The bad news is that we’re not going to see a redraw of CD5 in the Republican’s favor. This is a highly Gerrymandered district and could easily be redrawn into a R district.

The good news is that any attempt to move them even more in the favor of the D’s will be blocked, just like 2000 (Oregon was split then too).

We didn’t even get a split. Basically, in a wave year virtually everywhere else, we got bupkus: Democrats still control every important statewide office and both houses of the state legislature, despite being well known for corruption and being generally held responsible for the mess Illinois is in. Mark Kirk only won for Senate because the guy he was running against ran a failed family bank that doled out millions of dollars in bonuses/dividends to him and his family moments before the bank failed, AND loaned money to known organized crime figures.

If the Democrats had run someone without obvious ties to organized crime, they would have won that seat, too.

Yes, we sent a few more Republicans to Congress by returning traditional GOP-leaning districts to their previous leanings. But overall, Election Night 2010 was rather disappointing for us here in Illinois. No, we’re not California, New York and Massachusetts — yet.

But still, it is quite ugly here.

But, yeah: the Left is stupid let ‘em miss the forest for the trees!!

…On redistricting from their Commission (which the Legislature signs off on), and insists upon the creation of a more GOP-leaning (or at least GOP-friendly) seat out of the two seats ME has.

I’ll be sorely disappointing if the ME Legislature just rolls over on redistricting and let’s this opportunity to improve GOP prospects in ME get away from them…

would have seen some really interesting districts – like one 400 miles long and 4 inches wide, that ran between cicular ends in Austin and El Paso. Oh, and try this, a 30 mile wide, 100 mile long district t that ran from Corpus Christi southwards to *below* the US border- on into Matamoros, Mexico – after all, illegal aliens are citizens too, so why not enfranchise them in the comfort and convenience of their own homes, before they have to make that dangerous river crossing with all those Nazi border patrol standing guard?

The process is still controlled by the FL Legislature (unlike here in CA ).

More importantly, what’s the *enforcement* mechanism for these Amendments?! If the FL Legislature ignores them, what then?! AFAIC, all that would happen is that people would go to court, just like they did before! All they seem to do is give judges a little more guidance as to exactly *what* criteria judges could use to throw out redistricting plans.

(Someone can correct me if I’m wrong on this…)

Anyway, I suspect the net effect of these two Amendments will be negligible – all it will likely do is encourage the FL Legislature to forgo creating monstrosities like FL-22 and FL-08 (which may ultimately lead to a few more ‘swing’ or ‘lean R’ districts over ‘likely/solid R’ districts…).

But, in the end, I suspect the partisan breakdowns of the FL Congressional delegation and FL Legislature will be little changed by Amendments 5 & 6…

nt

…that will be more solidly Republican nationally. I haven’t done any deep-dive analysis but hope to find the time to do so.

Theoretically, the other states’ CD maps might not need redrawing, particularly if they’re states that didn’t have Democratic-controlled legislatures after the last census. Those had (of course) the highest risk for shenanigans.