Craft a Solution to Partisan Gerrymandering The key to combating partisan gerrymandering is reforming the process of redistricting. The Center's project will focus on three questions basic to reform: (1) who should draw the lines for legislative districts? (2) what criteria should guide how they are drawn? and (3) if state legislatures are to be relieved of redistricting authority, how might that be accomplished? In terms of drawing district boundaries, reformers in recent years have favored assigning this responsibility to independent commissions. The Center will investigate how effective these commissions have been, in comparison with state legislatures and state courts, in reforming districting and reinvigorating representative government. It will also assess alternative designs for those commissions, because currently commissions differ markedly in their selection and membership. In Arizona, for example, the initiative in 2000 that established the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission designates the same panel that reviews the qualifications of potential judicial nominees to review the qualification of potential appointees to redistricting commission. From the pool of candidates that survives this scrutiny, legislative leaders in the state's House and Senate choose two Republicans and two Democrats, and those four in turn choose a registered Independent to chair the commission. In Maine, in contrast, legislative leaders select commission members from sitting legislators without a preliminary vetting and also select the two public members, who in turn appoint a third public member. Therefore it is necessary to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the selection systems that have been instituted, as well as to identify alternatives to current selection systems. The Center will also address the criteria to be used in redistricting. Federal law-"one person, one vote" and the Voting Rights Act-necessarily provides a baseline for redistricting efforts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) that it will play little role in addressing partisan gerrymandering, so the primary law affecting legislative districting will be state law. The factors to be considered in redistricting under state law may include: ensuring competitiveness within districts, providing opportunities for minority representation, securing partisan fairness, giving representation to communities of interest, respecting geographical and political boundaries, and ensuring compactness and contiguity in the design of districts. The Center will consider to what extent these goals are compatible, and insofar as they are not, offer guidance as to how to prioritize or balance these goals. Finally, because legislators are likely to resist relinquishing the power to draw district lines, the Center will examine how one might go about instituting reform. In some instances, this will require the amendment of state constitutions. Even if a commission plan or other mechanism cannot be instituted, there may be ways to control self-dealing by the state legislature in districting. Three earlier Center publications-State Constitutions for the Twenty-first Century: The Politics of State Constitutional Reform (2005); "Getting from Here to There: Twenty-first Century Mechanisms and Opportunities in State Constitutional Reform," Rutgers Law Journal (2005); and Constitutional Politics in the States (1996)--have explored in general terms alternative paths to constitutional reform. This project will bring this expertise to bear on the task of redistricting reform.