US House Redistricting: Maine

[Kevinstat]

This seems like a good enough development to start the forum discussion on Maine's congressional redistricting:

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Full article (from the online Portland Press Herald; the Bangor Daily News posted this earlier with what from a quick glance is the same text, but I cited from the PPH's article since they named an individual author from the AP as opposed to just "The Associated Press".)

[Kevinstat]

Maine, like Connecticut, requires a 2/3rds vote in the legislature to approve a map, so it will likely be drawn by the courts. This happened last time, and they minimized the shifting around of towns between districts.

That's a statutory requirement (for congressional and county commissioner redistricting; it's a constitutional requirement for legislative redistricting) and can be either amended, repealed or "notwithstood" by other legislation that can be passed in the normal way, ie. a simple majority among those present and voting in each house of the Legislature and being signed by the governor (or being vetoed and overturned by a 2/3 vote in each house of the Legislature, but with Republicans holding the "trifecta" in Maine but without supermajorities the former path is much, much more likely).

In 2003, the Democrats had the trifecta and an initial draft of Democratic congressional redistricting bill would have passed the majority plan of the Apportionment Commission (the chair of the commission voted with the Democrats on that plan), but if they had done that the Republicans would likely have withdrawn their support for the State House disrtrict plan and sent that process to the courts.  The Republicans had largely "won" the 1993 court battles on House and Senate redistricting (when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which makes the apportionment if the Legislature fails to do so, was dominated by McKernan (R) appointees) on the  and legislators were probably more willing to risk Mike Michaud getting a less favorable district than to risk themselves (and to a lesser extent, their party) getting a less favorable district.  The court's preliminary plan did put Knox County in the second district (that's where Chellie Pingree served in the State Senate and last I knew was still her official address (I know it was in 2008 when she was first elected to Congress), and she probably would not have been elected to Congress under that set of lines), and the Democrats actually made it clear to the court that they would prefer what had by the minority (Republican) congressinal district plan of the Apportionment Commission, which would have moved all of Waldo County to the first district and had the second district in Kennebec County hug Augasta very closely.  The Republicans' attorney, former Congressman and later Gubernatorial primary candidate David Emery, defended the court's preliminary plan, but the court ended up keeping tha changes to Kennebec County, although the portion of the first district in Kennebec County now looks to me like the head of some mythical beast.

The cheif counsel to the governor is an admitted Republican partisan but is also good government minded, and based on some correspondence I've had with him (I've posted for years at a conservative Maine political website) I think the Republicans will try to get a congressional district plan adopted this year than can command a 2/3 majority, perhaps not cancelling the 2013 redistricting and allowing the Apportionment commission to deliberate on that in 2013 along with legislative and county commissioner redistricting (he would like the 2/3 requirement for congressional and I think county commissioner districts added to the Maine Constitution).  The plantiffs' attorney, by the way, is a former mayor of Bangor (the city council elects the mayor from among their own, which has been the case in Portland although that will change this year) and ran for the open ME-02 seat in 2002, finishing recount close (there was a recount and Woodcock made up some ground but after the Bangor area was recounted with little to no difference he withdrew his recount request) to Kevin Raye (who's now the Senate President and one heartbeat away from replacing our portly governor) in the Republican primary.  I wouldn't be surprised if there's a connection between the lawsuit and Republicans in the Legislature/Governor's office, but I suspect more of a "let's get good government brownie points" way than "let's gerrymander Maine" way.

[Kevinstat]

Maine's ideal congressional district population in 2000: 1,274,923/2 = 637,461.5
Maine's ideal congressional district population in 2010: 1,328,361/2 = 664,180.5

Maine's Existing Congressional Districts:

ME-01
Cumberland County (all)
Kennebec County (all except for Litchfield, Wayne, Fayette, Oakland, Waterville, Winslow, Benton and Clinton)
Knox County (all)
Lincoln County (all)
Sagadahoc County (all)
York County (all)
2000 census population: 637,450 (11.5 people (0.0018%) below state ideal)
2010 census population: 668,515 (4,334.5 people (0.6526%) above state ideal)

ME-02
Androsscoggin County (all)
Aroostook County (all)
Franklin County (all)
Hancock County (all)
Kennebec County (Litchfield, Wayne, Fayette, Oakland, Waterville, Winslow, Benton and Clinton)
Oxford County (all)
Penobscot County (all)
Piscataquis County (all)
Somerset County (all)
Waldo County (all)
Washington County (all)
2000 census population: 637,473 (11.5 people (0.0018%) above state ideal)
2010 census population: 659,846 (4,334.5 people (0.6526%) below state ideal)


My Preferred Maine Congressional District Plan (for the time being) for the 2012 elections (which could be revisited by the advisory Apportionment Commission in 2013):

