Brookings Institution Forum - Polarizing the House: Does Gerrymandering Matter?

Wondering whether C-SPAN will cover this.

Just found this press release:


A Brookings Institution Forum: Polarizing the House of Representatives: How Much Does Gerrymandering Matter?

10/24/2006 10:43:00 AM
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To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor

Contact: The Brookings Office of Communications, 202-797-6105, or Web: http://onlinepressroom.net/brookings/

News Advisory:

Monday, Oct. 30 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

The Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, D.C.

As this year's mid-term elections approach, they present new questions about gerrymandering -- particularly how Election Day results will be affected by congressional redistricting designed to provide an electoral edge to certain political parties and incumbents, or to disadvantage racial groups as the Supreme Court recently ruled Texas had done.

On Oct. 30, Brookings will explore these issues in the second series of panel discussions on America's polarized politics inspired by the forthcoming book "Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America's Polarized Politics" (Brookings, 2006).

Brookings Senior Fellow Thomas Mann, who has written a chapter on gerrymandering, will be joined in the discussion by Sam Hirsch, a Jenner & Block attorney who has represented the Democratic Party's national redistricting project; Mark Braden, a Baker & Hostetler partner and former chief counsel of the Republican National Committee, and Thomas Edsall of the New Republic, who has written on the historic impact of gerrymandering and polarization. Stuart Taylor, Brookings nonresident senior fellow, will moderate this discussion, also a part of the ongoing Brookings series of public discussions on jurisprudence and the role of the courts. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

Moderator: Stuart Taylor, Jr., nonresident senior fellow, the Brookings Institution; columnist, National Journal; contributor, Newsweek

Panelists:

Thomas Mann, senior fellow, Brookings

Sam Hirsch, partner, Jenner & Block LLP

E. Mark Baden, counsel, Baker & Hostetler

Thomas Edsall, special correspondent, the New Republic

RSVP: Please call the Brookings Office of Communications, 202- 797-6105, or visit http://onlinepressroom.net/brookings/

http://www.usnewswire.com/

-0-

/© 2006 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

If a state has, for instance, 20 seats in Congress, I'd like to see the state award seats according to proportional representation. It would break the two-party near monopoly of power, and it would allow more choices at the ballot box for people. It would encourage more cooperation and less competition, in my view. Instead of having two "microphones" to fight over, there would be enough for all parties involved.

Edit: Gerrymandering does matter. Just look at its ugly history with respect to suppressing and diluting the Black vote and disempowering the poor in favor of more affluent voters with money to donate to campaigns. It matters...painfully so.

what gives? thanks for heads up - should be interesting..

Looks like he's one of the big fish.


http://www.jenner.com/people/bio.asp?id=163

SAM HIRSCH, Partner
Publications

Washington, DC Office
Office: (202) 637-6397
Fax: (202) 639-6066
Email: shirsch@jenner.com
 
Sam Hirsch is a partner in Jenner & Block’s Washington, DC office.  He is a member of the Firm’s Litigation Department and Appellate and Supreme Court Practice.

Mr. Hirsch’s practice focuses primarily on election law, redistricting, and voting rights.  He has represented IMPAC 2000, the Democratic Party’s national redistricting project, as well as the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic congressional delegations from several of the Nation’s largest states.  In the post-2000 redistricting cycle, he has been actively involved in congressional, state-legislative, and local redistricting efforts in more than a dozen states.

Mr. Hirsch serves as the liaison to the National Conference of State Legislatures for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section and as a member of the ABA’s Election Law Committee.  He is the coauthor of the ABA’s monograph on redistricting law, “The Realists’ Guide to Redistricting: Avoiding the Legal Pitfalls,” American Bar Association (2000).  He is the Associate Editor of the Election Law Journal and authored the lead article in the Journal’s inaugural issue, “Unpacking Page v. Bartels:  A Fresh Redistricting Paradigm Emerges in New Jersey,” 1 Election Law Journal 7-24 (2002).  More recently, he authored “The United States House of Unrepresentatives: What Went Wrong in the Latest Round of Congressional Redistricting,” 2 Election Law Journal 179-216 (2003), and co-authored (with University of Virginia law professor Dan Ortiz) Beyond Party Lines: Principles for Redistricting Reform (Reform Institute 2005).  Mr. Hirsch has presented lectures on redistricting and election law at the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Washington & Lee University.  He also has testified before the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act.

Prior to joining Jenner & Block in 1995, Mr. Hirsch worked on Capitol Hill and as a campaign manager, press secretary, and media consultant for Democratic candidates for public office.

In 2004 and 2005, Mr. Hirsch was on the West Palm Beach trial team that won a $1.5 billion jury verdict in Coleman (Parent) Holdings Inc. v. Morgan Stanley & Co., Incorporated — one of the largest jury verdicts ever awarded to a single plaintiff in American history.

Mr. Hirsch graduated from Rice University in 1984 and received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1993, where he served as Treasurer on the Harvard Law Review.  From 1993 to 1994, Mr. Hirsch clerked  for Judge Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  Mr. Hirsch is a member of the D.C. and Maryland bars.

Available Publications:

* "The Realists' Guide to Redistricting - Avoiding the Legal Pitfalls," American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, May 2006
Please click here to view the excerpt of the guide.
* Beyond Party Lines: Principles for Redistricting Reform (co-authored with Professor Daniel Ortiz of the University of Virginia School of Law), The Reform Institute, 2005
* "The United States House of Unrepresentatives: What Went Wrong in the Latest Round of Congressional Redistricting," Election Law Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2003
Please click here to view the article.
* "Unpacking Page v. Bartels: A Fresh Redistricting Paradigm Emerges in New Jersey," Election Law Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2002
Please click here to view the article.

an error on Brookings part??

Gerrymandering has been practiced with vigor by both parties, but under Delay the practice has been raised to a new science. Simply put, the perverted structuring of legislative districts obstructs and obliterates the principle of one person, one vote and leads to cynicism and lack of enthusiasm in the electorate. For the majority of Americans, they have no meaningful vote in determining who will represent them in the US House and many state legislatures.

It is essential that all legislatures, the US House first, be fully redistricted under a set of guidelines that restrict the effects of partisanship. At the very least, legislative districts should be geographically contiguous and have defensible natural and political boundaries.

The pols aren't going to put their seats at risk out sense of duty. Public debate leading to the pressure of public opinion will be needed.

You're gonna be an asset here.