Wattson Plaintiffs Release Congressional and Legislative Plans for Submission to Special Redistricting Panel

The Wattson plaintiffs today submitted to the Special Redistricting Panel their proposed plans for new congressional and legislative districts in Minnesota.

“Using the plans adopted by the Special Redistricting Panel in 2012 as a point of departure, we demonstrate how the current Panel can preserve the district geography of the state while making corrections for population changes occurring over the past 10 years,”said Peter S. Wattson, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We also provide the Panel with the analytical tools to examine in depth the impact of plans submitted by all the plaintiffs.”

“We illustrate to the Special Redistricting Panel how plans can be designed to minimize both partisan impact and favoritism relating to current incumbent office holders,” said Michelle Witte, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, a co-plaintiff in the current lawsuit. “We believe that this politically neutral approach best empowers the voters, especially traditionally under-represented communities,  to select the candidates of their choice in state elections for the next 10 years.”

The congressional plan submitted by the Wattson plaintiffs makes only minor territorial changes to the existing districts. The proposed Wattson congressional plan includes an average of 94% of those districts, including 100% of the territory in the current 5th district and 99% of the territory in the 4th district. In the proposed Wattson legislative plan, 78% of the persons of voting age in 2020 would find themselves in the same Senate district and 71% would be in the same House district.

The incumbent-neutral approach used by the Wattson plaintiffs to implement the standard adopted by the Panel that prohibits drawing district boundaries with a political motive results in no pairings of any current member of the Minnesota congressional delegation. At the legislative level, the Wattson plan would pair 10 Senate incumbents and 47 House incumbents. This plan would also result in 5 Senate districts and 24 House districts in which no incumbent member of the legislature currently resides.

Using results for statewide offices in competitive races from the state general elections conducted from 2012 to 2020 to evaluate the partisan impact of the proposed plans for 2022, the Wattson congressional plan has the same partisan effect as the existing 2012 court-ordered plan, with 4 districts favoring Democratic candidates and 4 districts favoring Republican candidates.

For the legislative plan, the Wattson proposal for the Senate has the same partisan impact as the 2012 court-ordered plan, with 38 districts favoring Democratic candidates and 29 districts favoring Republican candidates. The Wattson proposal has an increase in the number of House districts favoring Democratic candidates, from 71 to 75, and a concurrent decrease in the number of House districts favoring Republicans, from 63 to 59. This change is likely due to the relative population growth of the metropolitan area compared to the state as a whole and the increasing advantage for Democratic candidates in the metro area.

The Wattson plaintiffs legislative proposal results in 13% of the Senate districts and 16% of the House districts having a minority population of 30% or more. Both the 4th and 5th congressional districts would have more than 30% minority population under the Wattson proposal.

For the first time in Minnesota redistricting, the Wattson plaintiffs propose that the Panel give great deference to the existing precinct boundaries created by Minnesota cities, townships and counties as the basis for constructing new district boundaries for 2022. This deference would enable the Panel to take advantage of county and municipal election officials’ intimate knowledge of the local geography throughout the state when drawing districts that are convenient for voters.

The Special Redistricting Panel was appointed earlier this year by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea. The Panel is empowered to create new congressional and legislative district boundaries if the Legislature and the Governor have not completed their redistricting duties by the statutory deadline of February 15, 2022. In either case, the new congressional and legislative district boundaries will be used for the 2022 state primary on August 9.

Maps of the proposed congressional and legislative districts and all the supporting data and reports can be viewed on the League of Women Voters website: https://www.lwvmn.org/redistricting-2021