News Clips

the Connecticut State Supreme Court has adopted a congressional redistricting plan, submitted by the court’s hired expert. The new map makes mostly minor changes to the boundaries of the state’s five districts to accommodate population changes.

A Connecticut congressional map recommended Tuesday by a court-appointed special master makes minimal changes in the racial, political and geographic features of districts that have produced only Democratic victories since 2008. The map drawn by Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford political scientist and law professor, was not unexpected, given the state Supreme Court’s directive that he make only the changes necessary to equalize the population of the five districts.

A court-appointed special master invited members of Connecticut’s bipartisan redistricting panel Monday to make one last attempt at negotiating the lines of new congressional districts. Last month, the state Supreme Court assigned the special master, Stanford University professor Nathaniel Persily, to draft a plan to ensure each of the state’s five congressional districts have an equal number of residents. The court inherited jurisdiction over the process when the legislature’s Reapportionment Commission failed to come to an agreement.

The Connecticut Supreme Court granted the petition from Connecticut’s bipartisan redistricting panel for more time to complete work on a map of congressional voting districts. The Supreme Court is giving the group until 12 p.m. Dec. 21 to complete their work. However, the court would like the commission to give them an interim report on their progress not later than 5 p.m. on Dec. 15.

"...while Connecticut’s legislative leaders have agreed that the redistricting process so far has been fair, Cheri Quickmire, executive director of Common Cause in Connecticut, the election watchdog organization, said the secret aspect of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats isn’t good for public perception of the effort."

"...The legislature is hardly a disinterested body when it comes to election districts. The leadership can use the map to keep members in power or make life difficult for members who don’t toe the line. The number of truly contested races for both houses in every election cycle is a minuscule fraction of the total. The fact that this bipartisan body has pushed out a map with such oddities on it should be setting off alarm bells for anyone interested in fair elections..."