Any folk here live in states that have redistricting commissions?

[struggle4progress]

What states? Impressions of the process?

I'm interested in cases where redistricting is not entirely driven by the legislature

[tabbycat31]

1. New Jersey

Their redistricting is done with two separate panels (and legislative has a much stricter deadline as their legislature is in off year elections). (Another FYI on NJ is that the state senate and state assembly districts are the same).

Each commission has 13 members. 6 are appointed by the Democrats, 6 by the GOP, and then both parties agree on a tiebreaker. The tiebreaker does not choose a map himself but instead will vote on which map. The tiebreaker is supposed to be independent but inreality he is not (there have been no female tiebreakers that I've been aware of). People who pay close attention to politics know which party's map won by who the tiebreaker is.

Last cycle, Democrats won the legislative map and Republicans won the congressional (NJ is a blue state, but it's congressional delegation is 6-6 based on a GOP gerrymander).

[Scuba]

2. Not mine. We hire crooked law firms and make everyone involved sign secrecy pledges.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10847514

[rurallib]

3. Iowa - think our system has been noted as the model for the country

I believe the commission is six members - 3 of each.
this is somewhat on memory of what happened in 2010. IIRC the commission created 3 proposed maps. Their focus is on equal sized contiguous districts for both the state legislatures and the US congress.
We have 100 representative districts and 50 senate districts. With 3 million people that makes each district @ 30,000 people. each senate district is 2 rep districts (eg Rep districts 88 and 89 is senate district 44)

We have 4 US districts down from 5 last census. Each district is @ 750,000 (and yes they are really close).

There wasn't a lot of controversy. Iowa is more heavily populated in the east and of course city districts are smaller. The legislature votes on the proposals. I recall that there was one dissenting vote in the whole legislature (my idiot Repug rep).

There were some seats that pitted incumbent dem against incumbent rep, incumbent Dem against incumbent dem and incumbent repug against incumbent repug.

The outcome of it all was a democratic senate 26 - 24 ( slightly closer than before) a repug House (53 - 47 IIRC) much closer than before.

In the US house we have 2 dems and 2 repugs - the east leans democratic, the west repug including the infamous Steve King.

[Wounded Bear]

4. I believe WA is similar to Iowa (above)...

The commission is, by law, comprised of both major parties and independents-generally a judge or legal type.

We came out pretty good overall IMHO as to districting. Of course we're a blue state for the most part, although the eastern counties are largely red. The Puget Sound area, including King County (and Seattle, of course) are strongly blue.

[Retrograde]

5. California - and we ended up with Democratic super-majorities in both state houses

We had a citizens' panel draw up the new districts. There were some complaints, and the GOP tried to derail the process, but the people on the panel tried to do a fair and impartial job. A few people in previously "safe" seats lost their re-election bids, but with the roadblocks removed in the state assembly and senate the state is back on track.

[dsc]

6. being entirely driven by the legislature is actually fairly rare

Most states at least give the governor a role to veto. Ohio, where I am originally from, has a commission made up of the governor, auditor, and attorney general along with majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate. Thus winning 2 of the 3 statewide offices on the commission gets a party control of the commission.