State Legislature Redistricting

[Shilly]

Couldn't find another thread on the subject, but it seems Mississippi is already considering a redistricting plan for the state house, so I though this would be a good place to dump maps and news for all state legislatures.

MS Article: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/03/04/2916771/house-passes-redistricting-plan.html
MS Map: Warning large pdf http://www.msjrc.state.ms.us/pdf/proposed_house_2011_high.pdf

Or my MSPaintized version of the above.

So go hog wild, I guess.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Here's the breakdown of the map:

http://www.msjrc.state.ms.us/pdf/proposed_house_long-report_build1.pdf

It looks like there are 44 majority-black districts, out of 122 total.

[True Federalist]

Just for reference here are links to South Carolina's current districts.

House

House Inset Maps for Greenville-Spartanburg, Columbia, and Charleston

Senate

[Shilly]

And the MS Proposal colored by % Black.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The Mississippi Senate rejected the House map:

http://www.sunherald.com/2011/03/08/2926075/miss-house-redistricting-killed.html

[Bacon King]

Is there really any possibility the two MS chambers will be able to compromise on their maps?

[jimrtex]

Is there really any possibility the two MS chambers will be able to compromise on their maps?

It doesn't sound too good with the senate election committee putting out an alternative to the map proposed by the senate redistricting committee.

I suspect that a lot of representatives might be content with using the current lines for this year's elections.  Every one of them was elected from those districts.  It also gives the Republicans a chance to take control of the House.

There might not be time for a court to draw districts for this year.  You're not going to get a court to usurp legislative authority and draw a map just in case the legislature fails to do so.  They will wait until there is an actual failure.  They might not have time to draw districts in time, and they are unlikely to enjoin the election at all.  So they might draw new districts, but the legislature could have a chance to redraw them.

And a court master might not be as demanding as the USDOJ.

[Kevinstat]

Some of you might be interested in viewing the Minnesota Senate's page on Mississippi Redistricting Cases:  the 1990s.  The first legislative election in Mississippi in the 2000s was in 2003 so the state, or the courts had it been necessary, had more time to redraw the states legislative districts.  Mississippi elected Legislators for what was supposed to be a four-year term in 1991 from districts drawn in 1982, but when a plan was enacted and approved by the Justice Department the next year, the U.S. District Court for Southern District of Mississippi federal ordered a legislative election for a three-year term on the regular primary and general election dates in 1992.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

This article suggests that the map adopted for New Jersey's legislative districts will be the one drawn by the Democrats.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

It would appear that the Mississippi legislature put aside their differences and passed their original plans.

[Mississippi Political Freak]

It would appear that the Mississippi legislature put aside their differences and passed their original plans.

Not so fast, as the State Senate Republicans have banded together to throw out the State House plan they regarded as a Democratic gerrymander and decided to Invite to conference over the joint redistricting resolution, where Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant would have a strong say in promoting maps more favorable to the GOP there.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Looks like we're going to get Virginia's maps on the 29th.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Virginia's proposed maps are available here (official source, slow but has district numbers on the map) and here (media source, faster but you have to click for district numbers).

Louisiana's Senate map was passed by the Senate and is expected to be passed by the House. Here is a rather large pdf file of the bill, and here is the news article detailing the vote.

[Bacon King]

Current draft for the new Louisiana House map.

(here's the old map for comparison

-New Orleans delegation reduced from 25 members to 19
-Three new black-majority districts added by the redistricting committee (to a total of 30), but one was later taken out in a partisan vote on the House floor; Legislative Black Caucus Chair has promised to sue over it.
-the pairs of Democratic incumbents will be running against each other
-recent party switcher Bubba Chaney was saved from being cut out of his district by the House GOP leadership's intervention

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The Democrats win in New Jersey: the tiebreaker dude picked their map for the legislature.

[Dgov]

The Democrats win in New Jersey: the tiebreaker dude picked their map for the legislature.