ME-01
Cumberland County (all)
Kennebec County (all except for Litchfield, Wayne, Fayette, Sidney, Oakland, Waterville, Winslow, Benton, and Clinton and Unity UT)
Knox County (all except for Isle Au Haut)
Lincoln County (all)
Sagadahoc County (all)
York County (all)
2000 census population: 633,826 (3,635.5 people (0.5703%) below state ideal)
2010 census population: 664,191 (10.5 people (0.0016%) above state ideal)

ME-02
Androsscoggin County (all)
Aroostook County (all)
Franklin County (all)
Hancock County (all)
Kennebec County (Litchfield, Wayne, Fayette, Sidney, Oakland, Waterville, Winslow, Benton, and Clinton and Unity UT)
Knox County (Isle Au Haut)
Oxford County (all)
Penobscot County (all)
Piscataquis County (all)
Somerset County (all)
Waldo County (all)
Washington County (all)
2000 census population: 641,097 (3,635.5 people (0.5703%) above state ideal)
2010 census population: 664,170 (10.5 people (0.0016%) below state ideal)

2010 census population of municipalities shifted between districts: 4,324 (0.33% of Maine's Population)
   From ME-01 to ME-02: (0.65% of current ME-01; 0.65% of proposed new ME-02)
   From ME-02 to ME-01: 0

So the faster growing district is the larger one unlike in the current plan as of the 2000 census, but the deviation of each district from the ideal is 1 less and you're only shifting territory 1 way (unlike in 2003), shifting 10 fewer people than you'd have to to get the districts within 1 person of each other.  Isle Au Haut is connected by ferry as far as I know only to Stonington on Deer Isle in Hancock County, which is connected by a pair of bridges to the Hancock County mainland.  And I imagine most of the 43 people (2010 census figures) in Unity Township (called Unity UT by the Census Bureau) live on or off state route 139 and are not connected via road to the rest of ME-01.  A road from Benton to Albion crosses a small corner of Unity Township, but any people who live on that very small stretch of road would be functionally contiguous to the main portions of each congressional district.  Sidney is bordered on three sides (including its two longer ones) by municipalities I have kept in ME-01 and on only one of its shorter sides by municipalities I have kept in ME-02, but one of the two long sides is along the Kennebec River where there is no bridge connecting Sidney to Vassalboro and much of the opposite side is Messalonskee Lake.  And public school students from Sidney go to high school (and last I knew, middle school) in Oakland, as do students from Belgrade and Rome which I've kept in ME-01 but I had to draw the line somewhere, and I'm envisioning this as a bipartisan two-year fix to the lines (with my own strong aesthetic preferences accounted for; I've long thought Isle Au Haut should be in the second district and the current Unity Township protrusion of the first district is ridiculous, unless residents there vote in Albion which wouldn't make much sense as most of the town isn't connected to it while it's all connected to Benton; it's in a different county than Unity so voting there might not be optimal).

The Democrats might not like any of Knox County being moved into the second district because of the precedence it might set about moving Knox County territory into the second district.  Chellie Pingree lives (or at least did as of 2010; well, as much as she doesn't live with her hedge fund manager and wealthy campaign contributor boyfriend in Portland or the Virgin Islands) in North Haven (which seems to have a corner water boundary with Isle Au Haut, although it's ferry connection is to Rockland), and that's where she lived when she was in the State Senate.  But considering that the Republicans could fairly easily put her and Michaud in the same district (they could do pretty much whatever they want, and if the Democrats tried to launch a people's veto against the plan I could see the courts ordering the one being suspended pending referendum to be used in 2012 even if the people's veto passed to ensure that the plaintiffs got relief from their under-representation), taking one small town (2010 census population: 73) in her area out of her district and in with its ferry connection ought not to be too objectionable.

[Edited over 8 years later to correct some syntax issues with boldface and underlining, plus some spelling errors (I was quite sloppy with this post).]

[Kevinstat]

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Full article

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We don't care about "fair share" (like a 75 word limit without express permission to go beyond that) regarding quoting newspaper articles at this forum, do we?  I paired the article down some but there were too many things I didn't want people to miss if they didn't click on the above link to the full article.

[Kevinstat]

So what, they desperately want a chance to try to gerrymander a 2-district state? How Republican could you make ME-02, really?

Chellie Pingree's hometown of North Haven is at the eastern end of ME-01 and could easily be put in the same district as East Millinocket (Michaud's hometown).  Under Maine law, candidates for Representative to Congress have to live in the district they are running in, not just in the state which I know is all the U.S. Constitution requires.  Pingree could still run in ME-01 while keeping her legal address in North Haven if it was moved to ME-02, and could easily "move" to Portland (I think she or her hedge fund manager boyfriend already have a home or apartment there), but part of her appeal is her connections to North Haven, where she served in the Maine Senate from and ran a successful small business (something to do with clothing, I think, by magazine rather than through a store), and that would could be weakened slightly if she had to change her legal residence to Portland in order to run for reelection North Haven was no longer in her district.

