Minnesota Redistricting Forum Overview

On the 17th of November the Humphrey Institute hosted "Redrawing the Boundaries: A Redistricting Workshop for Minnesota Citizens, Grassroots Organizers and Policy Advocates."

The presenters at the forum came from a diverse collection of organizations; Common Cause Minnesota, The Brennan Center for Justice, George Mason University, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, League of Women Voters, Minnesota Senate Counsel and the Citizens League.

In this post I will give you an overview of the event; what the presentations were about and some of the highlights. In the future I plan to get into more detail on many of these topics.

This week in Redistricting 11/19

• MidwestRedistricting.org is a great resource for information on redistricting specific to our region of the country. The site is a collaboration of Midwest Democracy Network, the Brennan Center for Justice and George Mason University.
  
  On Wednesday the League of Women Voters hosted a redistricting forum featuring these organizations that I'll have a more extensive write-up on next week.
  
  In the meantime, here's a link to a two page pdf about Minnesota specifically. It goes over the process and criteria used in redistricting.
  
  
• One positive outcome of election day was that Minneapolis approved question 1:
  
  

  Should the City of Minneapolis adopt a change in its charter by eliminating the Redistricting Commission and giving the responsibility for redistricting of city wards, park board districts and Minneapolis school board districts to the Charter Commission, with input from an advisory group appointed by the Charter Commission?

  
  It's a start.
  
  
• Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics has a state by state overview of redistricting. About Minnesota he says:
  
  

  Right now it is neck-in-neck between Minnesota and Missouri for the 435th district, with Minnesota holding the short straw. With a Democratic Governor and Republican legislature, the Republicans will probably find themselves unable to complete their longstanding goal of combining Minneapolis and St. Paul into one district. If the governor and legislature can't agree, a judicial panel will draw the map. The 4-4 split between the parties makes it hard to predict a loser, especially since the Republican districts have been growing sharply and 3 of the 4 Democratic districts lost population. A panel would probably opt to draw a Republican and Democrat into an evenly-balanced district.

  
  
• Mike Stark outlines how the GOP could use The Dark Scenario to ram through a redistricting bill that accomplishes their goal of combining Minneapolis and St. Paul.
  
  This is the real danger of the dark scenario in my view. If the Republicans draw the map they want, it's conceivable that they could get a 6-2 congressional map and hold the state legislature in 2012.
  
  
• In my post on Wednesday I mentioned the split-line algorithm for drawing district lines. This is another automated method, with the prime directive being:
  
  

  The best district map is the one where people have the lowest average distance to the center of their district.

  
  I'm not so sure I agree with that statement, but the maps are interesting nonetheless.
  
  
• Dave's Redistricting App has updated to version 2.0.