[EL] Lessons from “Va. Republicans push re-drawn district map through Senate”

Tue Jan 22 05:55:21 PST 2013

[Gasp!] Why, we haven't seen gerrymandering this blatant since . . . oh, wait, . . . this year.

In Virginia's ultra-blue neighbor, Maryland. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-21/opinions/35494407_1_congressional-districts-gerrymander-bizarre-districts. Maryland's 3rd CD was described as the most gerrymandered in the nation. http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109938/welcome-americas-most-gerrymandered-district. And it was upheld by the courts precisely BECAUSE it was partisan, not racial, gerrymandering. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/federal-judges-uphold-marylands-controversial-new-congressional-map/2011/12/23/gIQA7tfVEP_story.html; http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-11-09/local/35503653_1_legislative-map-congressional-map-single-member. And, in the November elections, the voters refused to void the redistricting. 

I barely escaped being put into a new district, which runs from my quintessentially-suburban D.C. neighborhood (where we hosted an international delegation of election observers, including the Ambassador from Egypt) to mountainous rural areas hundreds of miles away in Western Maryland. The dividing line is a block away. Nothing compact or contiguous about that. The district was expressly designed to defeat former Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, and it worked. 

But, as another of today's stories shows, perhaps it was intended to work that way. 

“Benign Partisanship”

Posted on January 21, 2013 7:25 pm by Rick Hasen

Franita Tolson has posted this draft on SSRN (Notre Dame Law Review).  Here is the abstract:

The Framers of the United States Constitution created our system of federalism based on the principle that political safeguards would protect the regulatory interests of the states from overreaching by the federal government. While many of these safeguards have since failed, others have emerged to insulate the states from an ever-expanding federal presence. One such safeguard is partisan gerrymandering, which allows states to draw legislative districts that reflect the partisan affiliation of a majority of the electorate, and in turn, send a delegation to Congress that is as ideologically cohesive as practicable. In making this argument, this Article corrects a basic misunderstanding in the political safeguards literature: that the Senate is the only chamber that the Framers constructed to protect state interests. In reality, a politically cohesive House delegation can ensure that the state’s preferred policy preferences shape federal lawmaking.
This Article also illustrates that, in the context of congressional redistricting, the legal scholarship’s sole focus on ascertaining manageable judicial standards ignores the concerns about institutional legitimacy and judicially dictated political outcomes that are exacerbated by the federalism issues in this area. Despite the absence of standards, the broader structural implications of promoting “federalism-reinforcing” gerrymandering require the Supreme Court to craft rules that encourage the use of mid-decade redistricting and at-large voting schemes; that limit the authority of independent commissions to draw redistricting plans; and that promote strong state political parties, all of which will help preserve the states’ ability to utilize the federalism benefits that flow from partisan redistricting.

Not sure I buy that argument, but it shows that partisan redistricting has its defenders beyond those who see merely short-term political advantage. 

Barnaby Zall 
Of Counsel 
Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP 
10411 Motor City Drive, Suite 500
Bethesda, MD 20817
301-231-6943 (direct dial) 
bzall at aol.com 
_____________________________________________________________ 
U.S. Treasury Circular 230 Notice 

Any U.S. federal tax advice included in this communication (including 
any attachments) was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be 
used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding U.S. federal tax-related penalties 
or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any 
tax-related matter addressed herein. 
_____________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org>
To: Election Law <Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
Sent: Tue, Jan 22, 2013 7:47 am
Subject: [EL] Lessons from “Va. Republicans push re-drawn district map through Senate”

This news item from Rick underscores just how far we can expect efforts to manipulate our electoral rules might go in some states. Those who dismiss the potential of similar powergrabs to distort the Electoral College by going to congressional district allocation of electoral votes in Democratic-leaning swing states (like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) simply aren't paying attention,.

In sum, without any warning, 20 Republican senators took advantage of an African American state senator being in DC for the inauguration on Martin Luther King Day to jam through a Republican gerrymander designed to ensure the state senate joins all the deep south state legislative chambers in being locked up for Republicans for the next generation. Excluding Maryland, which has its own politic dynamic locking it down for Democrats, the only southern legislative chambers still in Democratic control are one house in Kentucky and two in West Virginia, both states with relatively few African Americans. I would be stunned if any of the otehr legislative chambers flip back to Democrats in the next decade, and probably not for at least two -- meaning that a majority of the nation's African Americans live in a region where their preferred state legislative candidates are nearly guaranteed to be out of power for a long time.

How Gov. McDonnell responds to this move will be very telling.

Rob Richie

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

 “Va. Republicans push re-drawn district map          through Senate”      

        Posted on January 21, 2013 8:14            pm by Rick Hasen 

WaPo:          “Senate Republicans pushed a re-drawn state political map past          flabbergasted Democrats on Monday, pulling off what would          amount to a mid-decade redistricting of Senate lines if the          plan gets approval from the House and governor and stands up          to anticipated legal challenges. The bill, approved 20 to 19,          would revamp the Senate map to concentrate minority voters in          a new Southside district and would change most, if not all,          existing district lines. Democrats, still scrambling Monday          night to figure out the impact, said they thought that the new          map would make at least five districts held by Democrats          heavily Republican. The map puts two sitting senators, R.          Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) and Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (R-Augusta),          into a single district.”TPM:

As mentioned earlier, seizing on the absence of a            Democratic senator who happens to be a veteran of the civil            rights movement and was in Washington, on Martin Luther            King, Jr. Day, for the second inauguration of the country’s            first black president, Republicans in the evenly split            Virginia state Senate pushed              through a surprise mid-decade redistricting plan to            try to gain decisive control of the body in the next            election.

We’re not done yet.

At the end of this wild day, the “Senate adjourned in            memory or (sic) General Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,”            according to the minutes            of the session. Jan. 21 is the Confederate general’s            birthday.

  Posted            in redistricting         | Comments Off 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20130122/3d99cd6b/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: share_save_171_16.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1504 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20130122/3d99cd6b/attachment.png>