said.

Presiding Judge Patrick Higginbotham of Dallas suggested at a redistricting hearing that Mr. Bonilla's sprawling district in South and West Texas would lose its remaining foothold in Laredo and reach more deeply into Bexar County.

While Mr. Bonilla's home is in San Antonio's predominantly white and Republican suburbs, the rest of the county is more Hispanic and Democratic. The proposed change could be "detrimental" to Mr. Bonilla, said his lawyer, J.D. Pauerstein.

Mr. Pauerstein said the judges' emerging plan risks "losing too much of Mr. Bonilla's base and bringing in too much of Democratic Bexar County." ...

Earlier, Judge Higginbotham, who sits on the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, delivered some good news to Mr. Bonilla and lawyers for Gov. Rick Perry and other GOP state leaders.

He indicated judges will rebuff pleas by Democrats and some civil-rights groups that Webb County be reunited in the 23rd District. That could have caused a showdown between Mr. Bonilla and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo. He narrowly lost to Mr. Bonilla four years ago but ultimately won the redrawn 28th District seat. -- Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Texas/Southwest

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The Austin American-Statesman reports: The state's congressional map could be fixed without pairing incumbents or eliminating U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett's Travis County base, a federal judge suggested today.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Higginbotham, the presiding judge on a three-judge panel, made the suggestion as he grilled the state's attorney at a redistricting hearing this morning in a packed Austin courtroom.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is trying to find a fix for a South Texas congressional district the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled discriminates against Latinos. In June, the Supreme Court found that Laredo's 23rd congressional district violated Hispanic voting rights and ordered the panel to redraw the lines of that district, which would also affect other districts.

Ted Cruz, representing the state, defended its map, which would pit Doggett against U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, and leave Travis County, largely a Democratic county, split between three Republican incumbents. -- Court hears redistricting plans

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AP reports: With an election just around the corner, a three-judge federal panel was set Thursday to hear arguments about how to redraw southwest Texas congressional districts to restore minority voting power.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that a huge southwest district violates the Voting Rights Act because the power of the minority vote was diminished when concentrations of Hispanics were split into two districts.

It is unclear when the three-judge panel may issue a decision, but Texas elections officials say a ruling by Monday is necessary for changes to go into effect for the Nov. 7 election.

"It is recommended by our office that the court have a map in place by (Aug.) 7th," said Scott Haywood, a spokesman for Secretary of State Roger Williams. -- Fast Ruling Sought in Redistricting Case

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The Pueblo Chieftain reports: Federal judges again are considering whether to throw out a Republican lawsuit challenging the current congressional district lines in Colorado.

A three-judge panel heard arguments Wednesday on whether they must dismiss the lawsuit on grounds they are precluded from ruling on it.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court decision, supported by Democrats, that upheld congressional district lines drawn in 2002 by a state court judge in Denver. The judge drew the districts after legislators could not agree on boundaries before the 2002 elections.

The lawsuit alleges the state Supreme Court decision violates a U.S. Constitution provision about elections by restricting legislators' ability to redistrict. The plaintiffs want legislators to have another chance to draw the boundaries. ...

The Colorado secretary of state contends the lawsuit is barred by a legal doctrine known as "issue preclusion" because the lawsuit presents the same issue "that was litigated to final judgment" by the supreme court. The secretary of state oversees elections. -- The Pueblo Chieftain Online - Pueblo, Colorado U.S.A

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Columnist Jaime Castillo writes in the San Antonio Express-News: A week from Thursday, a panel of three federal judges will try to figure out the best way to redraw Henry Bonilla's 23rd Congressional District to satisfy the concerns of the U.S. Supreme Court.

But it has become clear that one of the plans judges will consider was the result of high-stakes negotiations between the four area congressmen with dogs in this fight.

To hear one side tell it, Austin-based Congressman Lloyd Doggett went along his colleagues -- U.S. Reps. Bonilla, Henry Cuellar and Lamar Smith -- to get what he wanted in the proposal and then pulled out of the compromise at the 11th hour.

And if you listen to Doggett, he was the one being played by Bonilla who was simultaneously working with state officials on another map that eradicated Doggett's Travis County base. -- MySA.com: Metro | State

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The Houston Chronicle reports: The state's proposed fix for a flawed South Texas congressional district invited scorn Friday from organizations hoping to convince federal judges of a better plan. ...

"The state plan changes two or three districts by partisan makeup. It's a partisan get-even plan," said lawyer Rolando Rios, who represents the League of United Latin American Citizens.

"State Republican leaders chose to put a partisan agenda ahead of the interests of Hispanic voters, whose voting rights have been violated," said Ed Martin, a Democrat consultant and redistricting expert. ...

"I'm disappointed that the Republicans are using this as a cocktail party joke opportunity rather than to submit real evidence before real judges who are going to determine the future of our state," GOP consultant Royal Masset said. "The Republican plan makes no sense. It's not responsive to anything. It's like a political statement."

Democrats wrote that the state's proposal should be called, "The Roadrunner That Ate Travis County," referring to the new 23rd District drawn in the Texas Hill Country for Bonilla. -- Chron.com | State's new map for Dist. 23 draws fire

My comment: I am not sure what there is about redistricting that brings out the similes and metaphors like a Heywood Hale Broun column ("Sweat is the cologne of accomplishment").

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The New York Times reports: Once upon a time, Congressional district lines were redrawn once a decade, after each federal census. But last month the Supreme Court made it clear that redistricting could occur far more often, and the resulting sense of impermanence was on display this week in a weather-beaten house on this city's Hispanic, working-class South Side.

A few dozen people clustered around the color-coded maps pinned to the wall, each map showing the jigsaw patterns of how South and West Texas’ Congressional districts might be redrawn in the next few weeks. One keeps this part of southern Bexar County in the 28th Congressional District, another puts it in the 23rd, some split it into both and one plan divides the neighborhood among three districts.

