When Gov. Doug Ducey appointed three people to a commission largely unknown to the public, Democratic senators tasked with confirming the appointees decried them as pawns in the governor’s attempt to ensure Arizona bucks its changing demographics and remains in Republican hands for the next decade.

A House panel approved a change in the redistricting process that, if ratified by voters, could have the lines for future legislative and congressional elections drawn only by Republicans.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the Legislature’s lawsuit against the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission on March 2.

Claiming illegal political motives, attorneys for Republicans are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to void the lines drawn by the Independent Redistricting Commission for the state’s 30 legislative districts.

Arizonans tired of the politics surrounding the once-a-decade legislative and congressional redistricting process voted to pull the job from the Legislature in 2000 and give it to an independent commission. But getting politics out of the high-stakes game has proven difficult.

A panel of three federal judges has dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit brought against Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission. The suit challenged the underlying legal premise of the commission itself.

For the first time since Republican redistricting commissioners accused their chairwoman, Colleen Mathis, of destroying mapping firm procurement documents and attempting to privately corral commissioner’s votes, Mathis offered her explanation for what happened in yesterday’s (March 28) IRC trial.

Federal judges hearing a civil suit brought by Republican voters who claim the state's new legislative maps were illegally drawn to benefit Democrats questioned lawyers Friday about whether some members of the commission that made the maps were free of political influence.

The future of Arizona’s legislative map is in the hands of three federal judges, who wrapped up four days of trial testimony March 28 and heard pointblank denials from Democrats that they gerrymandered the districts.

With less than two weeks before the start of the trial over whether a Democratic conspiracy rigged Arizona’s legislative map, attorneys representing each side are engaged in an 11th-hour fight over what testimony will be included and what evidence each side will get to introduce.