If she chose to run in the new district including North Haven that would likely mean running against Michaud, and while the primary would not be a lost cause depending on the district (like if Michaud lost Lewiston/Auburn and the entire mid-coast and the Augusta area was shifted into ME-02), she would likely run poorly in northern and downeast Maine and state Democratic leaders would likely suggest she still run or even move "back" into the first district.  A Portland-based challenger could possibly emerge, and while such a challenge would likely fissile (Pingree would have all the institutional backing) it could cause her some headaches.

The midcoast would not be particularly good territory for Michaud either, although in 2010 he did slightly better than district-wide in Waldo County and slightly wore than district-wide in Androscoggin County, where his opponent was from (Auburn) and where the Lewiston-Auburn suburbs are strongly trending Republican (Michaud lost 5 of the 7 towns in ME-02 that surround Lewiston and Auburn).

Basically, the Republicans couldn't draw more than a leaning Republican, but they could give Pingree and Michaud headaches which might be worth it for them (particularly giving Pingree headaches).  If they stretched the second district down the midcoast all the way to and including Portland like a preliminary plan of there's did in 2003, then it would become fairly likely that one of the Maine's current U.S. Represetntatives would be out of office come 2013, but the result could well be one of the two current congresspeople and a new Democratic congressperson.

[Edited to correct the false statement I believed to be true at the time that Maine law required candidates for the U.S. House to live in the district there running in (apparently it can't, but in any event it doesn't), and to adjust my analysis accordingly.]

[Kevinstat]

Chellie Pingree's hometown of North Haven is at the eastern end of ME-01 and could easily be put in the same district as East Millinocket (Michaud's hometown).  Under Maine law, candidates for Representative to Congress have to live in the district they are running in, not just in the state which I know is all the U.S. Constitution requires.

Maine (nor Congress for that matter) may not add qualifications for Representatives.  The requirement is to live in the State on election day.

I didn't know that, thanks.  I was wrong when I said that Maine law required candidates for Representative to Congress to live in the district they're running in.  I've looked through where it would be in the Nominations chapter of Maine's election law title and didn't see any such requirment, and the Maine 2010 Candidates Guide to Ballot Access (PDF) just mentions a Maine residency requirement with the only statutory reference being to the U.S. Constitution.  Not that it would matter if the state had additional requirements if they would be deemed null and void, but I thought I'm mention that I was wrong about there even being such a provision in Maine law.  If all of York and Cumberland Counties are still in the same district, then Pingree would likely run in that one, but some of the territory both she and Michaud might each not be as good a fit for the territory she/he would be gaining as for the territory she/he would be losing.

I think you would be better of trying to pick up some more Republicans for ME-2.  You can't eliminate Aroostook from ME-2.  Is even Oxford possible?

Well, if you moved the remainder of Kennebec County Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and part of Cumberland County into ME-02 (but a small enough portion that a majority of the population of the current ME-01 would remain in ME-01), you could go clockwise along the New Hampshire and Canadian borders and shift the whole counties of Oxford, Franklin, Somerset and Aroostook Counties to ME-01.  But yeah, any plan that wasn't totally rediculous (and that wouldn't reliably benefit anyone but wuold just tick a bunch of people off) would keep Aroostook in ME-02.  Moving Oxford County into ME-01 is definitely doable, though.  York, Cumberland, Oxford and Androscoggin Counties combine for 97.01% of an ideal Maine congressional district population, and you could add a majority of either Sagadahoc or Franklin counties to get the district to the appropriate population.  Franklin County would be easier to do without splitting county subdivisions (cities, towns or grouped unorganized territories such as "East Central Franklin UT") there are a lot more small (population-wise) county subdivisions there than in Sagadahoc County.

A good plan for a more Republican ME-02 would be to have ME-01 consist of York, Cumberland and Sagadahoc counties, Androscoggin County except for Turner, Minot, Mechanic Falls, Poland, Wales, Sabattus and maybe Lisbon (which would have been a Democratic stronghold 20 years ago but is trending heavily Republican) and Durham, the town of Jay in Franklin County, and portions of Kennebec County going up the Kennebec River including Gardiner, Hallowell, Augusta and Waterville.  You might have to add some more territory into ME-01, and the district's portion of Kennebec County could be fleshed to include marginal towns like West Gardiner, Manchester, Readfield and Winthrop, perhaps pairing off Republican-leaning towns of Chelsea and Sidney along the river.  Both districts would look very ugly, though.

[Kevinstat]

Yeah, I never really understood why Maine waits the extra two years to redistrict.

They have an abnormally early filing deadline or something.

It's later than some other states that are redistricting this year (like Illinois, where filing will be in November).

