| Sometime next year, the highest court in the land could take all 50 states' legislative maps, shake them up like an Etch A Sketch and say, "try again." Of course, that's only if the U.S. Supreme Court backs up yesterday's ruling by a federal judicial panel ... and Donald Trump's newly minted Supreme Court justice could be a deciding factor. The details, plus more of the president-elect's nominations, are in today's edition of For the Record. | | Judges to Wisconsin: Break out the maps and crayons again | | Back to the drawing board? A federal judicial panel in Wisconsin ruled that the state's legislative district maps were unconstitutional, saying they "intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters ... by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats." In other words -- your districts have herded all the Democrats together; try again. | | Here's the background: Generally, legislatures are in charge of drawing up the borders of their state's legislative districts. When the U.S. Census results are released every 10 years, the state must redraw the boundaries of each legislative district to make sure the populations stay even. But without fail, the party in power tends to divide up the citizenry in ways that will ensure that their party stays in power. They generally do this by giving their party slim but solid advantages (say, 53-47) in most districts, and cramming as many opposition voters (say, 67-33) into the remaining districts. For example, the Wisconsin panel noted that in 2012, Democratic assembly candidates received more total votes statewide than Republican assembly candidates, but the Republicans still wound up with 60 of the assembly's 99 seats. The court didn't have any specific suggestions on how the lines should be drawn, just that they should be drawn ... uh, better. | | What this means for everyone outside of Cheeseland: Wisconsin's attorney general, Brad Schimel, has vowed to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the high court upholds the decision, it could mean that every state's legislative boundaries would need to be redrawn to better represent the state's voters. That could help whichever state party is out of power, but it generally would be bad news for Republicans, who currently control 32 state legislatures. If the high court upholds the decision AND delivers a more broad-based ruling, it could force states to redraw even congressional boundaries, making for more competitive races for the U.S. House of Representatives. That generally would also be bad news for Republicans, who currently have control of the House. | | Note to Clintonites and other Never-Trumpers: If this looks like a glimmer of hope on the horizon, there's that small matter of Donald Trump having the power to nominate a new, presumably Republican-leaning justice to the Supreme Court once he takes office. (And something tells us that Wisconsin's AG, a Republican, will wait until after that justice is seated before he files his appeal.) Oh, and even if yesterday's ruling ultimately is upheld, this wouldn't do a thing to the Electoral College. Sure, there might be a bunch of Democrats crammed into coastal states, but nobody's talking about redrawing state lines ... at least not seriously. | | Flipping the outcome in the Electoral College. Difficulty level: high | | Oh, and speaking of impossible dreams ... a semiorganized effort is underway to get Electoral College electors to buck their states' voting results and change their vote to Hillary Clinton. After all, Clinton is a mere 38 electoral votes away from winning this thing! Unfortunately, the very people they're trying to convince are the exact people they're not going to be able to convince: Republican Party loyalists. | | One particular target, Florida elector Susan Moore, has been volunteering for the party since she was 12, but her email inbox has been flooded with form letters asking her to change her vote. "When it comes down to it, I think these people mean well," she said of the anti-Trump sector. "But they're asking us to do something that's really not going to work out the way they want." | | Backers know it's not likely. "This is a long shot. It's a Hail Mary," P. Bret Chiafalo of Everett, Wash., told Politico. "However, I do see situations where -- when we've already had two or three (Republican) electors state publicly they didn't want to vote for Trump. How many of them have real issues with Donald Trump in private?" | | Trump: 'Cool it with the jail talk, guys. Honestly, where do you get this stuff?' | | Hillary Clinton won't be in the Oval Office in the near future. On the other hand, she's also not going to be in jail. Despite "lock her up!" chants being the unofficial theme song of this summer's Donald Trump rallies, Trump himself says he's not going to push for her prosecution on ... whatever it was he was going to push for her prosecution about. Trump told The New York Times on Thursday that he doesn't "want to hurt the Clintons, I really don't. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways." | | More from the USA TODAY Network | | • | Ben Carson could be tasked with bringing his energy to Housing and Urban Development (USA TODAY OnPolitics) | | • | Trump superfan Mitt Romney is the top choice for secretary of State, says the Wall Street Journal (USA TODAY OnPolitics) | | • | Nikki Haley, former Trump critic, could be UN ambassador. In Trump's defense, the roster of politicians who haven't criticized him is pretty slim (USA TODAY OnPolitics) | | • | Former Tennessee congressman in line for [position TBD] (Memphis Commercial Appeal) | | • | Wearing a red Trump rally cap, Dow Jones Industrial Average rolls past 19,000 (USA TODAY Money) | | • | Will Trump be the one to finally bring peace to the Middle East? Don't be ridiculous! His son-in-law will, obviously (USA TODAY OnPolitics) | | • | Kentucky governor on Trump and Muslim registry: 'Let's just wait and be patient' (Cincinnati Enquirer) | | • | Coming soon to China: corn dogs and butter sculptures. Iowa governor says he'd be open to serving as China ambassador (The Des Moines Register) | |  | | Unifying the country with TweetMashup.com | | The brilliant TweetMashup.com is remixing tweets from any two Twitter accounts to bring horrifying social media hybrids to life. Mash up our outgoing and incoming presidents, and it looks like @realDonaldTrump and @BarackObama are both bent on America's destruction, and they'd like everyone to join in. | |
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