Redistricting Woes

I wonder if part of the goal is to win by losing. If they got a new ruling that said "Redistrict any time you can justify it", that might not be so good.

More developments in Wisconsin's redistricting saga (initial post in this thread with more context here):

Attorneys for the WI GOP have been caught withholding emails pertaining to the redistricting efforts, in spite of multiple court orders to do so.

Many of the other newly uncovered emails discussed Hispanic majority districts and arranging testimony at a public hearing on the maps.

The review will be completed by Oct. 29, according to the report.

Other emails the Wisconsin State Journal found in late July when reviewing redistricting emails released to new Senate Majority Leader Mark Miller, D-Monona, showed Republicans discussed ways to increase the number of "safe" and "leaning" GOP districts and to protect conservative incumbents.

Poland said he thinks the report is "a step in the right direction," but more computers and hard drives still need to be searched.

"We don't believe the process is complete," Poland said.

In other news, snow is reported to be white.

Robear wrote:

In other news, snow is reported to be white.

Except when it is yellow.

Robear wrote:

In other news, snow is reported to be white.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that a redistricting process that was so bad that they made participants sign secrecy oaths is continuing to flaunt the law.

Color me an optimist, I guess.

A gerrymandering report by a firm named Azavea ranks electoral districts for compactness using several measures. I'm sorry to say that North Carolina comes in at #2 for the most gerrymandered state, and North Carolina's U.S. House District 12 takes the crown as the most gerrymandered district in the country. My own U.S. House district, the 4th, is the sixth worst gerrymandered district in the country.

We've got an absolutely horrible one from the recent redistricting, Maryland 3rd District. It's brown on this map. I believe there's a proposal on the ballot to trash the new districts and start over.

The Wisconsin GOP is floating the possibility that Wisconsin should allocate its electoral votes based on results in each congressional district.

Like 47 other states, Wisconsin grants all its electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the statewide vote. Two states - Nebraska and Maine - give two electoral votes to the statewide winner and parcel out the rest by congressional district. As it happens, all their votes have gone to a single candidate, except in 2008, when one electoral vote in Omaha was given to Barack Obama.

If Wisconsin adopted such a system, the votes would be split routinely. If the state had such a system this year, Obama would have gotten five votes and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, would have gotten five. That's because Romney won the majority vote in five congressional districts, while Obama won the majority in three congressional districts and the statewide vote.

Wisconsin has gone for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1988. It has continued to draw attention from both parties, nonetheless, with the results in 2000 and 2004 being extremely close.

This is a terrible idea, and I'd be saying so even if the Wisconsin Democrats were putting this idea forward. Legislative steps which make gerrymandering even more advantageous should be avoided whenever possible.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

The Wisconsin GOP is floating the possibility that Wisconsin should allocate its electoral votes based on results in each congressional district.

Like 47 other states, Wisconsin grants all its electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the statewide vote. Two states - Nebraska and Maine - give two electoral votes to the statewide winner and parcel out the rest by congressional district. As it happens, all their votes have gone to a single candidate, except in 2008, when one electoral vote in Omaha was given to Barack Obama.

If Wisconsin adopted such a system, the votes would be split routinely. If the state had such a system this year, Obama would have gotten five votes and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, would have gotten five. That's because Romney won the majority vote in five congressional districts, while Obama won the majority in three congressional districts and the statewide vote.

Wisconsin has gone for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1988. It has continued to draw attention from both parties, nonetheless, with the results in 2000 and 2004 being extremely close.

This is a terrible idea, and I'd be saying so even if the Wisconsin Democrats were putting this idea forward. Legislative steps which make gerrymandering even more advantageous should be avoided whenever possible.

Interestingly, in Ohio, the Democratic party tried to make gerrymandering harder by introducing legislation that required a public vote to redistrict. The Republican party here KILLED it by making it sound like government beaucracy and a small section of its budgetary matters sound like they were planning on running up billions of dollars with no oversight.

Well Dimmer, Wisconsin should they do that would also likely run into a similar problem that Texas did. The idea that the population centers like Milwaukee, Dane, and Brown counties would be marginalized would get the DNC, the NAACP, League of Women voters up in arms.

As more and more people are moving to major cities and the areas around those, many of these rural areas across the nation wield disproportionate political power.

I'd say the fact that he won the state by over 6% but lost five of the eight congressional districts is a sign that the districts are kind of f*cked up.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I'd say the fact that he won the state by over 6% but lost five of the eight congressional districts is a sign that the districts are kind of f*cked up.

Astute readers of this thread may recall that the Wisconsin GOP engaged in a gerrymandering campaign so egregious they made participants sign secrecy oaths.

New court filing reveals that documents were deleted from computers pertaining to the Wisconsin GOP's redistricting efforts, even after they were told to preserve all documents pertaining to the redistricting process.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]Nine hard drives were recently given to groups suing the state because of questions about whether legislators and their attorneys had turned over all the documents they had been ordered to provide. One of the nine hard drives was unreadable and the outside of it was dented and scratched, which suggested its metal housing had been removed, according to affidavits in the case.

In addition, some of the hard drives had a program installed on them that could remove electronic data and hide the fact that files had been deleted, according to the filing. So far, however, a computer expert has not been able to determine if the program was actually used.

So what is the punishment for that?

LeapingGnome wrote:

So what is the punishment for that?

Re-election!

Exactly. Why *wouldn't* they do it if there is no real downside.

LeapingGnome wrote:

So what is the punishment for that?