Yeah, a lot of people assume that it's either because of early filing deadlines (Maine's is the first business day on or after March 15 for primary election candidates and the first business day on or after June 1 for non-party candidates or for candidates for positions on the state/federal ballot that don't have primaries or party designations listed like county charter commission or the finance/budget committee in a couple counties with charters providing for elections to that committee) and/or because our odd year sessions are so short.

Well, the reason they don't do it in time for 2012 is that with their strange (and short) sessions and very early primary filing deadlines, they don't really have time do it in time for 2012.

My reply:

The Statutory adjournment date of the odd-year regular session of the Maine Legislature is now the third Wednesday in June.  How much later than that do odd-year regular sessions adjourn in most states?

[Kevinstat]

My understanding is that Maine's late re-districting is more a tradition, and that if anyone wanted to challenge it in court they would win.  Any challenge would be based on equal protection grounds, which would override anything in the State constitution or law.

It's a tradition that only began in the 1970s for the State House - after the bulk of the earth-shattering "Apportionment Decisions" had been handed down - and in the 1980s for the State Senate.

The delay in Legislative redistricting was established in the Maine Constitution in a constitutional amendment adopted in 1980.  Maine didn't redraw its congressional districts (or at least didn't draw them any differently) from 1961 to 1983, although voters in the town of Otisfield started voting for second district candidates in 1978 when it was moving from Cumberland County to Oxford County (it officially changed counties between the primary and general elections, if I recall correctly from some e-mail correspondence I had with an Otisfield geneology buff over a decade ago - it's on Dave Leip's webblog somewhere).

[Kevinstat]

A personal message string with a Republican cyberfriend of mine from December 2008 that ought to provide a clearer idea of why Maine has redistricted after the "2" year elections for as long as it has for its various types of districts (see the previous post):

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[Kevinstat]

Some more correspondence in January 2009 that starts and ends on the topic of trying to correct Maine's delayed redistricting, near the end contains rejoinder to my earlier explanation of possible causes for the delay, and in the middle goes to another topic but one that I'll hope people will find interesting:

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[Kevinstat]

The scheme of not splitting towns is not necessarily in violation of SCOTUS OMOV rulings.  Given Maine's system of local election administration it is conceivable that apportionment by county, and the sub-apportionment by town is legitimate.

Following the then-language of the Maine constitution (which had already been amended to repeal the 7-member limit and the apportionment of partial seats to the smaller counties) in the redistricting following the 1970 census would have given Kittery 1 Representative (over 50% greater than the ideal district population) and Bath, which by that time was smaller than Kittery, 2 Representatives (and the population of Bath divided by 2 was I think forty-something percent smaller than the ideal district population).  The Maine Supreme Judicial Court didn't see fit to do that when the Legislature and Governor couldn't enact a plan by the deadline.  The Republicans, who controlled the Legislature, had proposed a plan that followed the Maine Constitution, but if they passed it Democratic Governor Ken Curtis vetoed it.

There were two committees tackling Maine State House redistricting following the 1970 census, one of them I think in 1971 and the other I think in 1973.  The first commission had a Republican majority, and proposed the plan I mentioned above.  In a minority report (I've borrowed both commissions' reports from the Maine Law and Legislative Reference Library before, but it's been a while), the Democrats called the attempt to follow the Maine Constitution "an academic excercise" or something like that.  They said that for that reason, they mostly went along with the Republican plan, although the plan doesn't indicate what districts were not unanimously agreed to), and that therefore the plan significantly benefited the Republicans, but fortunately the plan would never go into effect because of its presumed violation of U.S. Supreme Court opinions.

The second commission, though Republicans still controlled the Legislature at this point (although Democrat Ken Curtis was still the Governor), had an even number of Republican and Democratic members with a presumed neutral chairman.  That commission, in a lengthly "preface" (the part before the actual plan) to their report, outlined "A rational approach to reapportionment" (or it may have just been 'apportionment') that melded the Maine constitution to comply with OMOV.  Portions of several cities were placed in single-member districts with surrounding territory with the remainder of the city being a multi-member district.  Auburn and Waterville were apparently closer to an even 4 quotas than an even 3 so parts of Minot and Winslow (the latter of which had a whole single member district of its own), respectively, were added to those towns to form 4-member districts.  They did the same for Bath, creating a 2-member district consisting of Bath, West Bath and part of Brunswick, the remainder of Brunswick being a 2-member district itself).  The boundaries of counties within a certain percentage of an integer number of "quotas" were not crossed, while otherwise pairs of trios of counties were grouped together and the external boundaries of those groupings were not crossed.  The only counties with more than one "partial" district were Franklin and Oxford counties, which had three districts partly in each county, and Somerset County, which was grouped with Piscataquis and Kennebec counties which don't come near each other and had a partial district with each of those counties.  The other three-county grouping was Lincoln-Knox-Waldo which had the remainders of each county in one district.