“It’s a mess,” said Jimmie Casias, a military veteran and school board official from nearby Somerset. “And what’s worst about it, the way things are now, if whoever’s running things doesn’t like the way an election turns out, they can come back and change the lines all over again.”

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling said that a 2003 redistricting plan, spearheaded by Tom DeLay, the former leader of the Republican majority in the House, was not an unconstitutional gerrymander even though it resulted in the defeat of four Democratic incumbents. But the court also ruled that one district, the 23rd, stretching for 700 miles from Laredo to the outskirts of El Paso was illegal under the Voting Rights Act and needed 100,000 more Hispanics in it to comply. -- Ruling Has Texans Puzzling Over Districts - New York Times

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The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports: Soaring legal costs for Tupelo's annexation case and other lawsuits could climb to $200,000 when the year is finished.

City leaders Tuesday agreed to set aside $100,000 more for iits annexation fight with Lee County plus another high-profile case. ...

In the other major suit, Rev. Robert Jamison and other black leaders are upset there's only one minority on the nine-member council. They want to eliminate the two at-large council seats.

The new council should have either nine or seven wards, they say. Tupelo city officials want to keep the current form of government. The trial date is uncertain. -- djournal.com

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Kuff's World reports: Ready to get back to reviewing and analyzing redistricting map proposals? Of course you are. Good news: there are a couple of thorough efforts to examine. First up is this report (PDF) by local political consultant Mustafa Tameez, which looks at all of the maps and their relevant briefs where possible. When you're done with that, check out this report by Phillip Martin on another case-by-case overview done by the Lone Star Project. And finally, Vince Leibowitz runs all the partisan index numbers on the different plans, which he posts here. Take a look at them all and know what the lawyers will be talking about on August 3.

The one comment I'll make at this time has to do with the state's plan, which would effectively defenestrate Austin Democrat Lloyd Doggett by splitting Travis County up again into three districts, only this time anchoring each one to a heavily Republican area outside Travis, while moving Doggett's CD25 south and thus leaving him without a base. Doggett could probably still win, at least in 2006, given his huge cash advantage, but the writing would be on the wall for him. -- Kuff's World: Still more redistricting map analysis

Kuff's blog has links to the various reports he describes.

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AP reports: The Georgia Supreme Court will hear an appeal in October of a lawsuit challenging changes to three northeast Georgia state Senate districts.

State Rep. Jane Kidd, D-Athens, said attorneys for three Democratic voters have filed briefs for the appeal. The state's response is due by Aug. 1, she said.

But a nearly identical lawsuit in federal court will not be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Kidd who is running for an Athens-based seat that was reconfigured after she announced her campaign.

Atlanta attorney Emmet Bondurant, representing the three voters, will attempt to overturn a June 20 Clarke County Superior Court decision that upheld changes to the district boundaries. -- AP Wire | 07/17/2006 | State Supreme Court to hear Athens redistricting case

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CQ Politics reports: The legal proceedings to amend one of the 32 House districts in Texas, as ordered by the Supreme Court in a June 28 ruling, moved forward on Friday -- the deadline for the parties in the case to submit proposals for revised district maps to a three-judge federal panel in Austin.

The future of the state's 23rd District, represented by seven-term Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla, is the one remaining issue from a long-running legal dispute over an unusual and highly partisan mid-decade redistricting plan implemented by the Republican majority in the Texas legislature prior to the 2004 elections. The map overhaul, spearheaded by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, replaced one more favorable to Democrats that had been invoked by a state court panel prior to the 2002 elections. ...

A redrawing of the 23rd District necessarily requires the reconfiguration of a few other districts. The major map proposals submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas would also make alterations to the 21st District, a Republican-leaning district near Austin and San Antonio that is represented by 10-term Republican Rep. Lamar Smith; the 25th District, a heavily Hispanic and elongated district from Austin to the Mexico border that is represented by six-term Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett; and the 28th District, a south Texas district that is represented by freshman Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.

Friday’s deadline was set under an expedited schedule issued by the federal court June 29, one day after the Supreme Court ruling. The parties now have until July 21 to file comments on the proposed maps, and the court will hear oral arguments in Austin on Aug. 3. -- CQPolitics.com - TX: Remap Plans Vary Widely; New Primaries a Possibility

[The article has details of the various proposals.]

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AP reports: Here is a list of all of the proposals before the Legislature at Wednesday's constitutional convention. Some issues appear twice because of minor differences in language or because they were brought to the convention in separate ways, such as through citizen petitions or by lawmakers. ...

ABSENTEE VOTING (1) -- The amendment would permit a city or town to vote to allow absentee voting for any reason.

Lawmakers voted for a substitute amendment allowing absentee voting, then gave it initial approval.

SEPARATE ELECTIONS -- The proposal would repeal an amendment to the constitution that was enacted in 1966 to group the governor and lieutenant governor in teams according to party in the general election. This amendment would allow a governor and lieutenant governor from different parties to be elected.

Lawmakers rejected initial approval of the proposal.

LEGISLATIVE TERMS (1) -- The amendment would increase the legislative term from two to four years.

Lawmakers rejected initial approval of the proposal.

REDISTRICTING (1) -- The proposal would create an independent redistricting commission in an effort to establish transparency and fairness in the redistricting process.

Lawmakers voted to move this item to the end of the calendar.

BALLOT QUESTIONS -- The amendment would increase the current signature requirement for qualifying initiative petitions for the ballot and place title and language setting authority in a new commission.

Lawmakers rejected initial approval of the proposal. -- A look at the proposed constitutional amendments before lawmakers - Boston.com

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The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy has posted the video of the “Revitalizing Democracy” panel at its recent National Convention. On June 17, ACS hosted a panel at its 2006 National Convention exploring the sources of the growing sense of disenfranchisement among Americans and avenues for reform that could make our democratic system more responsive to ordinary Americans. Panelists explored issues such as the impact of money in politics and campaign finance reform, the effect of redistricting on political polarization, the merits of the electoral college, how technology will affect political campaigning in the coming years and the implementation of the Help American Vote Act. Panelists also discussed ways that we can encourage a national conversation on these issues and broaden participation in our democracy. Included on the panel were:

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AP reports: This Cleveland suburb's mayor bristled Tuesday at a Justice Department lawsuit over the city's election system, calling the attempt to block elections premature and unwarranted.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, alleges that majority whites voting as a bloc in an at-large election setup have made it impossible for a black candidate to get elected. It's the third time the Bush administration has filed a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of black voters, Justice Department spokesman Eric Holland said.