Great question. The three-judge panel which had been overseeing one of the redistricting lawsuits has shown their frustration with the WI GOP and their legal team, fining Michael Best & Freidrich last year in a judgement that read (in part): "Quite frankly, the Legislature and the actions of its counsel give every appearance of flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to hide from both the court and the public the true nature of exactly what transpired in the redistricting process".

This three-judge panel is also the one which had ordered access to the computers which now appear to have been purged of at least some data prior to handover.

I expect the judges are angry, but don't know whether or not they have the ability to impose sanctions on any of the people involved in any data deletion (especially since I expect the defense will be that any data loss was through incompetence rather than malice). Additionally, any judgement the panel makes about the redistricting case would be subject to appeal to the SCOTUS, and I don't have a good enough handle on the issues involved (or possible appeal angles) to have a read on how that might play out.

There are also two redistricting cases (I think) still active in the state courts, but given our State Supreme Court's behavior regarding 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 I don't expect any judgement contrary to what the Wisconsin GOP demands.

tl;dr? iaintgotnopants may be right

Isn't it kind of hard to argue incompetence in the case of the hard drives where actual programs were found to erase data, and hide the fact that this was done? Even the most incompetent of idiots would still have to deliberately install that program, it doesn't just accidentally make its way there.

Of course, that being said, I fully expect zero repercussions. I'm 100% with iaintgotnopants on this. It's pretty messed up, really.

Rallick wrote:

Isn't it kind of hard to argue incompetence in the case of the hard drives where actual programs were found to erase data, and hide the fact that this was done? Even the most incompetent of idiots would still have to deliberately install that program, it doesn't just accidentally make its way there.

Of course, that being said, I fully expect zero repercussions. I'm 100% with iaintgotnopants on this. It's pretty messed up, really.

While all of the other chicanery makes me suspect that foul play was also at work here, the existence of that software on the computers doesn't tell us anything without context. For all we know that was standard software that they used to delete documents after the valid timeline had passed, or whatnot.

It does seem really unlikely, but most nefarious seeming software has completely benign use cases, so it's something to keep in mind.

Even if that software isn't standard for that office, it could have been installed so that someone could clean up his midget bondage porn.

Yonder wrote:

it could have been installed so that someone could clean up his midget bondage porn.

... What was the name of that program again?

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]As Democrats were seeking access to Republican redistricting files last year, hundreds of thousands of computer files were deleted from state computers used by GOP aides, according to documents filed Thursday in federal court in Milwaukee.

Democratic plaintiffs alleged in the court filing that six days after an agreement for Republicans to hand over files used to draw new legislative districts, someone logged in as a Republican aide deleted hundreds of thousands of redistricting files from one of the computers. The following week, redistricting documents were handed over to Democrats.

Hundreds of thousands.

Incompetence is looking like more and more of a stretch.

I don't know, that seems like just the right size for a midget porn directory.

That's what a friend told me anyways...

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel[/url]]As Democrats were seeking access to Republican redistricting files last year, hundreds of thousands of computer files were deleted from state computers used by GOP aides, according to documents filed Thursday in federal court in Milwaukee.

Democratic plaintiffs alleged in the court filing that six days after an agreement for Republicans to hand over files used to draw new legislative districts, someone logged in as a Republican aide deleted hundreds of thousands of redistricting files from one of the computers. The following week, redistricting documents were handed over to Democrats.

Hundreds of thousands.

Incompetence is looking like more and more of a stretch.

So when does the Open Meeting's Act suit begin in the 7th Circuit?

KingGorilla wrote:

So when does the Open Meeting's Act suit begin in the 7th Circuit?

I think the 7th Circuit was actually hearing a case pertaining to the status of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, not the redistricting efforts. That case was heard in January, and upheld Governor Walker's law in a 2-1 decision.

I should probably cross-post this to the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 thread - will do that now.

More information about timing of the apparent deletions.

PRWatch[/url]]According to the April 18 court filings, the analysis so far indicates files were deleted on at least two separate occasions: on January 6, "just after the Court’s order [to turn over the documents] and just before the legislature’s supplemental production," and on July 25, which was one week "after majority control of the state senate shifted [and] the new majority leader requested Michael Best’s redistricting file," and one week before "Michael Best turned over its redistricting file to the new senate majority leader."

In other contexts, CMD has encountered patterns of Republican legislators deleting files, thanks to a loophole in the state open records law exempting legislators from records retention rules that apply to all other government officials. Sen. Fitzgerald -- whose office is at the center of the redistricting litigation -- in the past had released hundreds of documents in response to requests for ALEC-related records, but is now issuing replies like this one to a records request for ALEC communications: "If we did receive materials (from ALEC), either electronically or via mail, those materials were discarded upon receipt."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the file-deletion case have thrown in the towel, issuing a joint report with Michael Best & Freidrich that effectively ends the inquiry into any malfeasance in the deletion of thousands of files from the computers that were ordered to be turned over to the plaintiffs, after that court order was issued.

Wisconsin State Journal[/url]]In a report to a three-judge panel, the two sides in the litigation said they found no solid proof the thousands of files deleted from state computers were removed with bad intent nor that turning those files over to plaintiffs would have changed the outcome of a federal case challenging Wisconsin’s redistricting.

The report filed Wednesday sought to assess why records were not properly turned over to plaintiffs challenging the secretive process in which Wisconsin Republican leaders redrew state legislative and congressional districts following the 2010 census.

“Compliance with the plaintiffs’ subpoenas, and the court’s orders regarding them, by the Legislature, its employees, consultants and counsel was not complete,” according to the report, filed jointly by attorneys for both sides.

“Whether such incompleteness was the result of inadvertence or ineptitude or otherwise cannot be determined.”

I do agree that it is fairly unlikely that turning the files over would have changed the outcome of the federal case.