This October, the Minnesota Supreme Court will hear testimony from civic organizations before issuing the congressional and legislative maps that determine Minnesota’s political boundaries for the next decade.
That they’re conducting these hearings despite the fact that the House Redistricting Committee held 13 hearings at the Capitol and 3 hearings around the state is telling.
Shouldn’t the courts be seperated from public opinion? Shouldn’t their job be to apply the laws and the Constitution to the census data?
It isn’t that we shouldn’t hear testimony from civic organizations. It’s that that’s the committees’ responsibility. The courts hearing from civic organizations means that the courts are adding an additional political step to the process.
Politics should be limited to the political branches of government, aka the legislative and executive branches. Judicial proceedings should be limited to making judicial rulings based on the law and Constitution.
Based on where the population shifts happened the past decade, the maps put together by Rep. Sarah Anderson’s committee are quite defensible maps that Gov. Dayton shouldn’t have vetoed. His veto was purely political, designed to keep his base happy.
Politics should be removed from redistricting. Redistricting committees already rely on redistricting software. After the committee hears from the interested civic organizations, the information should be plugged into the redistricting software.
Whatever system is used, the Minnesota Supreme Court shouldn’t be engaged in anything but the law. It shouldn’t engage in hearings. That’s the legislative branch’s responsibility.
It’s time for the courts to stick with their responsibility. It isn’t their responsibility to get involved in conducting political hearings.
Technorati: Minnesota Supreme Court, Redistricting, Hearings, Committees, Legislature, Congress, Elections
You people are hypocritical idiots! Of course re-districting is political. You just don’t like it when it might not go your way. It’s the same complaint you scream about “activist judges”, except when their allowing the Koch brothers et al to pump millions into elections. You people are fools, and when we end up in a neo-Gilded age, trying to stay above water, you’ll undoubted be whining louder, trying to blame everyone but yourselves.
First, don’t hear what I didn’t say. I didn’t call anyone an activist judge. You heard what you wanted to hear.
Second, I didn’t say politics aren’t part of redistricting. I simply said that politicking should be left to the political branches of gov’t, aka the legislative & executive branches.
Finally, there won’t be time for whining or celebrating. It’ll be about eliminating this administration’s trillion dollar deficits. It’ll be about getting the economy growing without the government’s help. The good news is that we’ll have a Republican president & a Republican Senate majority.
Though the last time we had a Republican President and majority in both houses, we got Medicare part D – the biggest expansion of welfare since the Great Society. If the Republicans in office are big government liberals, it really doesn’t matter. That’s why the TEA party is so important. The TEA party people are the ones we need running the show.
Hopefully it’ll happen in 2012.