"Euclid has been proactive in fostering racial harmony and full participation of all residents through programs sponsored by city government, nonprofit organizations and the many churches and congregations throughout our community," Mayor Bill Cervenik said in a news release Tuesday.

The Lake Erie city of roughly 53,000 is 30 percent black, but no black person has been elected to a local seat. There have been eight recent black city council candidates, but the council's four wards and four at-large seats dilute black voters' power, the Justice Department lawsuit alleges. -- AP Wire | 07/11/2006 | Mayor rejects claims in Justice Department's voting-rights suit

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The Orlando Sentinel reports: Osceola County won a two-month delay Friday in the trial of a federal voting-rights lawsuit. ...

Lawyers for the county asked the judge for a delay in order to take depositions for close to 30 potential witnesses in the wake of a three-day hearing that resulted in Presnell's June 26 injunction halting commission elections. Presnell's ruling to move the trial to September came after a telephone hearing Friday.

There remains one unanswered question for experts to answer, the county said in paperwork asking for the delay.

It "concerns whether a constitutionally proper and proportionate district can be drawn using 2006 population and registration data which still provides for a Hispanic majority. To this point, no expert on either side has tried to do this, and defendants submit it cannot be done," the legal filing said.

The county argued it would take time for experts to flesh out that issue for trial. -- Voting trial in Osceola postponed 2 months - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News Voting trial in Osceola postponed 2 months - Orlando Sentinel : Osceola County News

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The Hattiesburg American reported on 27 June: A lawsuit filed by 10 leaders of Hattiesburg's black community alleges that city council and election officials used 3,358 transient student residents to unfairly sway political power to maintain a white voting bloc in city council.

"It's all about political power," said Ellis Turnage, a lawyer from Cleveland who represents a group of 10 city residents. "They cheated an African-American out of one seat on city council."

The lawsuit alleges the redistricting plan created by city council and approved by the U.S. Justice Department in 2002 violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the strength of black voters in the city.

The suit cites statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and the 2005 election results that show a much smaller number of people turned out to vote in Ward 1 - where the student population resides - than in the four remaining wards. The group is asking the court to order city council to eliminate the college students from the equation and redistrict the city in accordance with the new numbers. -- Hattiesburg American - www.hattiesburgamerican.com - Hattiesburg, Miss.

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The Washington Post reports:
Democrats cried foul three years ago when Texas Republicans rammed through a highly partisan redistricting to gain an advantage in several House races. Now, a recent Supreme Court ruling that blessed the Texas plan gives Democrats a chance to show that turnabout is fair play.

But early indications are that Democrats will probably resist the temptation to do unto Republicans as Republicans did unto them. ...

First, Democrats must compile a list of states where a DeLay-like strategy is feasible. It will be remarkably short. Several states assign the redistricting task to commissions, shielding the process from partisan control. Some states, such as Texas, are controlled by Republicans. Many others have divided government, in which neither party controls both the governorship and the two legislative chambers, making blatantly partisan redistricting impossible. Finally, some Democratic-controlled states have already carved out all the Democratic-leaning House districts they can, leaving no room for gains.

The result, redistricting experts say, yields perhaps four states where Democrats conceivably could try a mid-decade gerrymander comparable to that of Texas's: Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico and Louisiana. In each one, however, such a move seems unlikely because of factors that include racial politics, Democratic cautiousness and even a hurricane's impact. -- Democrats Not Eager to Emulate Texas's Redistricting

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The Washington Times reports: Last week's Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the 2003 Tom DeLay-led Texas redistricting coup was a distinct victory for the Republican Party, but it could spawn some interesting fallout.

There was only one instance in which the court said the Republican gerrymandering could not be upheld -- District 23, which sprawls from San Antonio to far West Texas. The court criticized the redrawing of a second district, District 25, which meanders from Austin to the Mexican border, and said it expected that district would be somewhat redrawn.

Despite the fact that the redrawing of district lines took months to accomplish -- resulting in the defeat of a half-dozen Democratic congressional incumbents throughout the state -- a panel of judges overseeing the changes is making sure they are determined well before this November's elections.

Within hours of the ruling, a federal judge from Texas' Eastern District ordered that all participants in the lawsuit claiming that the Voting Rights Act had been violated must have new maps and arguments submitted to the court within two weeks. Oral arguments are scheduled for Aug. 3 in Austin. -- Fallout felt from Texas redistricting ruling - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

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AP reports: California lawmakers are considering giving up one of their most politically potent powers -- the ability to draw their own districts.

A constitutional amendment that would transfer those duties to an 11-member commission seems to have enough votes to pass, a year after voters rejected a somewhat similar attempt that sparked a fight between Democrats and Republicans.

''I don't see a whole lot of opposition to this at this point,'' said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, D-Los Angeles. ''It's a clear effort to try and do the right thing by way of allowing for broader citizenship participation in the political process.''

Twelve states currently take the power to draw districts out of the hands of legislators and give it to commissions. Five others use commissions if lawmakers fail to approve new districts by a deadline.

If the California amendment passes, it would be the first time a state legislature had voted to give up its redistricting role, said Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, the measure's author. The other commissions were created by voter initiatives, he said. -- Monterey County Herald | 06/19/2006 | Redistricting resurfaces

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Dick Engstrom has emailed me his chapter from "Writing Southern Politics." He says, " It argues that the perverse effects hypothesis concerning African American majority districts resulting in the election of Republicans has been exaggerated, in light of the empirical research on this issue."

