Group makes 2nd bid to have voters alter Nevada redistricting process
CARSON CITY — Fair Maps Nevada, a reform group pressing to change how the state conducts its once-a-decade rewrite of state and federal legislative districts, will try again to put the matter before voters next year after its 2020 effort fell far short.
The group filed paperwork last week for a new ballot initiative in 2022 to amend the state Constitution and set up an independent commission to handle redistricting, taking the duty away from the Legislature. State lawmakers, meeting in a five-day special session in November, approved new district maps that critics said favored Democrats who control the Legislature and hold the governor’s office.
The new initiative is nearly identical to its predecessor, with language fine-tuned in response to legal challenges brought against the 2020 version. The COVID-19 pandemic ultimately waylaid that effort, with organizers able to gather only 12,000 of the roughly 100,000 signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot in spite of receiving a court-approved two-month extension.
At the time, Fair Maps leader Sondra Cosgrove, a history professor at the College of Southern Nevada, vowed that the group would resurrect the effort in 2021. According to its filing with the Secretary of State’s office, the group seeks to “amend the Nevada Constitution to end the partisan practice of gerrymandering by establishing a bipartisan independent Redistricting Commission to oversee the mapping of fair and competitive electoral districts.”
As it currently stands, the redistricting process is conducted mostly out of public view. New maps this year became public only days before the special session convened and no explanation was ever provided regarding how they were produced. The Legislature is exempted from state open meetings law.
Cosgrove said Monday the Fair Maps coalition opposes that exemption, adding that the current procedure “produced bad outcomes in the just concluded special session, so we have refiled our independent redistricting commission initiative to stop this from happening again.”
Under the Fair Maps plan, the proposed commission would have seven members, four appointed by legislative leaders of both parties in the Assembly and Senate who then would appoint three other nonpartisan members. The unaffiliated members could not be lobbyists, partisan candidates or close relatives of either.
For the initiative to win a place on the ballot in 2022, petitioners would have to gather nearly 141,000 signatures statewide, slightly more than 35,000 in each of the state’s four congressional districts.
Redistricing occurs every 10 years based on the decennial national census. Fifteen states use independent commissions to redraw state legislative districts and 10 use them to draw congressional districts, with others using them in advisory or backup capacity, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
A court-appointed panel redrew Nevada’s districts in 2011 after then-Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed the Legislature’s redistricting plans and declined to call lawmakers back into special session to try again.
Contact Capital Bureau reporter Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.