US House Redistricting: Maine

[Kevinstat]

Last-ditch efforts on redistricting unlikely to produce compromise (Bangor Daily News)

The Gardiner-Vassalboro plan shown in that article is the majority (8 to 7, after an initial 7 to 7 vote with the Independent member obstaining) plan of the Commission to Reapportion Maine's Congressional Districts.  The Republicans released a new plan (also shown in that article) that had ME-01 stretching to Knox County but also including Androscoggin County (accomplished by putting northwestern Cumberland County in ME-02 and a crude split of Lincoln County), but either when the Democrats didn't support that plan or when the Independent member of the commission decided to vote for the Democratic plan, they went back to their initial plan which they voted in as the minority report.

Commission approves Democratic redistricting plan; GOP ready to approve its own plan (Lewiston Sun Journal)

Mentions the constitutional amendment that my State Representative sponsored at my request, although back then it only proposed to move of legislative redistricting after 2013 ahead two years (my aim at the time was to do the same thing for congressional redistricting, county commissioner redistricting, etc. in a companion bill making statutory changes).  The Democrats are saying it would be hypocritical of the Republicans to pass a majority plan after "unanimously" (there was a division with 7 State Representatives voting Nay, perhaps all Democrats) supporting a constitutional resolution ensuring that future congressional redraws will require 2/3 support in the Legislature (or go to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court).  Where were they in June when they let the Republcians insert that requirement in (and prohibit any changes to congressional districts after the constitutional amendment goes into effect until 2021) with no guarantee they would not ram through their own plan this year?  I'm sure Republican legislators and others who worked for the bill are chuckling.

If only I'd expressed my concerns about the late amendment to the bill to Democratic Legislators and not counted on the Vice Chair of the Democratic Party (the one whose arguments the three judge panel slammed in their ruling as jimrtex described) to pass them along.  I had a correspondence on redistricting going with her though and she was clearly concerned about the motivations behind the lawsuit when that was going on so I figured giving her a heads up was all I needed to do.

[Kevinstat]

Maine redistricting could sway presidential race (Stateline.org)

Political Pulse: Presidential implications for Maine's redistricting fight? (Lewiston Sun Journal)

[Kevinstat]

GOP Tries to Out Maneuver Dems on Maine Redistricting (Maine Public Broadcasting)

Maine Republicans may suspend rules to pass their redistricting plan (Bangor Daily News)

Contained in the BDN article:

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So it looks like the Republican party whip will be involved, not that that's a surprise.

The map of the Democratic plan in the BDN article is the map of the first Democratic proposal, which had a difference of 11 people between the two districts, rather than the plan the Democrats are now supporting (the majority plan of this year's reapportionment commission) which has a population difference of one.  You can view their current plan here with a close up on the changes here.

Bill Nemitz: GOP ready to go out of bounds on district lines (Maine Sunday Telegram)

I had to post some liberal commentary.  Nemitz did, however, write in an earlier column that the Democrats "need to accept that they no longer control the Legislature – where the new lines ultimately will be drawn – and thus they're in no position to hold out for "a few changes.""

Maine People's Voting Coalition promises people's veto if GOP bypasses 2/3 vote law (Dirigo Blue)

[Kevinstat]

Compromise looking likely on congressional redistricting (Bangor Daily News)

The Republicans finally unveiled their proposed "consensus map" from August that keeps the changes entirely in Kennebec County, but moves Waterville and Winslow into the first district.  It looks a little ugly, but compared to most other states it's neet, especially considering no municiaplities are being split and the proposed districts differ in population by the minimum 1 person.  The last three plans adopted had population differences of 8 (iirc), 6 and 23 in as of the 1980, 1990 and 2000 censuses respectively.

[Kevinstat]

Voters to tackle redistricting rules with Question 4 (AP article (my link takes you to the article on the Bangor Daily News, but it's also on other online newspapers like the Washington Examiner))

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I'm the "activist constituent" mentioned.  The article doesn't mention that the original draft of the constitutional resolution had nothing to do with the 2/3 rule (it only dealt with Legislative redistricting that already had the 2/3 rule in the Maine Constitution)*, but it's a pretty good article as far as modern-day news articles go.  I pitched the bill to Representative Maloney (D-Augusta, also mentioned in the article) and a fairly nearby Democratic State Senator in the same e-mail in which I pitched it to my two Republican legislators.  Keschl responded first and Maloney responded a few days later and seemed to defer to Keschl but was happy to co-sponsor the bill.  She and the other Democratic co-sponsor (who had turned against the bill even before the initial redistricting lawsuit was launched, at the public hearing when it became known that I frequented a conservative Maine web site where she had been spoken poorly of) ended up doing a press conference that was I think the day before the special "redistricting session" (which also passed a bath salts bill) convened, when it still looked like the Repulicans were going to ram through their original plan and the Democrats were going to respond with a people's veto signature drive.

*I had submitted proposed text of a companion bill making the same timing changes to Maine's statutory provisions for non-legislative redistricting in Maine, which Keschl submitted to the Revisor's Office but they refused to draft, citing a 1941 Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling that basically said that if something is precluded by language in the Maine Constitution, it can't be changed even conditionally upon a constitutional amendment removing that barrier.  You have to wait until after the constitutional is amended.  There's nothing currently in the Maine Constitution about non-legislative redistricting but there is about the Apportionment Commission, which current Maine statutes give a roll in congressional and county commissioner redistricting.  As I wasn't aware of the 1941 ruling, I kept the statutory references to Maine's Apportionment Commission in my proposed companion bill while changing the year, making the bill conditinoal upon the constitutional amendment being adopted.

Interestingly, you can make a bill or part of a bill conditional upon the adoption of a state constitutional amendment in Maine if it's something that would be constitutional even without any constitutional amendment.  Like if you're proposing to change the length of Legislator's terms from 2 to 4 years (a constitutional issue) but want to keep Maine's term limits (defined in statute by the number of consecutive terms, rather than a continuous time period) at 8 years without enshrining term limits in the Maine Constitution, you could draft a companion bill to reduce the number of consecutive terms a Legislator could serve in one chamber from 4 to 2 (perhaps with some clever transition language so a Legislator could serve two two-year terms followed by one four-year term), conditional upon the Maine Constitution being amended to change the length of terms after such and such a year to four years.  Such a constitutional amendment and a conpanion bill have been proposed multiple times in the past (although the companion bill is often rather poorly drafted in my opinion), but neither have ever gotten close to getting past the Legislature as far as I can tell.

[Kevinstat]

This is a 2+-year old thread now and even this article is pushing two years old, but as I just updated the Maine Legislative/county commissioner redistricting thread I thought I'd post a link to this article as some of the legally minded Forum members (like jimrtex) might be interested in it.

Court Slashes Baker & Hostetler Fees in Maine Redistricting Litigation (Am Law Daily, March 30, 2012)

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I looked sometime last year at the PACER directory of documents for this case and didn't see anything after the decision as to attorney's fees discussed in this article, so I guess there was never an appeal filed.  It's worth noting that even though the Attorney General at the time was a Republican, and the lawsuit was pretty clearly aimed at allowing the Republicans then with the trifecta in Maine to redraw the second district to their advantage, the Attorney General wasn't afraid to recommend major cuts to Plaintiffs' counsel's totals that the state, as the losing party in a civil rights vindication case, would have to pay.  The local counsel for Plaintiffs was a former Mayor of Bangor and 2002 Republican candidate for Congress in Maine's second district, finishing a very close second to Kevin Raye in the Republican primary.