The Maine Supreme Court largely followed the commission's plan.  A couple of changes I've noticed were that the 2-member district including Bath was divided with Bath having a whole single-member district and part of another (perhaps because Bath had less than 1.5 quotas, although they would have had a two member district under the Maine Constitution the way the numbers crunched, or perhaps it was so the remainder of Brunswick would be in a single-member district), and the town of Isle au Haut in Knox County was placed in a district otherwise entirely in Hancock County (I'm pretty sure the commission's plan hadn't done that).

For more information, see pages 138-144 according to my Adobe Acrobat Reader (pages 141-147 according to the numbers on the pages) of this article (PDF) I discoved from Ballotpedia's article on redistricting in Maine.  In at least one instance, the article states that the Republican House and Senate couldn't agree on a plan when I know from another article that goes into detail that in fact they had passed a plan but the Democratic Governor vetoed it after taking perhaps intentionally dragging his feat and appointing a commission to study the Senate redistricting (and the Democrats had over a third of the members in both chambers and the veto was sustained, although by that time the Maine Supreme Court was already well into making its own apportionment).  Also, the "sliding scale" formula of Senators per county wasn't part of the Maine Constitution until 1931 and the apportioning of extra Representatives after remainders were tossed out to the smaller counties wasn't in there until the 1950s.  Before then the respective chambers were supposed to theoretically be apportioned among the counties based on population, but that had not been fully followed in the 1920s.   In a couple of instances a smaller county had one more Senator or Representative than a larger county (I'm not kidding).  But it still seems like the best source available on line on Maine redistricting in the 1960s and 1970s.

[Kevinstat]

The Maine issue is not a partisan one. Not least because it takes a 2/3rds majority to forward a map anyway. The Republicans don't have numbers to do anything even if they wanted to. Whether or not the maps are redrawn this year or next year, it will be a compromise.

If the three-judge panel (or a Maine court, if the panel refers the case to them to fashion the form of relief to the plaintiffs after ruling that the current delay violates the plaintiffs' rights to equal representation) holds that the statutory 2/3 requirement for congressional redistricting only covered redistricting in years ending in 3, and that there are no valid Maine law pertaining to congressional redistricting in 2011 and thus the redrawing can be done by the Legislature as provided for in the Maine Constitution for "normal" legislation (a simple majority vote in each chamber and the Governor's signature, with the possibility of overriding the Governor's veto with a 2/3 vote in each chamber), then the Democrats couldn't stop the Republicans from doing whatever they want.  That is, unless the Democrats collected signatures for a people's veto that is provided for in Maine's Constitution for non-emergency legislation (and anything passed without a 2/3 vote in each chamber could not have an emergency preamlbe), but if a June 2011 congressional redistricting plan that the Legislature had been mandeted to do by the courts law was suspended by a people's veto a court might rule that the suspended plan be used in 2012 even if the people's veto passed to ensure relief for the plaintiffs before the preparation for the 2012 primary and general elections has progressed far enough to make granting that relief after the people's veto election results (and the vote on the people's veto couldn't be held before November of this year) difficult.

That's an absolute worst-case scenaro for the Democrats, and there might still be a rationale for a people's veto if the new law canceled the scheduled 2013 congressional redistricting that the Democrats could force to go to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court (which could adopt a new plan even if a plan had been adopted in 2011 based on the 2010 census, and a magority of justices on that court right now are Baldacci appointees) if they had a majority in the House by then (if Republicans still had a "trifecta", the 2/3 requirement could be "notwithstood", subject of course to a people's veto - if the 2013 congressional redistricting was repealed this year, than Republicans could block any attempt to undo a Republican gerrymander unless and until the Democrats (or non-Republicans) gained either a "trifecta" (which they couldn't get until January 2015 assuming LePage serves out his term) or a 2/3 majority in both houses of the Legislature.  A court would be incorrect to nullify the statutory provisions for congressional redistricting in 2013 (as opposed to nullifying any interpreted restriction against redistricting in 2011 or ruling that the 2/3 rule doesn't apply to 2011), but a very shortsighted court could perhaps completely nullify Maine's congressional redistricting provisions.

So there is a possibility that a non-compromise congressional redistricting map could be drawn (even if the courts construed the 2/3 requirement for a "3" year congressonal redistricting to apply to a court-mandated "1" year redistricting, that law could be "nothwithstood" by the ace adopting a new plan), but there would be both public reations and future retaliation risks to that stategy for Maine Republicans.   The 2/3 requirement for legislative redistricting is in the Maine Constitution, and a court-drawn plan in 2013 would seem be more likely to help Democrats than Republicans, particularly if they still held more seats in either or both chambers with a bunch of second term Legislators who were starting to entrench themselves in their districts and wouldn't be termed out until 2018.  As I have written earlier, I think there is some desire among Republicans to put the 2/3 requirement for congressional redistricting in the Maine Constitution where is is for legislative redistricting, and they wouldn't advocate that any time soon while or just after they had rammed through a congressional district plan without signficant bipartisan support that they were proposing to leave unchanged until 2021.

