Princeton Election Consortium

In Los Angeles, the Schwarzenegger Institute for Public Policy is hosting the Terminate Gerrymandering Summit. This is its actual name! A launch for their new project, the Fair Maps Incubator. It’s focused on redistricting commissions. and it will be livestreamed!

There are some great speakers and panels (schedule here). To name a few: Arnold Schwarzenegger of course, Katie Fahey (Voters Not Politicians), Stephen Wolf (Daily Kos Elections), Christian Grose (USC), Nick Stephanopoulos (Campaign Legal Center), Kathay Feng (Common Cause)…watch if you can today at 10 AM-noon Pacific (1-3 PM Eastern).

The redistricting amendment was withdrawn on Saturday. No vote Monday!

Leadership took a beating. Some of this beating was unfair, administered by reporters who see everything in terms of national partisan warfare. The true battle was between the Legislature and Governor Murphy. But the legislation also had defects. Now there’s breathing room to fix it.

To fix the amendment, we have a few ideas. Some were described in our December 5th analysis. Here’s an updated list: [Read more →]

Much news coverage of the New Jersey redistricting amendment has characterized it as a Democratic power grab. But this is a lazy dependence on the national narrative of partisan warfare. Here in the Garden State, this is an intra-party squabble. Republicans are bystanders – and minorities are missing a chance at getting much-needed protection from the Supreme Court.

As fun as it is for the press to claim “both sides do it,” that’s actually not true in this case. In fact, there is so much confusion that proponents and opponents of the legislation are both citing Princeton Gerrymandering Project analysis – though in some cases, somewhat selectively.

There’s a wrong idea going around. The legislation *doesn’t* cement a Democratic advantage. Both parties can still gain an advantage, by persuading the independent commissioner to accept their plan.

This legislation is mostly not about partisanship. Instead, it is a power grab by the Democratic General Assembly – to take power away from Governor Murphy,  who is also a Democrat. The grab consists of changing the commission away from being appointed by the state parties and governor. Instead, commissioners will be appointed by legislative leaders.

The commission is currently half Democrats, half Republicans, plus an added independent tiebreaker appointed by the state Supreme Court. That’s the good part! The amendment doesn’t change that fact. But it also doesn’t do anything to mandate that competing plans from the two parties be closer together. It’s a lost opportunity.

Much of what has appeared in the news media about the mathematical formulas is wrong. Here’s a recent example by Mark Joseph Stern of Slate. As much as I generally like Stern’s work, there are some factual issues with this particular piece. He’s not alone.

Here is a quick FAQ on what the legislation does and doesn’t do. [Read more →]

In the Bethune-Hill racial gerrymandering case, special master Bernard Grofman has submitted possible remedial plans to the federal court in his report and addendum.

Unusually, he has given the court a variety of choices. In these choices, the affected area, in southeast Virginia, is divided into four regions. In each region, Professor Grofman has given the court several options. We give you a visualization of several of the plans here.

Today the Princeton Gerrymandering Project submitted an amicus brief evaluating the various plans. We find that the combination which does the most effective job of remediating the racial bias is also the plan that makes the most changes. We say as much in our amicus brief (see PDF).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has compared New Jersey’s redistricting legislation, S.C.R. 43/A.C.R. 205, to the current system that is already in place. We find that the proposed legislation would not improve quantitative measures of fairness. Furthermore, it opens the door to several forms of partisan and racial gerrymandering.

Here are the major points:

• The formula (pseudo-“competitiveness” and partisan symmetry) still allows gerrymandering.
• It gives partisans a way to fool the independent commissioner, and does not bring the parties closer together.
• It does not guard against the single biggest threat to the Voting Rights Act.
• A do-nothing bad bill forecloses the possibility of a better bill.

Details: [Read more →]

As I wrote earlier this week, there’s been a lot of fuss – and some misinformation – concerning a proposed redistricting reform here in New Jersey. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has now analyzed the legislation, constitutional amendment S.C.R. 43/A.C.R. 205.

Will Adler, Ben Williams, and I find that the legislation still allows either party, Republican or Democrat, to commit a gerrymander. We show exactly how that would be done, and we list districts that would be affected by a partisan redrawing of the state legislative map.

We also describe amendments that would close these loopholes and create genuine reform. This morning, we sent our findings to two local legislators, Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D) and State Senator Kip Bateman (R). Our analysis and recommendations are here as a PDF.

At the top of this post is a Republican gerrymander that is allowed under the legislation. Here is a Democratic gerrymander, also in compliance:

In these charts, each dot is one Senate district, color-coded by party (black indicates open seats freed up by throwing pairs of Democrats into the same district). The location of the dot is the natural partisan tendency of the district, as defined by statewide elections. The arrows include the advantage that individual incumbents bring to the table on top of that natural partisanship.

How can this be? It has to do with a weird definition of competitiveness, and limits on partisanship that don’t entirely make sense given New Jersey’s demographics. For details, see our memo.

Yesterday, FairDistrictsPA had a town hall on redistricting in Harrisburg. Lots of great people, with a focus on Pennsylvania. It was livestreamed – the whole event is available here, and my session will be here and is embedded above (I start at 36:09).

My panel featured FairDistrictsPA legislative director Pat Beaty, the Brennan Center for Justice’s Yurij Rudensky, and me. We talked about prospects for state-level action in Pennsylvania.

I talked about the Princeton Gerrymandering Project’s mission: to use math, law, and data to help with fair districting. Fundamentally, we are translators and toolmakers. We work at the level of rules (lawmaking and courts) and transparency (open data and citizen redistricting).

I was especially pleased and excited to talk about OpenPrecincts, the Princeton Gerrymandering Project‘s approach to providing tools for all citizens to do high-quality, open-access redistricting. It’s not unlike what the good people at DrawTheLinesPA are doing, though our goal is to draw legal-quality maps and hit all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. We aim to get this done in time for 2021 redistricting cycle – and in certain key states, even sooner.