The file is large because of the method used to make the PDF.

Download part 1

Download part 2

Download part 3

Download part 4

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The Mobile Register reports: A three-judge federal panel on Monday decided not to change the boundaries of Alabama's legislative districts, ruling that previous litigation settled the issue.

A group of Republican voters in southwest Alabama filed a federal lawsuit in Mobile last year, arguing that the Legislature's redistricting plan following the 2000 Census intentionally discriminated against GOP voters by packing them into districts that were as much as 5 percent more populous than the ideal number.

Lawyers from the state attorney general's office and the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate argued the lawsuit should be barred because it made essentially the same case made in other challenges to the boundaries and that the plaintiffs were closely associated with the plaintiffs in the previous cases. -- Judges uphold legislative districts

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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama has just dismissed the Republicans' suit against the 2002 state legislative redistricting plan on the basis of res judicata. Here's what the Court says in its conclusion:

Having held that Gustafson and Montiel [an earlier redistricting case] involve the same cause of action and having found that the parties are in privity, and Plaintiffs having conceded the other requirements, we hold that the instant suit is barred by res judicata. Accordingly, judgment is due to be entered against Plaintiffs and in favor of all Defendants.

Here is the opinion.

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The Cleveland Plain Dealer: The biased, one- party process for drawing Ohio political districts would be erased and remade by a nonpartisan commission under a plan introduced Thursday by Republican House leaders.

"Nobody can honestly look at this and say that it is an unfair proposal, that it favors one party over another," said Rep. Kevin DeWine, a Dayton- area Republican and the resolution's sponsor.

But with a similar redistricting pro posal overwhelmingly rejected by voters just six months ago, House Minority Leader Joyce Beatty said lawmakers should move on to more- pressing matters, like the economy. ...

DeWine's resolution has the support of House Speaker Jon Husted and is intended to show up on November's election ballot as a constitutional amendment. To get there, it needs approval from 60 percent of both the House and Senate. -- GOP proposes new redistricting panel

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AP reports: A three-judge panel Tuesday rejected an attempt from an Athens lawmaker to throw out a state Senate map that splits the Democratic stronghold of Athens in half.

State Rep. Jane Kidd had asked the federal panel to rule a map that shifts Athens-Clarke County into two Republican-dominated districts unconstitutional and prevent it from being used in this year's elections.

Kidd, who had announced plans to seek an open Senate seat, and other Democrats accused Republicans of redrawing the map to give their party an advantage to win a seat now held by Republican Sen. Brian Kemp. -- AP Wire | 05/02/2006 | Judges back Republican plan to split Athens vote

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The Clarion-Ledger reports: A three-judge federal panel in Jackson will hear a lawsuit today that says the 2002 state legislative redistricting plan gerrymandered Senate District 45 to remove any chance of a black being elected.

"This should have never been approved," said Forrest County Supervisor Rod Woullard, the main plaintiff in the lawsuit against the state.

The federal panel will decide if the changes violate the Voting Rights Act, which was created during the civil rights era to guarantee fair election practices nationwide.

The suit contends that minority voting strength in the redrawn district is 20.42 percent, compared with 42.96 percent before redistricting. -- Judges to hear redistrict suit - The Clarion-Ledger

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The Baltimore Sun reports: Two Carroll County residents, one of them an official in the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., have gone to court to overturn an agreement that settled a long-running political feud about how to draw districts from which commissioners are to be elected this fall.

The election has been in the throes of uncertainty since the General Assembly recessed without approving a map that would create the five commissioner districts called for in a referendum approved by voters in 2004. The referendum had expanded the number of commissioners from three to five and required them to be elected by district.

Last week, a consent order was filed in Carroll Circuit Court that settled a lawsuit and called for a district map based on the recommendations of a redistricting committee created by the 2004 referendum.

One resident seeking to overturn last week's order is Joseph M. Getty, a former delegate from Manchester and now policy director for Ehrlich. Getty was one of two members of the redistricting committee to reject the Option Two map, aligning himself with the delegation.

He said the county Board of Elections doesn't have the authority to establish the districts called for in the consent order. -- 2 in Carroll County seek to overturn redistricting order - baltimoresun.com

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AP reports: The state's redistricting commission is questioning how it can get a fair shake from a trial judge who the commission suggests could be resentful, partly because his rulings on key issues on the legality of Arizona's map of legislative districts were overturned on appeal.

However, both the state Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court have turned aside efforts by the Independent Redistricting Commission and a Republican group which supports the map to have the case reassigned from Judge Kenneth Fields of Maricopa County Superior Court.

That leaves Fields presiding over Democrats' challenge that the commission didn't create enough competitive legislative districts - ones winnable by either major party _ when it drew the map used in the past two elections.
Everybody involved now acknowledges that the case won't be resolved in time to affect this year's election, but the eventual outcome could determine which districts are used in 2008 and 2010. After that, new census results will be used to draw new districts. -- Redistricting case stays with judge after challenge fails | www.azstarnet.com

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AP reports: Advocates for smaller county boards have a new weapon in Wisconsin — putting the issue to a vote of residents — but early returns indicate changes won't come soon.

Only one county has put the issue to a referendum so far and it failed, while the board in one of the state's most populous counties headed off an attempt to drastically reduce its size by voting for a smaller reduction before petitioners could get the issue on the ballot.

Sabrina Davis of Wisconsin Rapids submitted petitions last week seeking to cut the size of the Wood County Board from 38 to 19, even though the board's own census review and redistricting committee had proposed a cut of the same size. -- Green Bay Press-Gazette - Reducing county board sizes can go to voters

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AP reports: A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the current district boundaries for the Alabama Legislature awaits a ruling by a three-judge federal panel on whether it can continue.

Democrats claim it's a Republican attempt to pick up where the last redistricting suit left off. It's unclear when the three-judge panel will rule. A hearing date has not been set. ...

But Barron, Sanders and another intervenor, House Speaker Seth Hammett, D-Andalusia, point to close relationships of Republicans involved in the suit, particularly Montiel, who has brought numerous redistricting lawsuits on his own.

