Republicans aim to get new map drawn<\/i><\/p>\n
by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n
After their fallen savior, Arnold Schwarzenegger, set up the redistricting commission and pushed it through the electorate, Republicans were admittedly a bit worried. Well, it seems they are in an all-out panic as they are concerned that Democrats could get a 2\/3 majority in the Senate. They are already gathering signatures to put the measure on the ballot, and they have raised a decent amount of cash for that effort. <\/p>\n
But there is some concern on their side that the maps would be used for 2012 even if they do get it on the ballot. And so, a lawsuit:<\/p>\n
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is an Orange County businesswoman but it was prepared by attorneys for the group Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting (FAIR) , which is backed by the California Republican Party and Senate Republican Caucus.<\/p>\n
“We think there are serious constitutional flaws in the Senate plan related to what the commission was required to do and what they ended up doing,” said Dave Gilliard, the political consultant behind the group. “There were numerous examples of cities and counties being split between districts irrationally and without explanation.” (LA Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Except there is one, giant, gaping whole in their logic: somebody had to be split up. In every redistricting process where you have to divide every district equally, you have to split some geographic or political community up somehow. That’s just the numbers. This year Sacramento County drew the short stick, but it is always somebody. It seems a big stretch to say that the commission didn’t follow the new rules requiring consideration of boundaries, especially as that was third down the line, with Voting Rights Act considerations trumping all else.<\/p>\n
Of course, they are bringing the VRA up in this legislation, but considering the lengths the commission went to in their process on the VRA, anything more than a few minor tweaks seems unlikely. But, facing irrelevance, the Senate Republicans are pulling out all the stops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republicans aim to get new map drawn<\/i><\/p>\n
by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n
After their fallen savior, Arnold Schwarzenegger, set up the redistricting commission and pushed it through the electorate, Republicans were admittedly a bit worried. Well, it seems they are in an all-out panic as they are concerned that Democrats could get a 2\/3 majority in the Senate. They are already gathering signatures to put the measure on the ballot, and they have raised a decent amount of cash for that effort. <\/p>\n
But there is some concern on their side that the maps would be used for 2012 even if they do get it on the ballot. And so, a lawsuit:<\/p>\n
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is an Orange County businesswoman but it was prepared by attorneys for the group Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting (FAIR) , which is backed by the California Republican Party and Senate Republican Caucus.<\/p>\n
“We think there are serious constitutional flaws in the Senate plan related to what the commission was required to do and what they ended up doing,” said Dave Gilliard, the political consultant behind the group. “There were numerous examples of cities and counties being split between districts irrationally and without explanation.” (LA Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Except there is one, giant, gaping whole in their logic: somebody had to be split up. In every redistricting process where you have to divide every district equally, you have to split some geographic or political community up somehow. That’s just the numbers. This year Sacramento County drew the short stick, but it is always somebody. It seems a big stretch to say that the commission didn’t follow the new rules requiring consideration of boundaries, especially as that was third down the line, with Voting Rights Act considerations trumping all else.<\/p>\n
Of course, they are bringing the VRA up in this legislation, but considering the lengths the commission went to in their process on the VRA, anything more than a few minor tweaks seems unlikely. But, facing irrelevance, the Senate Republicans are pulling out all the stops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[190,8360],"class_list":["post-13856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-190","tag-8360"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3Bu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}