[Kevinstat]

On the Desena et al v. State of Maine et al front, the three-judge panel divided the case into a "liability" phase and a "remedy" phase, and drafted a Schduling Order on April 28 for the "liability" phase.  The three parties (the Plaintiffs, (State) Defendants, and Intervenor Defendant (the Maine Democratic Party)) all submitted their opening briefs on Friday, May 20, the day of the deadline for those briefs.  Reply briefs may be submitted on or before this coming Tuesday, May 31 at noon.  (No reply briefs had been submitted when I checked on PACER last night.)  Oral argument is scheduled for Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 11:00 a.m.

You can view the Scribd downloads of the Plaintiffs', State Defendents' and Maine Democrats' opening briefs and the Joint Stipulated facts the three parties agreed to, all of which are linked to from a blog entry on the briefs at Dirigo Blue.  (Included with the Plantiffs' opening brief are the two Exhibits they attached; the State Defendents attached to their opening brief the Joint Stipulated facts and, either as an attachment to their opening brief or to the Joint Stipulated Facts, a copy of this map of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court's final congressional district plan in 2003 (the one currently in use).)

As the editor of Dirigo Blue noted in his blog entry, Attorney General William Schneider (a Republican who was elected to his post by a secret joint ballot (although I know the Democrats used to collect the ballots their Legislators didn't cast from each Legislator so they would know if someone defected) of the new Republican Legislature) (joined in his brief by Deputy Attorney General Paul Stern), representing the State Defendants including the State of Maine itself, agreed with the plaintiffs that "this Court should conclude that given the differences in population between the two districts, which are shown by the 2010 census to be 0.652 percent from the ideal, Maine must engage in a good faith effort to reapportion those districts to achieve equliaty before the next Congressional election."  Schneider and Stern did oppose the nullification "in general" (my words) of the statute delaying Maine's congressional redistricting as theoretically the two districts, drawn to be substantially equal in population as of and according to one census, could be within an acceptable range of deviation as of and according to the following census, even perhaps closer than as of the census upon the results of which they were drawn.  But they argued that "as applied to the present situation, the timing provision in Maine's statute is unconstitutional" (emphasis theirs).

[Kevinstat]

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Full article

[Kevinstat]

A better (in my opinion) MPBN article on the ruling, with some commentary from some of the parties involved and some others like the Maine GOP Chair.

[Kevinstat]

So I take it the court is going to either choose the map they like best or draw the lines themselves?

I'm not sure about that.  It might be that "let the Legislature redraw the lines under the provisions in the Maine Constitution" (which are none beyond the general provisions for "normal" legislation, the statutory provisions arguably only applying to years ending in 3) would be an acceptable "proposal".

[Kevinstat]

It would seem like a similar case could be made against legislative districts.  It appears the maximum Senate deviation is around 20%, and for the House 44%.  It might require different plaintiffs.

Yeah, it would probably require different plaintiffs, assuming the 2010 redistricting data's populations for the Senate and House districts covering the plaintiffs' hometown of Cape Elizabeth are correct (they aren't everywhere, at least in terms of some municipalities not being in the right district or not split where they are or split where they aren't, so it would be a freak coincidence if the population figures for those districts are correct).  Senate District 7 (South Portland, Cape Elizabeth and part of Scarbourough) is given a 2010 resident population of 37,687 (-0.70%).  House District 121 (part of Cape Elizabeth) apparantly had only 7,666 residents (-12.86%).  House District 123 (the remainders of Cape Elizabeth and South Portland, which has two whole districts of its own) had 9,154 residents (+4.06%), which is odd considering the four districts in those two towns average 3.33% below the ideal district population, but the figures for the House district portions of each town add up as do the Senate district portions of Scarborough.  I didn't check the Senate district including the remainder of Scarborough which has another split town the remainder of which is in with the remainder of Portland (too much work).  But anyway, House District 123 is within acceptable range and the 2013 redistricting will likely result in residents of that portion of Cape Elizabeth only losing 39 more fellow district residents than they gain, as Cape Elizabeth will most likley coincide with one House district (2010 resident population 9,015 (+2.48%)) and South Portland and Scarborough (which currenly has an even two House districts which are overpopulated by an average of 7.53%) will probably combine for five (averaging 0.15% below the ideal district population).

[Kevinstat]

Well, BigSkyBob beat me the point of the paragraph I breifly added to my last post (I posted multiple times while I was composing because I had earlier lost a lot), but I thought I'd add it here as I spent some time on it.

