MN lege: Redistricting, so far

Back in 2017, Minnesota Republicans were seriously hot to trot for the 2020 elections to get here, because they figured they’d seal the legislature/governor trifecta then, and could install the sort of extreme right-wing gerrymander here that has plagued the nation since 2010. 2018 brought a reality check. (In fact, I’ve noticed that the “Minnesota turning red!” crowd in general has been rather mum, of late. I suppose that, considering among other things that as of the next state executive office elections in 2022 the GOP will not have won a single one of those seats in 16 years, one sees the reason for embarrassed silence.)

Now, Republicans are on board with efforts to block gerrymanders. Left.mn has a summary, here. From what I’ve seen, it’s the last discussed therein, HF1605/SF2575 that has the best chance of getting somewhere.

This is the bill we heard about at Drinking Liberally Minneapolis last Thursday and is my personal favorite of all the bills listed in this post. It sticks with the five retired judges model, four picked by the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate and House, and those four judges then pick the fifth judge. But this bill doesn’t stop there. It also provides for the appointment of twelve citizen members, making the redistricting commission 17 members in size, with slightly less than 30% of those members being retired judges.

It’s mostly, but not entirely, Republicans who have been doing the gerrymandering, nationally. That’s wholly unsurprising, because the bottom line is that it is a desperately cowardly practice.