Saturday: Redistricting Caucus

Somehow I ended up in yet another redistricting caucus on Saturday.

In California: A big factor in their success was that everything was very open. Everything was online, streamed, etc. They gave them a list of criteria, ranked by importances. They also had a very broad coalition supporting the campaign. They're now gearing up to make sure the second round of redistricting is as successful as the first.

Colorado: They're trying to get something on the ballot, very similar to CA's. One of the CA people has moved to CO. They have to have two different proposals, one for congress and one for the legislature, due to a quirk in CO constitution. Their proposed committee has 4 Democrats, 4 Republicans, 4 unaffiliated. They expected to need a petition drive, but then decided to try the legislature. They hired 5 lobbyists (very helpful!), started in the Senate, got 100% vote in favor in each committee and then on the floor. Then the same in the House.

Sue Smith, Michigan: 3 things:

• A big education campaign, where they sent out trained speakers from the state league to 70 groups across the state, and trained local league members who fanned out and gave more presentations.
• The ballot proposal (will be on 2018 ballot unless opponents knock it off the ballot via the Supreme Court). They gathered 400,000 signatures using volunteers only.
• The state league filed a lawsuit last year in federal court, with trial set for Feb 2019, claiming the current maps are unconstitutional under the federal constitution.

Jennifer Greenwood, North Carolina: unhappily not in the pattern of the others. They can't put anything on the ballot by petition, but must get it through the legislature, and Republicans have a supermajority in both houses. So they're relying primarily on the courts. Members can't even get meetings with their legislators: legislators have been instructed not to cooperate the League because of the lawsuit.

Allison McCaffrey, Washington state: They've had three cycles since their redistricting passed, and never had a lawsuit. They have a bipartisan commission, which is trying to improve transparency; they have only Democrats and Republicans on the commission and are trying to improve that. They're drawing maps for 2021 and trying to get them made publicly and transparently. They're now showing a play about the 1965 redistricting, when things were so bad they were funny.

After that we broke into groups, but there wasn't much time left and the groups were fairly large, so at least in my group (the one that was supposed to cover states without Initiatives) we didn't really cover any useful ideas.

...Akkana Peck