Leading Off
● Ohio: The League of Women Voters and Common Cause are backing an attempt to put a state constitutional amendment on the 2018 ballot to reform congressional redistricting in Ohio, and they released a new report in late October detailing the lengths that Republicans went to in order to create some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in the country in 2011. The report contains newly published emails from key Republicans detailing how they intentionally crafted maps to lock in GOP majorities. These maps were so successful that Republicans gained a veto-proof state House majority in 2012 even though Democratic candidates won more votes statewide.
One especially pernicious element of the Republican-drawn districts is what is called “prison gerrymandering.” Ohio and many other states count prisoners where they are incarcerated for the purpose of redistricting, but Ohio bans those with felony convictions from voting while in prison, while those serving time for misdemeanors can only vote absentee at their previous home address. Republicans thus added prisons to districts they wanted to win so that they would have enough residents to make sure districts were equipopulous. But because prisoners can’t vote (or can’t vote in the districts they live in), that allowed Republicans to avoid taking on more Democratic-leaning areas where actual voters cast actual ballots.
Consequently, 91 percent of Ohio's prisoners reside in Republican-held congressional districts, and several GOP districts even extend odd tentacles so that they can just barely grab certain prisons. A truly glaring example of this can be see in Ohio’s 4th District, held by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, which sprouts a bizarre protrustion on its far eastern end in the Cleveland suburbs to swallow up the Lorain Correctional Institution, an overcrowded facility that houses almost 1,500 prisoners. Thanks to tactics like these, this congressional gerrymander allowed Republicans to win 12 of 16 seats—75 percent—ever since it came into effect in 2012, even though Barack Obama won Ohio that year.
Some states have eliminated this undemocratic distortion by requiring that prisoners be counted for redistricting purposes at their previous address before incarceration. Unfortunately, Ohio's proposed 2018 redistricting reform measure would not do that, but it would place limits on the extreme partisanship that Republican legislators and GOP Gov. John Kasich injected into the congressional redistricting process in 2011. Although the proposed reform has its flaws, Ohio could have somewhat fairer congressional districts after the 2020 census if it passes.
Redistricting
● Michigan: Michigan is well on its way toward voting on a state constitutional amendment ballot measure in 2018 that would establish an independent redistricting commission: Reformers just announced that they’ve collected more than 300,000 petition signatures. The volunteer-based effort needs to submit 316,000 signatures before mid-February, and organizers set a goal of over 400,000 signatures to ensure that enough of them are actually valid.
● North Carolina: In late October, the federal district court hearing a challenge to North Carolina's state legislative districts appointed Stanford professor Nathaniel Persily as a nonpartisan "special master" to assist the court in anticipation that it would reject some of the GOP's redrawn districts. Now things are moving ahead: On Wednesday, the judges ordered Persily to draw new districts by Dec. 1 to remedy the constitutional violations that likely persist in the maps Republican legislators had passed earlier in 2017 to comply with a previous ruling that struck down their original 2011 districts for illegally diminishing the power of black voters.
At issue are two districts in the state Senate and seven in the state House that the court indicated were likely unconstitutional under the GOP’s maps. Redrawing them would also affect several adjacent seats. Although the court has not (yet) ruled that these districts violate the Constitution, their directive for Persily to begin drawing alternate boundaries almost certainly means it will reject the GOP's redraw and institute lines of its own.
Specifically, the court indicated that two Senate seats and two House seats still maintained elements of illegal racial gerrymandering. The judges also suggested that five House seats violated a state constitutional ban on mid-decade redistricting by the legislature. A court can of course order new lines be drawn between censuses, as has happened her, but Republican lawmakers had used this order as opportunity to strengthen vulnerable incumbents in seats that did not need to be redrawn in order to satisfy the court’s earlier rulings.
In the end, if the court winds up drawing at least some districts on its own, that would be the best outcome for voting rights, black voters, and consequently Democrats, too. However, with the court now likely to do just that, Republican legislators will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court again. Fortunately, the district court's expedited timeline would leave room for new districts to be in place by the 2018 general election if its upcoming ruling survives an appeal. Democrats only need to gain four House seats to be able to break the GOP’s supermajority and sustain Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes, and a favorable ruling could help make that happen more easily in 2018.
