In 2011, each state will redraw the boundaries of its legislative and congressional districts. Common Cause supports redistricting reforms, including the creation of independent commissions to conduct redistricting, establishment of criteria for re-drawing districts, requiring a fair and transparent process for conducting redistricting, and creating independent “shadow” commissions to present their own recommendations.
Each state decides for itself who draws its district lines, which has led to a few different models: state legislature, political commissions and independent comissions.
For years, FairVote has highlighted how our nation's reliance upon winner-take-all elections and single member districts for Congressional elections without national standards has left our voting process open to the abuses of unfair partisan gerrymandering. Insiders for decades have known how powerful redistricting can be for elected officials to protect friends and undermine opponents. It's a blood sport that both parties have exploited, thereby minimizing the role of voters in the political process. By gerrymandering the districts, legislators and their political cronies have used redistricting to choose their voters, before voters have had the opportunity to choose them. ... The lessons of our years of research on Congressional elections indicate that resolving the gerrymandering dilemma is only part of the problem. Redistricting reform can minimize the ability of partisan legislators to punish their enemies and reward their friends, but for competitive elections, legislative diversity, and other public interest goals multimember districts with proportional voting are needed to maximize the effectiveness of these reforms – and ensure all voters have choices and no strong prospective candidate is shut out of a chance to participate.
Michael McDonald of George Mason University and Micah Altman of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, working in conjunction with our two think tanks, have created the Public Mapping Project, an open-source software package that enables anybody to create districts for any state that bance such desirable qualities as compactness and the protection of communities of interest with competitiveness and partisan fairness, all while satisfying one-person, one-vote and the Voting Rights Act. ... The best student plans show that it is possible to create more legitimate and responsive districts — and that with the right tools, citizens anywhere can create better plans to choose their representatives than the representatives do to protect their own careers. While politicians may fight to keep the process closed, the tools are available to enable us to do better. Virginia’s college students have demonstrated that. The challenge is to replicate their efforts across the country and to harness informed and empowered public participation to improve the quality of our democracy.
1/26/2011--Introduced.John Tanner Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act - Prohibits a state that has been redistricted after an apportionment from being redistricted again until after the next apportionment of Representatives, unless the state is ordered by a court to conduct such a subsequent redistricting in order to:
(1) comply with the U.S. Constitution, or (2) enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Requires such redistricting to be conducted through a plan developed by the independent redistricting commission established in the state, or if such plan is not enacted into law, the redistricting plan selected by the state's highest court or developed by a U.S. district court. Prescribes requirements for: (1) establishment of a state independent redistricting commission (including provisions for holding each of its meetings in public and maintaining a public Internet site), (2) development of a redistricting plan (including soliciting and considering public comments) and its submission to the state legislature (with public notice of plans at least seven days prior to such submission), (3) selection of a plan, under specified conditions, by the state's highest court or the U.S. district court for the district in which the capital of the state is located, (4) special rules for redistricting conducted under a federal court order, and (5) Election Assistance Commission payments to states for carrying out redistricting.
On April 20, Thomas Mann answered your questions on the status of the redistricting process, and efforts for reform around the nation, in a live web chat moderated by David Mark, senior editor at POLITICO. A transcript of this chat.
For more than three decades, the Institute's research has helped shape [redistricting] policy in California and other states by:
Providing state, county, municipal, and tribal governments, businesses, media outlets, and other organizations with in-depth studies on issues ranging from elections and demographics to budgets and regulations;
Delivering sophisticated analysis to the broader public through conferences, academic publications, newsletters, and our blog, RoseReport.org;
Maintaining one of the largest databases of economic data and survey research in the country, the most complete archive of voter-approved statewide ballot initiatives, and the California Political History Digital Library;
Publishing reports and studies featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, CNN and many other national and regional publications; and
Giving college students a hands-on opportunity to take on real-world policy problems under the guidance of leading experts in their respective fields.
The non-partisan Americans for Redistricting Reform is a national umbrella organization comprised of groups from across the political spectrum that recognizes the critical need to reform our nation's redistricting process. With the post-2010 Census redistricting cycle fast approaching, Americans for Redistricting Reform is committed to raising public awareness of redistricting abuses and promoting solutions that benefit voters and strengthen our democracy.
