Loading
Feature
| Redistricting Commissions: A Better Political Buffer? |
|
 |
| Bruce E. Cain [View as PDF] |
|
121 Yale L.J. 1808 (2012). The new institutionalism in election law aims to lessen the necessity of court intervention in politically sensitive election administration matters such as redistricting by harnessing politics to fix politics. Many hope that independent citizen commissions (ICCs) will improve the politics associated with drawing new district boundaries. As the recent round of redistricting comes to a close, I offer some observations about ICCs as effective court redistricting buffers. My basic points are as follows. Independent citizen commissions are the culmination of a reform effort focused heavily on limiting the conflict of interest implicit in legislative control over redistricting. While they have succeeded to a great degree in that goal, they have not eliminated the inevitable partisan suspicions associated with political line-drawing and the associated risk of commission deadlock. Additional political purity tests and more careful vetting of the citizen commissioners are not the solution. I argue that ICCs in the future should adopt a variation of New Jersey’s informal arbitration system as a means of reducing partisan stakes and encouraging coalition building among stakeholders. |