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Of course, the reason a lawsuit challenging Maine's delayed congressional districting may not happen (I'd say probably not at this point) has nothing to do with where plaintiffs live (although if either of my legislative districts were overpopulated by more than 5%... (my Senate district is +0.57%, while my House district is +3.66%; although my House district at least is more than 10% (of the ideal district population) greater than some House districts (like House District 121)).  Anyway, the two main reasons such a suit might not happen are (a) a favorable federal court ruling is less certain, as jimrtex discussed here) and (b) the likely result of a successful lawsuit against the 2012 legislative elections being held using the current districts being used in 2012 would be a court-drawn plan being used, while the liekly result of the successful lawsuit against Maine using its current congressional districts in 2012 is the Republican-majority legislature and Republican governor being able to do whatever they want, subject only to a people's veto (and in the event of a plan being suspended by a people's veto, even if the signatures were collected early enough for the referendum to be this November rather than with the primary elections next June, the three-judge panel might order the suspended or "people's vetoed" Republican congressional district plan be used in 2012 anyway).  And the current Maine statute governing congressional redistricting requires it only "If the districts do not conform to Supreme Judicial Court guidelines," so a people's veto couldn't even force a 2013 review where LePage couldn't veto any change to whatever plan the Republicans rammed through in 2012, although there might be some room for litigation by the Democrats if the congreessional districts used in 2012 weren't on the books yet due to a successful people's veto.

[Kevinstat]

Finding the appropriate plantiffs., and filing, are merely technical exercises. The only reason there won't be a legeslative redistricting for 2012 is that noone wants one.

Well, "noone wants one enough to get the necessary legal staff (including paying them or convincing them to work pro bono) to have a decent shot at prevailing in a less than slam dunk lawsuit" (I considered the one just informally decided to be a slam dunk for the plaintiffs) might be a more accurate discription.

The pathetic part is that instead of taking the Congressional ruling seriously, Maine might wait to be forced to redistrict in a seperate lawsuit that ends with Maine paying the second set of plantiffs their attorney fees.

What makes you think that might happen?  (I imagine the current plaintiffs will be paid their attorney fees though.)

[Kevinstat]

Oh, I thought you meant that the state would ignore the ruling to redraw its congressional districts, when that would be (well, it probably isn't unprecedented but it would be asking for serious legal trouble) and the Republicans in power probably won't mind redrawing the districts anyway.

Maine's Constitution would seem to bar the state from redrawing its Legislative districts before 2013 unless forced to by a legal challenge.  The constitution could be amended this year to allow for a redistricting before the 2012 elections but with Maine's filing period beginning on January 1 the year of the election and a 1941 Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling that you can't pass a law that goes against the current language of the state constitution even conditionally upon the constitution being amended to allow whatever is being done in statutory law, you'd probably have to add the definitions of the new legislative districts into the Maine Constitution, which would probably make the majority of the text of the constitution House and Senate district descriptions.

[Kevinstat]

Oh, I thought you meant that the state would ignore the ruling to redraw its congressional districts, when that would be (well, it probably isn't unprecedented but it would be asking for serious legal trouble) and the Republicans in power probably won't mind redrawing the districts anyway.

Maine's Constitution would seem to bar the state from redrawing its Legislative districts before 2013 unless forced to by a legal challenge.  The constitution could be amended this year to allow for a redistricting before the 2012 elections but with Maine's filing period beginning on January 1 the year of the election and a 1941 Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling that you can't pass a law that goes against the current language of the state constitution even conditionally upon the constitution being amended to allow whatever is being done in statutory law, you'd probably have to add the definitions of the new legislative districts into the Maine Constitution, which would probably make the majority of the text of the constitution House and Senate district descriptions.

The US Constitution trumps the Maine Constitution, and it is extremely questionable whether a court would allow a 20% variation in one statehouse district stand for 2 years when the data to redraw districts is readily available.  In my opinion, such a large disparity should not stand, even for a relatively short duration - but stranger things have happened.

What happens if a state passes a statute that is in violation of the state constitution but would seem to be mandated by the U.S. constitution but there hasn't yet been a federal court challenge to the pending U.S. Constitutional violation?  It's tough for me to tell what the appropriate thing for the state to do regarding legislative redistricting at this point is.

A constitutional resolution (LD 494) that I basically drafted to move legislative redistricting after 2013 ahead two years, with an amendment I didn't draft and which I think is kind of sloppy (although I support the concept) to basically add the current congressional and county commissioner redistricting provisions (most notably the 2/3 vote requirement) to the constitution (except of course to move future redistrictings ahead two years as would be done with the legislative redistricting provisions), has been Finally Passed in the House and is currently before the Senate on what's called the "Special Appropriations Table" pending Final Passage there.

