From the Associated Press:

The amendments as well would require maps to follow existing city, county and geographical boundaries where feasible.The proposals have drawn opposition from state and federal lawmakers of both major parties who say they would reduce minority representation and result in turning redistricting over to the courts.

The critics include U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, a Democrat, and Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican, who each appeared before a joint meeting of state House and Senate reapportionment committees last week.

Brown told the lawmakers it’s not possible to “take politics out of politics” and that she’s afraid the proposals would turn the clock back to before 1992 when she was one of the first blacks elected to Congress from Florida in 129 years.

Brown represents the 3rd Congressional District that snakes more than 100 miles from Jacksonville, where she lives, to Orange County to pick up enough black voters to form a majority.

Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American from Miami, represents the 25th District, which includes a large Hispanic base on the east coast but stretches across the southern end of Florida’s peninsula to the west coast.

The proposals put minority districts at risk through “standards that are conflicting,” Diaz-Balart said.

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From the Tampa Tribune.

A real Democratic resurgence, however, “has to come back to redistricting and regaining power in the Legislature,” Belohlavek said.Democrats may gain some legislative seats in 2010 – 22 Republican-held state House seats will come open – but have no chance of overcoming the large GOP majorities.

But having a Democratic governor and attorney general in power during the 2010 redistricting could change that picture for the 2012 election and thereafter.

The governor can veto the congressional districting plan passed by the Legislature and has horse-trading influence over the legislative plan. A Democratic attorney general, in turn, could influence litigation likely to result over redistricting. That could make Democrats more competitive.

The overall result could “change the face of Florida,” said attorney general candidate Gelber.

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From the Washington Post:

MOST VIRGINIANS are under the quaint impression that their state has a competitive two-party system. If only. The sad fact is that for the vast majority of legislative races in the state, real competition is a thing of the past. For that, Virginians can thank state lawmakers of both parties, who for decades have drawn lines on the voting maps for no higher purpose than to preserve their own grip on power.So it is significant that both candidates in the race for governor are now in favor of scrapping the state’s blatantly partisan decennial redistricting system. (Actually, “system” is too elegant a word for a process by which the majority party retreats to a back room and simply does as it pleases.) State Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate, is in fact a longstanding champion of redistricting reform designed to minimize partisan considerations. And while former attorney general Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican candidate, for years opposed and obstructed reform efforts, he recently switched sides and now endorses the creation of a bipartisan commission with a nonpartisan leader to redraw the state’s electoral districts every 10 years with extensive public input.

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From the Baton Rouge Advocate.

A legislative redistricting expert warned lawmakers Thursday of politics that could interfere with the drawing of new election district lines that meet constitutional muster.“Significant interest groups and individuals are going to be coming to you trying to affect how the process works,” Senate Secretary Glenn Koepp told about 20 lawmakers gathered for what has been billed as a “Redistricting 101” class.

“You are going to be asked to vote against the wishes of your friends, your colleagues, even some of your (political) party members,” he said.

Eighty percent of redistricting — a redrawing of election district lines to adjust for population shifts — is the technical, legal side of the process, Koepp said.

That was the subject of the training session.

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From the San Angelo Standard Times.

As an indicator of what may be coming, state demographer Karl Eschbach said Texas increased in population from 2000 to 2008 by about 3.475 million, an increase of 16.7 percent, but most of that growth has occurred in major metropolitan areas such as San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Austin, he said.“All of rural Texas is going to lose. That’s the bottom line,” said Rep. Delwin Jones of the 83rd District, R-Lubbock, chair of the House Redistricting Committee.

Jones said on average, the 150 House districts will need to increase their population by 24,000 and the 31 Senate districts by 120,000 to absorb the population growth.

“West Texas hasn’t generally kept pace,” Eschbach said about the population growth. “If you’re not growing at the same pace of the state, you have to expand geographically those districts.”

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