What is the relationship between congressional reapportionment and redistricting?
Both are based on the Census. Congressional reapportionment is the post-census calculation in December of the Census year of how many Congressional seats each state gets. After the formula established by Congress apportions the seats to each state, it then becomes the responsibility of the states to draw the lines for the individual congressional districts. That is redistricting -- the states also have to redistrict the district lines for other elections, ranging from city council lines to state senate districts. Between January and March of the year after the Census, the individual population data at the neighborhood level is released to the states (and the public) so that states (and subdivisions within those states) can draw the new the district lines in time to be used in the next election cycle. While reapportionment only takes place once a decade, a state is free to conduct a second or third, etc., round of redistricting at any time during the decade. Some states have no choice but to conduct a second round when their original attempts are invalidated by a court for violating state or federal requirements governing district lines.
Should the current process for choosing a U.S. Supreme Court justice be changed and, if so, what changes should be made?
In my opinion, the worst thing that has ever happened to the judicial selection process was begun by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who, despite warnings from then Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, did away with the long-standing Senate procedural rule requiring 60 votes to confirm both Supreme Court Justices and Federal lower court judges.Initially Reid put a rule into effect which required only a simple majority for confirming judges to the lower courts; McConnell warned him at the time that the second the GOP was able to win control of the Senate, he would initiate the same rule for Supreme Court Justices. And he did.The Constitution requires that judicial appointments be made by the President with advice and consent of the Senate, but specifies no rules or procedures for how the Senate must act.If I were in charge of changing the process, I would reinstate to 60 vote rule (for lower courts and the Supreme Court), and enact a statute so that it couldn’t be done away with on the Majority Leader’s say-so. This would go a long way towards ensuring nominees would have a modicum of bi-partisan support.While I was at it, I would also enact a statute requiring the Senate to act within a reasonable specified time after a nomination was presented, so as to prevent nominations from falling into a black hole in the manner of Merrick Garland and a number of lower court judicial nominees who were never given a Senate hearing and whose nominations just sort of died (which, by the way, is what led to Reid’s ill-advised decision to do away with the 60 vote rule in the first place). Just for the record, by the way, I’m a life-long Democrat but I was never a Harry Reid fan.