Leading Off
●Redistricting Reform: At Daily Kos Elections, we have long advocated for ballot initiatives to implement nonpartisan redistricting at the state level to combat gerrymandering, which states like California have successfully done in the past. Very helpfully, the Brennan Center has published a roundup of which states have active efforts to put redistricting reform on the ballot in 2018, which we’ve highlighted in the map at the top of this post. Below we list each state, with links to our most recent coverage of each effort. In parentheses, we've also included which party would control redistricting if it took place today.
- Colorado—congressional and legislative (divided government)
- Michigan—congressional and legislative (Republican)
- Missouri—legislative (bipartisan commission)
- Ohio—congressional (Republican)
- South Dakota—legislative (Republican)
- Utah—congressional and legislative (Republican)
Of these efforts, we haven't previously discussed Missouri and South Dakota. A group called Clean Missouri is organizing the push in the Show Me State, and they want to implement independent redistricting for the state legislature as part of an initiative that would also institute a broader set of ethics and campaign finance reforms. Unfortunately, the proposal doesn't cover congressional redistricting thanks to a constitutional limit on the scope of a single initiative.
Under current law, the two major parties appoint members of a bipartisan commission that draws new legislative districts each decade. The proposed reforms would instead have the state auditor draw up a pool of applicants from which a nonpartisan state demographer would be selected. That person would then be tasked with drawing the maps, subject to the commission's approval.
The demographer would be explicitly directed to use a statistical model known as the “efficiency gap” that’s design to gauge partisan fairness, which we have previously explained in detail. While the maps would not be designed to yield outcomes perfectly proportional to the popular vote, they would aim to treat both parties the same. For instance, if the GOP could win 65 percent of seats with 55 percent of the vote and Democrats could also win 65 percent of districts with 55 percent of votes, then the maps wouldn't give one party an asymmetric advantage over the other.