Some states take plunge to eliminate gerrymanders

some attribute to the party’s skillful, if deceptive, gaming of the new rules.

In states that have seriously sought to curb partisanship, it is usually voters who have pried control of political boundaries from the grip of unwilling legislators. Arizona’s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission sprang from a 2000 ballot initiative fiercely resisted by the state’s Republican Legislature. California voters passed Proposition 11, creating an independent commission, in 2008, four years after incumbents — mostly Democrats — swept every state legislative and congressional election. Democratic political leaders spent $7 million in a vain effort to defeat the measure.

And in Florida, after voters initiated and then approved constitutional amendments in 2010 mandating nonpartisan political maps, a largely Republican-led coalition filed suit to try to block the measures. The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature drew new congressional boundaries that were immediately challenged in court as illegally partisan. New nonpartisan legislative and congressional maps were drawn in 2015.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that independent commissions like Arizona’s passed constitutional muster, but other states have not followed suit. Both Democratic and Republican legislatures, from Delaware to Wisconsin to Virginia, have scuttled proposals to make map drawing less prone to political manipulation.

In states that have taken the plunge, though, supporters insist that the new regimens have improved the political process.

While Florida’s redistricting path has been tortuous, the amendments were “the right thing to do at this time,” said Goodman, of the Florida League of Women Voters, which campaigned for them.

“The intent was to create independent districts,” she said, “and in the course of that to attract more candidates and a higher level of discourse in the election.”

Florida is a battleground state in national elections, but Republicans rule the regional and local races. That remains true: In 2016, the first election year under redrawn maps, Democrats gained but one of 27 House seats and a mere four of 160 state legislative seats.