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In reply to the discussion: Follow Marc E. Elias: We had THREE major wins tonight in TEXAS, MONTANA and SOUTH CAROLINA! [View all]bigtree
(85,996 posts)...
03/05/2012
Judge Mann asks legislature's lawyers why on earth redistricting should protect incumbents
On Monday afternoon, in a crowded federal courtroom in Brooklyn, Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann peppered a series of attorneys with distinctly skeptical-sounding questions about why the court should consider incumbency when drawing the state's new congressional lines.
Mann, who was appointed by a three-judge panel of district judges to oversee the congressional redistricting process, must chart the court's course somewhere between a set of maps submitted by Common Cause, which deliberately ignore where existing legislators live, and a couple of competing plans offered by state legislators, which seek to minimize competition among current office-holders.
Mann sat quietly through the first few presentations, which mostly argued for a "Unity Map" drawn by a coalition of minority groups, but she began to pipe up when Marc Eliaswho represents a group of voters in overpopulated districts, but also has close ties to Democratic congressional committeesbegan to argue that the court should not start from scratch, but instead use the existing congressional map as a guide.
He argued that there were good policy reasons for considering incumbency, and that the court needs an anchor from which to work.
"It's not a very good anchor when you have to carve out two districts," replied Mann, referring to the state's need to eliminate two of its 29 congressional seats after New York registered a relative decrease in population in the last census.
more: https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2012/03/judge-mann-asks-legislatures-lawyers-why-on-earth-redistricting-should-protect-incumbents-000000