Video: New York Legislators Hold Public Hearing on Redistricting

Video: New York Legislators Hold Public Hearing on Redistricting

Hoping to grapple with an untenable confluence of logistical realities, the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment held this hearing in July to deal with possible delayed census results, early 2022 primaries, and new redistricting rules. The full video of that July 15 virtual public hearing is below. The legislature will be grappling with an entirely new process for redistricting in accordance with a 2014 constitutional amendment that made significant changes to the state's redistricting process, including the creation of a redistricting commission. Several reform, advocacy and public interest groups testified at the hearing including the League of…
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Do Independent Redistricting Commissions Produce Neutral Maps?

Do Independent Redistricting Commissions Produce Neutral Maps?

After the Supreme Court's exit from the partisan gerrymandering business last week, the focus will likely turn to the states. The call for independent redistricting commissions will be key to any reform strategy. A group of government and political science professors provided some insight into the question of whether these commissions actually work to produce nonpartisan, or "less" partisan maps. Their preliminary evidence suggests that it does. "The nonpartisan-drawn maps tended to be more symmetrical on average after redistricting. In other words, they tended to treat both parties similarly. This suggests that nonpartisan bodies have successfully neutralized partisan bias, as…
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Panel Discusses Election Administration, Redistricting and Campaign Finance

Panel Discusses Election Administration, Redistricting and Campaign Finance

On Thursday, January 31, a panel of professors and activists met to discuss the state of the American election system. Here is the description provided by the Hammer Forum of UCLA: . "The 2018 midterm elections revealed egregious voter suppression tactics and mismanagement of polling places but also slate of new reforms that eliminate barriers to voting for many Americans. Kathay Feng, California Common Cause executive director; Franita Tolson, USC Gould School of Law professor; Justin Levitt, Loyola Law School professor; and Michael Morley, Florida State University law professor, discuss the future of voting rights and election laws with moderator Rick Hasen, UC Irvine…
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NAACP-LDF Releases Catalog of Voting Law Changes Since Shelby Decision

NAACP-LDF Releases Catalog of Voting Law Changes Since Shelby Decision

Washington, DC - Last week the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund released this report detailing state, county, and local voting changes proposed or implemented,  during the past three years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder halting the Department of Justice's preclearance system that operated to preapprove voting changes made by covered states. As the report indicates, a majority of preclearance activity (80%) had been to approve voting changes on the local level. Dramatic reduction in the number of polling places, and widespread purging of voter rolls have been on the rise since Shelby. The report…
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The Census Bureau Warms Up to Prison Gerrymandering

The Census Bureau Warms Up to Prison Gerrymandering

The Census Bureau boasted in its 2010 View from the States,” that it has listened to state requests and is working toward helping states facilitate the latest redistricting trend: prisoner reallocation. The Bureau announced that it would conduct a feasibility study regarding prisoner reallocation - counting prisoners at their last residential address, although a previous study nearly ten years go found it to be cost prohibitive. Currently, the two states that have already endeavored to reallocate prisoners have used the Bureau’s Group Quarters file, which was released early during the 2010 census cycle for that purpose. The group quarters data…
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