[EL] Citizen Redistricting Commissions

[Michael McDonald]

To make matters more complex in Arizona, in the commissioners interpreted
the state constitution with respect to competitiveness differently in the
post-2000 and post-2010 redistricting.

If one was interested in a specific electoral outcome, it is best to
incorporate the outcome into the redistricting criteria. We are most
familiar with the approach as it is implemented in the Voting Rights Act. A
partisan fairness metric similar to scholarly bias measures has been
informally adopted by the court-appointed ninth member of the New Jersey
state legislative redistricting commission, starting with Donald Stokes (it
is called the “Stokes method” in the state). Micah Altman and I supported
Ohio reformers through the Public Mapping Project, who held a redistricting
competition under a formula that included partisan fairness and competition.
We analyze the Ohio competition participants’ plans alongside the
legislative plans in this manuscript:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2450645 

Finally, some may be interested in this draft paper presented with my
co-authors at the recent APSA meeting, which examines Mexico’s experience
with automated redistricting. To spoil the ending: humans can beat the
computer by drawing better plans on the objective scoring function, which
thereby opens the process to political manipulation since the parties can
strategically decide if they will present and adopt amendments.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2486885 

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor
University of Florida
Department of Political Science
234 Anderson Hall
P.O. Box 117325
Gainesville, FL 32611

phone:   352-273-2371 (office)
e-mail:  dr.michael.p.mcdonald at gmail.com                
web:     www.ElectProject.org 
twitter: @ElectProject

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Justin
Levitt
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 8:01 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Citizen Redistricting Commissions

There's a summary of the institutions that draw congressional lines here
(individual detail available by clicking on each state), and state
legislative lines here (again, individual detail available by clicking on
each state).

It'll be tougher to point to "results" of the institutional choices across
state lines, both because many of the non-legislative bodies haven't been
around for that many cycles, and also because the different bodies aren't
necessarily designed to achieve the same thing, which makes the appropriate
question difficult to frame.  

For example, Arizona has a citizen commission that is asked to consider the
competitiveness of districts, as a last priority after considering federal
law, compactness, communities of interest, geographic features, and
political boundaries.  California has a citizen commission that is designed
somewhat differently, has a different mix of priority criteria, and is
(intentionally) not asked to consider drawing districts that are
deliberately competitive, but is told that it may not draw districts for the
purpose of favoring or discriminating against a party.  Each exists in its
own state with its own political demography and history of recent
elections.  Gauging the extent to which these two institutions arrived at
competitive districts in the 2011 redistricting cycle doesn't necessarily
tell you much about whether a citizen commission in the abstract is likely
to "result" in more competitive district (or whether a citizen commission
specifically told to prioritize competitive districts first and foremost --
which I don't favor -- would "result" in more competitive districts than
another institution given the same instructions).

The same is true for many other potential measures of the redistricting
process -- whether communities of interest are better preserved, whether
parties are more equitably represented, whether districts are more compact
(by whatever measure), whether municipalities are less often split, whether
citizens have a more ready forum to present their grievances, and so on.  It
may be possible to compare redistricting processes and outcomes within a
state under a legislative structure (though even here, different legislative
conditions might have produced different plans) and then a subsequent
non-legislative structure in the same state.  But given the diversity of
non-legislative structures, the diversity of criteria they are asked to
apply (with different priorities), the diversity of political demography,
and the decennial nature of the process (yielding few data points) it's
tough to find analyses that reliably demonstrate that a given redistricting
structure in its Platonic form definitively yields X or Y result.

Justin

-- 
Justin Levitt
Professor of Law
Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA  90015
213-736-7417
justin.levitt at lls.edu
ssrn.com/author=698321
On 9/3/2014 3:59 PM, Fredric Woocher wrote:
Could anyone point me to a good source on data regarding which states use
citizen commissions or other non-legislative bodies to perform the decennial
redistricting of their Congressional or state legislative districts, and any
analyses of the results of such efforts?
 
Off-list responses would be fine.  Thanks,
 
Fredric D. Woocher
Strumwasser & Woocher LLP
10940 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2000
Los Angeles, CA 90024
fwoocher at strumwooch.com
(310) 576-1233 
 



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