Voter Suppression
● Indiana: The nonpartisan reform group Common Cause has filed a lawsuit against Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, a Republican, alleging that she violated the National Voter Registration Act by illegally conducting mass purges of voter registration. Their lawsuit is similar to one that the League of Women voters and the NAACP filed back in August.
Both suits argue that Lawson's use of the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck database system promoted by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who leads Trump's voter suppression commission, is illegal. Crosscheck is notorious for using a faulty data matching that inevitably yields scores of false positives for every one improper registration it might find because it only compares first names, last names, and birthdates, which many people undoubtedly share in a country with over 200 million voters.
Lawson announced back in April that her office had purged roughly 10 percent of the entire state's registered voters since the 2016 elections. These lawsuits seek to force Lawson to stop using Crosscheck to purge voters it claims are improperly registered in multiple states.
● North Carolina: On Tuesday, a panel of superior court judges told the state Supreme Court that they would have rejected Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's challenge to a new law that the Republican-dominated legislature passed earlier in 2017, which blocks Democrats from Seating majorities on the state elections board and its county-level counterparts. This same lower-court panel dismissed Cooper's lawsuit earlier this year by claiming they lacked the jurisdiction to hear it, but the Supreme Court ordered it to re-examine the case and tell the high court how it would have ruled if the superior court judges thought they had jurisdiction.
This ruling is a setback for Cooper, but it sets the stage for a likely appeal to the Supreme Court on the merits of the lawsuit, which seeks to block the new law so that Cooper can appoint Democratic majorities to these boards, which in turn could roll back voter suppression measures that Republicans passed when they controlled these panels under GOP Gov. Pat McCrory. But although Democrats hold a four-to-three majority on the Supreme Court, the superior court's ruling was both bipartisan and unanimous, meaning there's no guarantee the high court will rule in Cooper's favor.
Felony Disenfranchisement
● California: Organizers in California are attempting to put a state constitutional amendment initiative on the ballot that would end felony disenfranchisement, and they attained initial approval to begin gathering signatures on Monday. Like most states, California still disenfranchises citizens who are currently incarcerated or on parole for a felony conviction, even though those on probation or who have completed their sentences automatically regain their voting rights. This proposal would end felony disenfranchisement completely, making California the third state to do so after Maine and Vermont.
Proponents now have 180 days to begin gathering the 585,000 valid signatures needed for the proposed amendment to appear on the November 2018 general election ballot. California's felony disenfranchisement rules are less stringent than those in most of the country, but its sheer size means this measure could re-enfranchise a considerable number of voters. The Sentencing Project estimates that 136,000 prisoners are currently disenfranchised in California, as are an additional 86,000 who are on parole, meaning this proposal would restore voting rights for roughly 223,000 citizens if it passes, or 0.7 percent of the state’s voting age population. But despite California’s laxer regime, black adults are six times likelier to be disenfranchised than those who aren't black, a pattern seen throughout the country.
● Florida: Proponents of ending Florida's lifetime ban on voting for those with felony convictions say they have gathered 750,000 signatures for a proposed ballot initiative that would automatically restore rights upon the completion of sentences for all but the most heinous crimes. Backers need 766,000 valid signatures, and they hope to break 1 million by the end of 2017 so that they have a cushion for when some signatures are invalidated. However, Florida's elections division has so far only verified 301,000 signatures, although that number is unofficial. Initiative organizers have until Feb. 1 to submit signatures.
Election Administration
● Detroit, MI: When Detroiters head to the polls next Tuesday to vote in their local election for mayor, they'll also be choosing their city clerk, whose office administers the very same elections they’re voting in. MIRS News has commissioned a recent poll from Target-Insyght of the city's races, and the survey shows the clerk’s race is very much up for grabs, as incumbent Janice Winfrey leads challenger and fellow Democrat Garlin Gilchrist by just a 42-35 margin. These results also represent a serious tightening from the August primary, in which Winfrey led Gilchrist 51-20.
This race will be one to watch next week because Detroit in particular earned awful headlines for its handling of the 2016 presidential race, with a post-election audit concluding there were “an abundance of human errors” by election administrators that contributed to the problem. Gilchrist, who serves as Detroit's technology director, is consequently challenging Winfrey on a platform of modernizing the city's election administration and improving access to voting. Doing so could subsequently prove critical for future elections in a state that Trump won by just 10,704 votes, given that Detroit is the most heavily Democratic big city in America.