Minutes of the Republican Party Executive and Steering Committee show that on at least four occasions in 2004 and 2005, GOP vice chairman Jerry Lathan made formal presentations about the lawsuit.

In speeches, he presented this suit as the "central aspect" of the party's official strategy to take over the state Legislature, Montgomery attorney Shannon L. Holliday wrote in a court filing last month. -- Welcome to TimesDaily.com

Disclosure: I represent, along with James Blacksher, Speaker Hammett in this suit.

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The Athens Banner-Herald reports: The U.S. Department of Justice signed off late Thursday on a redistricting plan that would split Clarke County into two Senate districts, setting the stage for a lawsuit challenging the new districts filed earlier Thursday by state Rep. Jane Kidd, D-Athens.

Federal approval came less than four days before the qualifying period, when candidates officially register to run for office, which begins Monday morning. If the justice department had not approved the maps by then, elections would have been held using the old districts.

But the maps are not yet final. Attorneys are seeking a hearing on the lawsuit, filed in an Atlanta federal court, early next week, Kidd said Friday. A date has yet to be set, but at that hearing, attorneys will ask to either move back the qualifying period until the lawsuit is settled, or will seek a preliminary ruling to hold the elections using the old maps, she said. ..

Kidd's lawsuit argues that the redistricting was unconstitutional because it did not occur in a census year, it creates uneven representation by changing the populations of the districts, and it limits the freedom of speech of Democrats who make up the majority in Clarke County by diluting their voting power. -- OnlineAthens.com | News | Feds OK map that splits A-C 04/22/06

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The Baltimore Sun reports: Since the state legislature failed to carve Carroll County into five commissioner districts, county officials decided yesterday to ask the courts to define the district lines.

The court could review two existing maps that each have five districts with equal populations. ...

Candidates, who face a July 3 filing deadline, cannot officially campaign until the districts are set. But there may not be enough time or willingness for the courts to rule on a map, said William R. Varga, assistant attorney general. ...

Kimberly A. Millender, county attorney, said she is reviewing the county's legal options and expects to make recommendations to the commissioners as soon as today. Minnich said he would urge Carroll County Circuit Court to make "a declaratory judgment in a timely manner." -- Carroll to ask courts to define districts - baltimoresun.com

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The Metropolitan News-Enterprise reports: A legislative redistricting plan does not violate the state Constitution merely because it splits a city, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.

The justices affirmed a Sacramento Superior Court judge’s ruling that lawmakers acted within their discretion when they drew up and passed the current redistricting plan five years ago. Santa Clara voters had challenged the decision to split their city between Assembly District 22 and District 24.

District 24 is currently represented by Rebecca Cohn, D-San Jose, and District 22 by Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View. Most of Santa Clara is in Lieber’s district.

The plaintiffs argued that splitting the city violated Art. XXI, Sec. 1(e) of the Constitution, which mandates that “[t]he geographical integrity of any city, county, or city and county, or of any geographical region shall be respected to the extent possible without violating the requirements of any other subdivision of this section.� -- Court of Appeal Rejects Challenge to State Assembly Redistricting

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AP reports: A proposed state constitutional amendment that would have stripped lawmakers of their power to redraw legislative and congressional districts was knocked off the ballot Thursday by the Florida Supreme Court.

In a separate ruling, the high court unanimously approved putting on the 2008 ballot another citizen initiative that would put a ban on same-sex marriages in the Florida Constitution. Sponsors had hoped to send it to voters this year but failed to get enough petition signatures.

The justices ruled in a 6-1 opinion that the redistricting proposal failed to meet requirements to address only a single subject and have clear and unambiguous language.

The citizen initiative would have set up a 15-member commission to handle redistricting every 10 years. Sponsors had collected the 611,009 signatures needed to put the amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot. -- AP Wire | 03/23/2006 | High court kills redistricting amendment, OKs gay marriage one

The advisory opinions may be seen here: marriage amendment; independent redistricting commission.

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Scripps Howard News Service reports: Legislation to strip California lawmakers of their power to draw state Senate, Assembly and other political boundaries narrowly passed a legislative committee Wednesday.

Supported by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, the measure comes four months after voters soundly defeated Proposition 77, which also called for independent redistricting but differed significantly in its process and timing.

Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat who helped craft SCA 3, hailed the proposed constitutional amendment as a way to give political power "back to the people."

"We can only depoliticize the redistricting process by working together," Lowenthal said in urging bipartisan support.

Under SCA 3, boundaries for legislative, congressional and Board of Equalization districts would be drawn once every decade, beginning in 2011, after the federal census.

Boundaries would be set by a citizens commission, with legislative leaders choosing a majority of its members from a pool of candidates nominated by a panel of retired appellate judges. -- Scripps Howard News Service

I'm sure that Rick Hasen will have all the details at Election Lawhttp://electionlawblog.org/.

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Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres write in the Boston Globe: DURING ORAL arguments on the Texas redistricting case March 1, Chief Justice John Roberts asked the lawyer for the Mexican-American appellants: ''What's the difference between 'being one' and 'looking like one?' "

Though Roberts was asking about the claim that the Legislature was hiding its partisan shenanigans behind an ersatz majority Latino election district in Southwest Texas, he could easily have been inquiring about the identity of the residents of that district and of their congressman. The question looms large because the legality of the Republicans' mid-decade redistricting will probably rise or fall with the proposition that appearances matter, i.e., that the legality of the plan depends on what the district, the politician who represents it, or the people living inside the district ''look like."

That the case will turn on identity, not partisan politics is not surprising since the probable swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy, objected that the mapmakers' twists and turns camouflaged a racial ''affront and insult" within the partisan landscape. Kennedy grounded his objection in a series of cases in the 1990s, where the court expressed displeasure with Democrats who allowed race to predominate on the map of congressional districts in North Carolina.