I've discussed this earlier on this forum, but just so people don't think I don't take timely redistricting seriously, I'd like to point out LD 211 in 2009 that my then-State Representative put in at my suggestion that would have moved future redistrictings from 2013 and every 10th year thereafter to 2011 (originally drafted by the revisors as 2012; fixed in committee) and every 10th year thereafter.  I had envisioned both in 2009 and 2011 a companion bill moving non-legislative redistricting to the same schedule (I wasn't aware of that pesky 1941 ruling at the time; there's currently nothing in the Maine Constitution on congressional or county commissioner redistricting but those redistrictings use the Apportionment Commission provided for in the constitution and my bill would have kept that use of the Apportionment Commission while changing the years it would meet for congressional and county commissioner redistricting).  If LD 211 had passed and the voters had accepted the constitutional amendment, I'm confident that a law moving congressional, county commissioner and the elected finance/budget committees in those counties that have them redistricting to 2011 and every 10 years thereafter would have sailed through in 2012.  But LD 211 was killed despite having gotten a unanimously favorable report in committee as it would have moved the cost of redistricting to the state into (pegged at $485,000 in the fiscal note) into the fiscal biennium the Legislature was budgeting for at the time.  LD 494, which I expect will be adopted this year in some form, didn't even get a unanimous report in committee; one paranoid first-term House Democrat on the committee voted "Ought Not to Pass" after she learned that I posted to a conservative Maine website and became convinced I had a secret agenda, even though my posts there are almost entirely statistical and analytical like most of my posts here and I actually volunteered a fair amount at the state Democratic HQ in 2008 and 2010.  The congressional lawsuit being launched while the bill was still before the committee and the cold Democratic reaction to it probably didn't help.

[Kevinstat]

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Two news articles on the three parties' implementation plans submitted yesterday (except that the one submitted by the state wasn't available at the time of the PPH article and was only discussed by comparison in the other article), one from the Portland Press Herald that makes it look like the plaintiffs are hoping for a Republican gerrymander and one from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network that suggests a bipartisan commission to deal with congressional redistricting is in the awning, and in which the plaintiffs attorney endorses a bipartisan commission "and if the Legislature thinks that's the right way to proceed."  (So basically, "We were hoping for a Republican gerrymander but we're not going to openly oppose a bipartisan commission that at least one our own party's legislative leadership has endorsed.")

[Kevinstat]

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Full article

[Kevinstat]

The court also issued its written order, in which slammed the Democratic Party, saying that their arguments rested on quicksand, were red herrings, and that the decision that the current districts were unconstitutional was child's play.  And this was before they even started addressing the Democrat's rationale for delay.

I expected the Democrats to be chastised, although I wasn't sure it would be as bad as it was.  In "League of Women Voters of Maine v. Gwadosky" (which struck down Maine's "Scarlet Letter Law" passed by citizen initiative in 1996 that would have written "VIOLATED VOTER INSTRUCTION ON TERM LIMITS" as part of the listings of incumbent members of Congress or the Legislature on the ballot who didn't vote in favor of a specifically worded application for a congressional term limits amendment or that amendment itself if in Congress, or didn't propose such an application or amendment if no one else did, or "REFUSED [I forget what exactly but similarly not flattering]" for non-incumbent candidates who refused to pledge to support such an application or amendment), the district judge (this didn't go to a three-judge court) wrote that the Intervenor Defendents' (U.S. Term Limits, the On Our Terms-Campaign Committee (perhaps the Maine group behind the challenged citizen initiative) and two ex-Democratic current or former State Representatives from Auburn (one of whom ran for Governor in 2002 and used the n-word on a radio show to describe how he was being "put in his place" - he's white, btw)) argument that "the Act is not coercive but rather provides non-binding instructions from Maine's voters to their legislators... raises naivete to new heights."  But they weren't slammed as much as the Democrats were.  Unlike in this case the State actually tried to defend the challenged law.

Technically though, what the court said was "child's play" was the plaintiffs' showing that the disparity in the two congressional district's populations "was not "unavoidable despite a good-faith effort to achieve absolute equality"", not the decision that the current districts were unconstitutional (not that the court would have disagreed with your statement).  The court was not at all appologetic about rejecting the Democrats' argument that (as the court put the Democrats' arguement) "the policies supporting Maine's carefully constructed redistricting process, laudably designed to prevent partisan gerrymandering, are worthy of deference and, therefore, justify the state in using the 2010 census figures more deliberately in revamping its congressional district lines (with the result that reapportionment will be delayed until after the 2012 election)" and didn't themselves conceed that the designs of Maine's provisions were laudible, but they weren't as savage toward the Democrats there as they were with the various defenses of such a large deviation as Maine's in general, like how large Montana's at-large congressional district was (I gawked when I first saw that in a Democratic brief) and the several cases (regarding legislative districts all) in which larger deviations than those of Maine's congressional districts had been upheld.

[Kevinstat]

Links to the two recent orders:

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER (basically the court's "Opinion" regarding the "liability phase" of the case, ruling that Maine's congressional districts have to be drawn before the 2012 elections)

ORDER REGARDING PLAN FOR REDISTRICTING