Gerrymander Gazette

January 24, 2023: Cynical Court Strategy Edition

• North Carolina legislators are seeking to take the state Supreme Court’s new Republican majority out for a spin by asking the court to rehear a case in which it had previously struck down congressional and North Carolina Senate districts. See Common Cause North Carolina and Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s statement on this cynical effort.
• The Brennan Center looks at how competition differed in the 2022 elections when legislators drew districts as opposed to citizen redistricting commissions.
• Montana State Sen. Shane Morigeau has filed a bill to end prison gerrymandering in the state at the request of the bipartisan Montana Districting and Apportionment Commission. The bill would require people imprisoned in Montana to be counted for redistricting purposes at their last known pre-incarceration address instead of in the prison’s location.
• The Michigan State Senate approved funding for the state’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. The effort to ensure that the legislature abides by its constitutional responsibility to fund the commission now moves to the Michigan House.
• Ohio experts predict little improvement regarding the state’s redistricting mess until politicians are removed from the process.
• The Texas Senate will hear public testimony on state legislative redistricting this week. The redrawing of districts is not expected to result in significant changes to maps drawn in 2021 and appears primarily designed to fulfill a state constitutional requirement that wasn’t met because of the late arrival of census data that year. This would be a welcomed departure from the 2021 mapmaking process, which was primarily designed to discriminate against communities of color.