In North Carolina, blacks, who were one-fifth of the electorate, had not elected a representative of their choice to Congress for almost a century. Yet Democrats, concerned about the reelection of a white Democrat incumbent, chose not to create a compact district in the southeastern and central part of the state where blacks and Native Americans lived in close proximity. Motivated by their own brand of political engineering, North Carolina Democrats ignored the potentially compact district to fashion instead a majority black ''highway district" that followed the lines of a zigzagging interstate. One legislator mused that if you drove down Interstate 85 with both car doors open, you would mow down all the voters in the district. The court objected. Appearances mattered. -- Tricks of virtual redistricting - The Boston Globe

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AP reports: His previous ruling overturned by an appellate court, a trial judge has begun reconsidering Hispanics Democrats' challenge to a map of legislative district maps that favor Republicans.

Judge Kenneth Fields of Maricopa County Superior Court said during Monday's hearing that he doesn't want the 4-year-old case to languish, and a lawyer for the Democrats left open a slim possibility that districts could be put in place for use in this year's election.

In January, the Arizona Supreme Court let stand a state Court of Appeals ruling that overturned Fields' 2004 ruling that ordered the state redistricting to replace the legislative district map with a new version that included additional districts winnable by either major party.

The Court of Appeals said Fields used incorrect legal standards in judging the map and ordered him to reconsider the Democrats' challenge under a standard that gives more discretion to the Independent Redistricting Commission. -- Welcome to the Tucson Citizen

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The Washinton Post reports: The Supreme Court hosted its own performance of "Beauty and the Beast" this week. On Tuesday, it heard the plea of Anna Nicole Smith, the former stripper and Playboy Playmate seeking a share of her deceased husband's fortune. Yesterday, the justices debated the aesthetics of three congressional districts in Texas.

"Particularly grotesque shapes," judged Justice John Paul Stevens. "Much less compact" than before.

Justice Stephen Breyer offered a partially concurring opinion. "A long walking stick is what it looks like . . . It's not a circle . . . It's not absolutely terrible."

Lawyer Ted Cruz, defending the state of Texas, found the map much more pleasing than the old one, which he said had "fingers" coming out of it. "It's not like they snake around," Cruz argued, rattling off what he called the districts' "perimeter to area score" and using fancy words like "equipopulosity."

Breyer demanded a more precise description of the shapes. "Either it is reasonably compact or it isn't," he said. -- The Justices Look at Some Shapely . . . Congressional Districts

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The New York Times reports: Texas Democrats had their day in the Supreme Court on Wednesday to challenge the unusual middecade redistricting of the state's Congressional delegation that led to the loss of five Democratic seats and helped solidify Republican control of Congress.

While the Democrats may not come away completely empty-handed, it appeared unlikely by the end of the intense two-hour argument that a majority of the court would overturn the 2003 redistricting plan, or any other plan, for that matter, as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

The new districts were drawn under a plan that was engineered by Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, then the House majority leader, after Republicans gained control of both houses of the Texas Legislature. And they are not necessarily invulnerable. Several justices, including, most significantly, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who may be in a position to cast the deciding vote, expressed concern with aspects of how particular districts were dismantled and reconfigured.

As a result, it appeared possible that the court would find a violation of the Voting Rights Act or the Constitution's equal protection guarantee in the way the new lines were drawn in South Texas. The legislators removed 100,000 Mexican-American residents of Laredo from a district in which the Republican incumbent, Representative Henry Bonilla, had become more vulnerable with each passing election, while creating a new Latino-majority district in a narrow strip running 300 miles from Austin to the Mexican border. -- Supreme Court Justices Express Concern Over Aspects of Some Texas Redistricting - New York Times

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The New York Times reports: The most pressing and unsettled questions in election law are those that concern the role of money, the role of race and the role of partisanship. The Supreme Court will take up all three this week.

Hearing arguments in a campaign finance case from Vermont on Tuesday and a Congressional redistricting case from Texas on Wednesday, the justices will venture onto a shifting landscape where the controlling legal precedents are either unclear or unstable and the prospect for fundamental change looms on the horizon.

On many of the questions, the new Roberts court will almost certainly be as closely divided as was the Rehnquist court. Two years ago, for example, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was succeeded last month by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., cast the decisive fifth vote to uphold major provisions of a new federal campaign finance law. The justices were unable during that same term to agree on a majority opinion in a case from Pennsylvania on whether the Constitution prohibits a partisan gerrymander.

While decisions in the new cases are not likely until June, the arguments this week could offer a hint of the court's direction and appetite for forging a new consensus. -- Supreme Court Set to Weigh Central Election-Law Issues - New York Times

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The Austin American-Statesman reports: The Democratic attorneys challenging Texas' congressional districts filed a reply brief with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, one week before arguments are set to begin in the high-stakes case.

The brief is aimed at countering state arguments that say the map, which was redrawn in 2003 and helped Republican candidates, was done fairly and with consideration to both parties' senior members and minority voting stakes.

Last week, the White House asked to join the state's case defending the map, and in the Wednesday arguments, the court will hear from Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Gregory Garr.

In their brief filed Wednesday, J. Gerald Hebert and fellow appellant attorneys called the reasoning behind the redistricting "nonsense."

"This was not some bipartisan effort. It was orchestrated in Washington and one of the most notorious power grabs in the history of our country," the attorneys said. -- Democrats prepare for redistricting case

Thanks to the Man in the Tuxedo for the link.

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The Rocky Mountain News reports: A U.S. Supreme Court decision Tuesday dropped the hot potato of redrawing Colorado's congressional district map back in the lap of a federal district court, but it will take a rapid-fire decision for the case to affect the November election.

Justices ruled that a three-judge, federal panel erred last year when it tossed out a Republican-backed lawsuit challenging the map drawn by Democrats and approved by a judge in 2002.

Tuesday's ruling does not change the map, but it gives four Colorado plaintiffs their day in federal district court that could change the ultimate shape of Colorado's seven congressional districts.

