Via the Dayton Daily News:

A plan to have a bipartisan board determine the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts has been approved by the Ohio Senate.The Senate approved the plan Wednesday by a vote of 21-12, with Republicans voting for it and Democrats against it.

The plan, by state Sen. Jon Husted, would take the power of drawing legislative districts away from whichever party controls the state Apportionment Board and give it to a seven-member bipartisan board. A five-vote supermajority would be required to pass a new redistricting plan.

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From Chuck Todd’s first read:

As today’s New York Times indicates, the president isn’t being shy about getting involved in key political races, even if it means taking sides in a Democratic primary or, in the case of embattled/unpopular New York Governor David Paterson, suggest to him that he not run. Obama’s not just the Commander-in-Chief, leader of the free world etc.., he’s also the head of the Democratic Party. Because these next set of elected governors (in 2009 and 2010) will be in office when the next round of redistricting/reapportionment takes place, it raises the stakes even higher than usual. All of this may explain why the White House — whose chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, himself has spent years getting Dems elected to the House — is taking such an interest in governor’s races.In the case of New York, the state may lose another House seat once the census is completed, making the redistricting process very important if they want to protect some newly elected Democrats sitting in swing/GOP leaning districts. So that’s why governors matter so much more this cycle than the last two combined. How important are governor races to the White House?

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From the Houston Chronicle:

One of the biggest problems for the Democrats right now is that they have only one major candidate for a down-ballot executive office race: Barbara Ann Radnofsky for attorney general.Winning down the ballot could be important for Democrats because if redistricting fails in the Legislature, legislative districts will be drawn by the Legislative Redistricting Board — consisting of the lieutenant governor, House speaker, attorney general, land commissioner and the comptroller.

Republicans showed in 2003 that the board could be used to create a partisan advantage in the Texas House that could then be used in the Legislature to create highly partisan congressional districts. If Democrats surrender seats on the board, they could be surrendering the shape of the congressional delegation for a decade.

Republican pollster Mike Baselice said it won’t matter what Democrats do because the state electorate is not ready to switch parties. He said the Republican voting advantage has dropped from nine percentage points to five based on last year’s elections, but that still spells victory for the GOP.

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From the Jacksonville Observer

State campaign finance records show that SEIU has contributed $225,000 to FairDistrictsFlorida.org, which describes itself as a bipartisan effort to get a pair of constitutional amendments on next year’s ballot to guide the upcoming round of redistricting.The union’s contributions amount to more than $1 out of every $10 FairDistricts has collected as it works to gather the 676,811 signatures needed for each ballot measure.

SEIU, a powerful, Democratic-leaning union with 2.1 million members nationwide and 40,000 in Florida, was an early backer of Barack Obama and spent $85 million supporting his 2008 campaign, federal records show.

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From the Deseret News:

The Utah Supreme Court Friday quashed a legal challenge to the $1 million price tag affixed to an independent redistricting commission effort one group hopes to put on the ballot in 2010.Fair Boundaries, a group formed to convince Utah voters there should be an 11-member independent panel to redraw voting districts after the next federal census, claimed the price attached to the effort by a state fiscal office was intentionally exorbitant.

“The cost estimate is outrageously high … it comes from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget who get their information from legislative research,” said Merrill Nelson, a former state legislator acting as a spokesperson for Fair Boundaries. “They get their marching orders from legislative leaders …This is a tactic to undermine our effort.”

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