Didn't this happen last time too?

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Here's an article with a little background on the Virginia plans. Sen. George Barker used DRA to draw the preliminary Senate map.

The Democrats win in New Jersey: the tiebreaker dude picked their map for the legislature.

Didn't this happen last time too?

I believe so.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Well, here's the New Jersey map and here's the racial breakdown. (Cribbed from Blue Jersey.)

[krazen1211]

The Democrats win in New Jersey: the tiebreaker dude picked their map for the legislature.

Didn't this happen last time too?

Yep, with a different tiebreaker.

They sliced Somerset County between what looks like 6 different districts. And amazingly, they didn't even dissolve an Essex County district as should have been done, although they did push SD-27 into a Morris based district.

I'm not sure what the point of some of these districts are. They sort of went out of their way to screw with the Republican Northwest counties.

[Bacon King]

They sort of went out of their way to screw with the Republican Northeast counties.

I don't know New Jersey geography very well, but, those changes might have been necessary to put in the new minority districts?

[krazen1211]

They sort of went out of their way to screw with the Republican Northwest counties.

I don't know New Jersey geography very well, but, those changes might have been necessary to put in the new minority districts?

Nope, because the Democratic map didn't actually create any new minority districts. Those are in any case in the Essex/Hudson corner of the state, which is the actual northeast, forgive my brainfart earlier.

It was the GOP map that increased black/hispanic districts to 2 each, up from 1.


If you look at the map, districts 23, 24, 16, and 15 could have all been drawn to not split counties like that.

Why on earth does that 16th span across 4 counties? Move Princeton and South Brunswick back into the 15th/17th and you'd have a much cleaner map. The Democrats though were trying to screw over some Democratic legislator they didn't like, and obviously Codey as well which is why they fed him to the Morris County GOP.


The population variance was sort of abused (GA 2000 style). Almost all the South Jersey districts are over population and all the Northeast Essex/Bergen based ones are under.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

The 16th spans four counties to sink Republicans in Hunterdon and Somerset into a Democratic district.



They didn't screw over Codey either, just some Morris County Republicans.

[Verily]

Some of their choices are slightly bizarre. They could definitely have created a totally new Democratic district in Morris County by combining Morristown, Morris Plains, Parsippany and Dover (plus the areas near each that are also Democratic) in one seat, but they chose not to do so for whatever reason, instead stranding all of those areas in R seats.

They also stranded some Democrats in LD39 unnecessarily in Closter, Haworth, Demarest, etc. Same with Bound Brook and South Bound Brook in LD23. Meanwhile, LD38 seems to have been made unnecessarily vulnerable; not sure why they didn't put Closter etc. in LD37 and Hackensack in LD38 to shore it up (then Paramus or something in LD39 to balance it out). Loretta Weinberg would have nothing to worry about with Englewood, Teaneck AND Tenafly still in her seat.

LD16 makes more sense than it looks as the parts of Somerset in the seat are marginal to D-leaning.

On the successful-gerrymandering side, they have successfully created a D or at least more likely to flip seat in Monmouth County in LD11 while at the same time pitting star incumbents Jennifer Beck and Sean Kean against each other there.

Diane Allen may lose LD07 now as it has dropped some of the less-D parts. (She really has no business holding it; it's something like 65% Obama.)

[krazen1211]

The 16th spans four counties to sink Republicans in Hunterdon and Somerset into a Democratic district.



They didn't screw over Codey either, just some Morris County Republicans.

Good information, but a lot of these areas in that 16th are more Republican at the local level than they are at the Presidential. Off-year turnout has a bit to do with it. I'll gather the 2005/2009 data for those districts. But I guess I see the logic.

For example, in that LD-16, Corzine only got 47% of the vote in 2005, and he would have gotten utterly drenched here in 2009.

[Capitan Zapp Brannigan]

Cody still has a shot of surviving in his new district just because of his name recognition and residual good will from when he was acting governor.