The plaintiffs' attorney, John -Zakhem, said he plans to file motions this week asking the judicial panel to put the case on a fast track. -- Rocky Mountain News: Local

The U.S. Supreme Court opinion is here.

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The Chicago Tribune reports: Chicago Heights officials voted Monday to continue a fight over minority voting rights, a battle that dates to 1987 and that by one alderman's estimate already has cost the town more than $3 million in legal fees.

By a 4-3 vote, with Mayor Anthony DeLuca casting the deciding vote, the City Council directed its attorney to appeal a federal court ruling ordering the city to redraw its voting districts and restructure its government to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Under the ruling handed down last week by U.S. District Judge David Coar, the city is required to go from a six-member City Council to a seven-member board of aldermen. The decision would weaken the mayor's powers to appoint department heads without council approval and cast tie-breaking council votes.

The ruling overturns a 1994 settlement of the 1987 lawsuit filed by four residents, including Ald. Kevin Perkins (3rd), who said the city's at-large elections for City Council were unfair to minority voters. Under the settlement the city abandoned at-large elections and replaced them with six districts, whose voters select their alderman. -- Chicago Tribune | Chicago Heights fights on

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AP reports: A proposed constitutional amendment that would strip state lawmakers of their power to redraw legislative and congressional districts should be kept off the ballot, lawyers for several state and federal lawmakers told the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.

The citizen initiative would set up a 15-member commission to handle redistricting every 10 years. Sponsors have collected the 611,000 signatures needed to put the amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot if the high court approves.

The lawyers who argued against the amendment, state Rep. Dudley Goodlette and former Rep. Barry Richard, said it would violate a ballot requirement because legislative and congressional redistricting are separate matters. Ballot questions can have only one subject. -- Lawmakers Seek to Keep Redistricting Off Ballot | theledger.com

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Dan Walters writes in the Sacramento Bee: Would legislative and congressional districts drawn by some independent body be more competitive? An exhaustive new study of California redistricting by the University of California's Institute of Governmental Studies - directed by a one-time redistricting consultant to the Legislature's dominant Democrats - concludes that plans drawn without regard to partisan impact would create a substantial number of competitive districts, i.e. those that could conceivably be won by either party.

The study, co-directed by Bruce Cain and drawing on the institute's extensive database, found that about a dozen congressional districts and, depending on the criteria, one to two dozen of the Assembly's 80 districts could be competitive without violating the other redistricting criteria, such as compactness and protection of minority rights.

The study notes that even with more competitiveness, it's likely that Democrats would retain control of both the Legislature and the congressional delegation - but that observation misses the point. The purpose of redistricting reform isn't to change partisan balance, but to give voters the opportunity to elect whomever they want without the outcome being dictated by politicians themselves.

The study, moreover, ignores the influence of legislative term limits, under which about a third of the Legislature's members are turned out of their seats every two years. Term limits have accelerated the impact of the 2001 gerrymander, and would also accelerate the impact of a non-gerrymander plan by diminishing the power of incumbency. In other words, the vacancies mandated by term limits would give voters even more opportunities to change partisan ownership of their districts. -- Politics - Dan Walters: UC study demonstrates how new districts can be competitive - sacbee.com

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The Dallas Morning News reports: The Bush administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to ignore arguments by minority voters in Texas that a contentious redistricting by Republican state legislators in 2003 violated the Voting Rights Act.

In a 35-page friend-of-the-court brief filed last week, the U.S. Justice Department argued that minority representation was preserved and even enhanced by the Republican reconfiguration and that Hispanics may be over-represented in some parts of the state.

Democrats and minorities have contested the reconfigured map, thus far unsuccessfully, as an unprecedented power grab by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. They argue that Republicans misused data from the 2000 census to tailor a mid-decade partisan gerrymandering that maximized Republican voter influence at the expense of incumbent Democrats. ...

In its brief, the Justice Department includes no position on excessive partisanship or various questions about the use of census data. It focuses instead on whether the current Texas districts violate the Voting Rights Act. -- Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Washington

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The Washington Post reports: The Bush administration has come to the defense of Texas in a legal battle with political overtones, telling the Supreme Court in a brief filed yesterday that the state's 2003 congressional redistricting plan, drafted by Republicans, is fully consistent with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The redistricting plan, drawn up at the request of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who was House majority leader at the time, was designed to give Texas's House delegation a Republican majority to match the state's overall voting preference. After the 2000 census, the state's delegation grew from 30 seats to 32, and the shift to a Republican majority in Texas helped cement GOP control of the House.

But opponents have challenged the plan in court on a variety of grounds, saying that it is so partisan that it violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, and that it violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting strength of black and Hispanic voters in some areas. A three-judge U.S. District Court panel upheld the plan last year; the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case during a special two-hour hearing March 1. -- White House Defends Texas's GOP Remapping Plan to Justices

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Morris News Service reports: A redistricting plan that would divide Clarke County between two Senate districts passed the House, 100-69, on a nearly party-line vote Tuesday.

The plan now moves to Gov. Sonny Perdue for his signature. Perdue hasn't yet commented specifically on the bill, though he said Monday he would veto any redistricting plans that he considered unfair.

The debate over the measure was sharp and partisan and reopened old wounds from the heated redistricting efforts of the past. Democrats, long accused by Republicans of twisting the state's political boundaries to their advantage while in power, railed against the GOP-backed plan. Republicans blasted the Democrats as chameleons who were ignoring their own past of gerrymandering. -- OnlineAthens.com | News | Clarke division passes 02/01/06

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The Washington Post reports: Since the first U.S. census in 1790, there has been a rule for keeping track of the convicts sitting in prisons: They are counted in the state and region where they are serving their time, not necessarily the place they did their crime or will call home once they are out of the joint.

How to count inmates historically has not been a big issue. But the fast-expanding prison population -- now about 1.5 million -- is prompting a debate because government spending and electoral district boundaries are in part decided by population. Opponents say the practice unfairly rewards rural, often sparsely populated regions where many prisons are built, at the expense of the cities where many prisoners had resided.

