In a 5-4 ruling handed down this morning, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Arizona's Independent Redistricting Commission and quashed the specter of partisan, mid-decade redistricting in both Arizona and California. The biggest winners today are the incumbents who were at risk of being drawn out of a seat in 2016: Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09) and GOP Reps. Jeff Denham (CA-10), David Valadao (CA-21), and Steve Knight (CA-25). Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended commissions from a strict interpretation of the Elections Clause as follows: "The Framers may not have imagined the modern initiative process in which the people of a State exercise legislative power coextensive with the authority of an institutional legislature. But the invention of the initiative was in full harmony with the Constitution’s conception of the people as the font of governmental power." Had the Court struck down commissions, Republicans would have probably added two seats in Arizona and Democrats could have added several seats in California. But now, the potential for remaps in time for 2016 is limited to Virginia, where
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