Congress could also deal with the issue for congressional seats, and I expect it would.
________________________________
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu on behalf of Michael McDonald
Sent: Wed 3/1/2006 10:29 PM
To: ban@richardwinger.com; election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: RE: prediction on congressional redistricting
Actually, the governor doesn't have a veto over NC redistricting. Still,
Democrats have, until now, shied away from mid-decade redistricting
opportunities in IL, LA, and NM (states where they gained control of
congressional redistricting after 2002), primarily because Democrats in
these states have been more worried with state politics than trying to gain
advantage in national politics. Perhaps Democratic re-redistricting efforts
would step up if Democrats won the CA governor and NY governor/state Senate.
I've come to the conclusion that the Supreme Court unintentionally mucked
this up in the 1960s when they ruled on equal population (not saying that we
should go back to malapportioned districts). No one foresaw that requiring
redistricting to occur at the beginning of every decade would provide
on-the-job training to the political parties and incumbents how to use
redistricting to their political advantage. The jinni is out of the bottle
now and the Court doesn't know how or doesn't have the stomach to put it
back in. However, restricting redistricting to occur once a decade (for
anything other than legitimate interests to rectify constitutional defects)
is a sensible step to reduce the incidence of partisan and incumbent
protection gerrymandering. I agree that if the Court does not put a stop to
it, we're likely to see more re-redistricting as long as the House is so
evenly divided (not to mention that the NH and SC state legislatures
re-redistricted without so much notice).
------------
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution
Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191 George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399 Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon@gmu.edu 4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu [mailto:owner-election-
law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu] On Behalf Of ban@richardwinger.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 9:06 PM
To: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: prediction on congressional redistricting
If the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Texas did not
violate the Constitution when it redrew the boundaries
of congressional districts in 2003 for partisan
reasons, then every time a state transfers power from
one major party to the other in the state executive
and legislative branches, we will see mid-decade
partisan re-redistricting.
For example, I can imagine the North Carolina
legislature redrawing that state's congressional
districts in 2007 (assuming Democrats are in the
majority in 2007; the governorship is not up in 2006
and a Democrat is now governor). In 2004 Democrats
only won 6 of the state's 13 US House seats. Creative
redrawing should be able to get that up to 9 or 10.
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