"For people in prison, their bodies count but their voices don't," said Kirsten Levingston, director of the criminal justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "Their presence in the tabulation column expands the influence of those who have an incentive to keep them in prison, not those who need the resources to help keep them out."

Now, after a congressional directive, the Census Bureau is studying what it would take to change the policy, and the National Academy of Sciences will also report on the question. -- Census Bureau, Activists Debate How and Where to Count Inmates

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The Indianapolis Star reports: The interests of voters, not politicians, would be the deciding factor when legislative districts are mapped in the future under a bill passed Thursday by the Indiana House.

House Bill 1009, which creates a bipartisan commission to draw House and Senate maps beginning in 2011, passed the House 54-43, with three Democrats joining Republicans in voting for the measure.
The bill was one of many passed Thursday as lawmakers worked late into the night, including one tightening restrictions on government's ability to seize private property under eminent domain.

But House Speaker Brian C. Bosma, R-Indianapolis, told lawmakers nothing they do this session will have greater long-term impact on the state than reforming the way legislative districts are drawn. -- House OKs redistricting change | IndyStar.com

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The Cape Gazette reports: Election-district map making is big business in politics. It is time consuming, tense and tentative to the very end. Although the next federal census is five years away, redistricting is emerging as a divisive issue in the state capital.

Bipartisan support is lending momentum to legislation aimed at establishing an Independent Redistricting Commission. If approved, SB 215 would dramatically alter the process of drawing the boundaries of state Senate and House districts.

“It is simply a fair concept. Regardless of which party is in the majority in either chamber, pure incumbent protection is not good,� said Sen. Gary Simpson, R-Milford. ...

As the issue gets traction, legislative watchdogs such as John Flaherty, executive director of Common Cause of Delaware, are gaining enthusiasm about the fate of SB 215. -- Independent redistricting bill gaining momentum in General Assembly

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The Mobile Register reports: A trial originally scheduled for Wednesday related to a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama's legislative districts has been canceled.

A three-judge panel in Mobile was to have heard evidence this week before deciding whether the lawsuit should be allowed to move forward. Lawyers for Democratic legislators have argued that a redistricting lawsuit in 2002 precludes the most recent suit, filed last year by Republican voters in southwest Alabama.

The voters contend that the Democratic-dominated Legislature's redistricting improperly packed them into overpopulated districts.

Plaintiffs made similar arguments in the 2002 case.

The many lawyers involved agreed last week to submit testimony from depositions rather than present live witnesses. The judges will review that testimony, along with written arguments from the lawyers, before making a decision. -- Hearing on legislative redistricting canceled

Disclosure: I am one of the counsel (for the Speaker of the House) in the case.

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AP reports: A group that thinks drawing political boundaries is a job for an independent commission and not politicians said Tuesday it has enough signatures to put the issue on November's ballot.

The Committee for Fair Elections said it has turned in more than 900,000 signatures, far more than the 611,009 needed to put it on the ballot. As of Tuesday evening, elections supervisors had certified almost 580,000 signatures. The deadline for certification is Feb. 1.

The ballot question would ask voters to create a 15-member commission to draw congressional and legislative districts. Members would be selected in a nonpartisan process and would not be able to seek elected office for four years after serving. Two-thirds of commissioners would have to agree on the districts, and if they couldn't agree by a deadline, the Supreme Court would set political boundaries. -- Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, Fla.

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Morris News Service reports: A controversial plan to craft new political boundaries in Clarke County could be the first of several attempts to shift the state's political maps, though Republican leaders vow that a wholesale redrawing of legislative districts is not in the offing.

House leaders gave representatives and senators the opportunity to propose redistricting plans for their areas - as long as all affected lawmakers sign off on them.

In a memo to representatives, the chairman of the House committee charged with overseeing the state's political lines said the Georgia General Assembly would not "redraw" the lines throughout the state.

"However, we do recognize that for a long time there has been a general understanding that if ALL members affected agree to change district lines or precincts, the House would permit such a change," wrote Reapportionment Committee Chairman Bobby Franklin, R-Marietta. "In keeping with that tradition, we will permit a similar practice of consensual redistricting during the 2006 session" as long as the proposals are in line with a list of rules Franklin laid out. -- OnlineAthens.com | News | Clarke's split may not be last 01/24/06

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AP reports: A bill that would create a five-member commission to draw up new maps for congressional and legislative districts each decade advanced to the full Indiana House on a party-line vote Thursday.

All seven Republicans on the House Elections and Apportionment Committee endorsed the proposal while all five Democrats voted against it. Maps are currently drawn by the Legislature.

Lawmakers would not be allowed to serve on the panel, but leaders of the four caucuses in the General Assembly would each appoint one member, and the chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court would choose a chairman.

The commission would be required to base new district boundaries on nonpolitical factors that include population, compactness and attempts to keep communities together. The General Assembly would then meet in a special session during the redistricting year to vote on the proposal. -- AP Wire | 01/19/2006 | Bill that creates redistricting commission advances

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AP reports: A former Minneapolis City Council member who portrayed himself as a champion of the downtrodden was indicted Wednesday for allegedly using his position to solicit cash and favors from developers seeking help with their projects.

A federal grand jury indicted Dean Zimmermann on three counts of accepting cash and one count of soliciting property — a retaining wall he wanted built at the home of his former girlfriend.

The indictment alleges that Zimmermann, a member of the city's zoning committee, accepted $5,000 from the developer of the Chicago Commons condo and retail complex, who was seeking a change in zoning rules to allow more retail space. ...

According to an FBI agent's affidavit filed in September, the exchanges between Zimmermann and the Chicago Commons developer were recorded on audio- and videotape. The FBI agent said Zimmermann wanted the $5,000 to help pay for his legal fees in a lawsuit against the city over a redistricting plan. The affidavit said the $1,200 and $1,000 payments were donations to Zimmermann's re-election campaign. -- Former council member indicted

Poor guy. He had a monkey lawyer on his back.

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