At Netroots Nation, I spoke for just about five minutes on why next year's legislative elections will have such a major impact on redistricting. Check out the video below:

To watch the entire panel, click here.

As it is currently written, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires many state and local governments –- those that once systematically suppressed minority votes –- to obtain Justice Department approval before altering election practices.

Today, the Supreme Court chose to avoid making a ruling that would have altered the way that Section 5 is enforced.

For now:

By a vote of 8-1, in a ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the majority choose to sidestep the larger controversial constitutional questions, effectively setting up a future challenge (unless Congress chooses to revisit the law). From the Wall Street Journal:

Instead, the court ruled narrowly in holding that all political subdivisions -- not just those that conduct voter registration -- can seek exemption from Section 5 pre-clearance if they can demonstrate a 10-year history free from racial discrimination. Lower courts had interpreted the exemption provision more strictly, meaning that most of the 12,000 units of local government covered by Section 5 could not seek exemptions.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the larger issue of whether dramatic civil rights gains means the advance approval requirement is no longer necessary "is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today."

We're paying particularly close attention to any decisions the Court makes with regards to the Voting Rights Act because any alterations would leave many state lawmakers scrutinizing the way that local elections are conducted, and that in turn could lead to some big changes.

For some time, we at the DLCC have been following the National Popular Vote movement, an effort to award electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Washington State on Tuesday became the 5th state to to embrace NPV:

Under a bill signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Chris Gregoire, Washington will pledge its 11 Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Washington joins a small but growing compact of states including Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey that allocate their votes that way.

The inter-state compact only becomes active when states accounting for a majority of electoral votes have agreed to it. All five current signatories voted for Barack Obama by wide margins.

The potential results of the compact have long been debated. As a purely mathematical issue, the Electoral College gives smaller states a disproportionate share of the voting power in presidential elections (because each state is guaranteed three electors), encouraging candidates to spend more time appealing to them.

In reality, of the 18 states with 5 or fewer electoral votes, only Montana had a final margin of less than 5% separating Obama and McCain (not counting Nebraska, which splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district and gave one of them to Obama). Most of the 17 other states were never seriously contested by either candidate. At the same time, the three largest states by population (California, Texas, and New York) were never contested either.

A national popular vote would encourage candidates to visit all these states where the outcome is never in doubt. Democrats might hold rallies in New York and Chicago to try and boost turnout, while Republicans might visit Tulsa. But would candidates still visit rural areas that might make a difference in the Electoral College but have little impact on the national vote? Would states without large metropolitan areas be ignored altogether?

It’s an interesting debate with profound consequences for how presidential elections are conducted in the United States, but these questions probably won’t be answered unless the popular vote compact can win enough support to go into effect.

For more information on the movement and the issues surrounding it, I recommend visiting http://nationalpopularvote.com.

To answer why Democrats have been calling for a greater response to the recession, Nate Silver looks at how red and blue states are being impacted by the economic crisis.

He shows that recession might in fact be worse in blue states, but it all depends on how you choose to define a state as Democratic.

Of note for our purposes:

State Legislatures. States in which the lower state house is controlled by Democrats have higher unemployment rates -- 8.0% versus 6.7% for the Republican-led states. The difference is smaller when examining the upper chambers (7.8% versus 7.4%), as high-unemployment states like Michigan and Ohio still have Republican-controlled state senates. Interestingly, the eight states where the upper and lower houses are divided (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Virgina and Montana) are having a particularly difficult go of things, as their unemployment rates average 8.6% percent.

It is no surprise to see that there is a greater tendency to support Democrats in parts of the country where the recession is worse.

Voters in this country have always turned to Democrats when they see the need for action.

The Supreme Court has already taken aim at the Voting Rights Act once this year when it weighed in with the Bartlett decision earlier this month.

Now the Court is set to consider the civil rights law again, and their decision could have similar long-term ramifications for state elections.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires certain state and local governments (those who once systematically suppressed minority votes) to obtain Justice Department approval before altering election practices.

The Court will take up a case in April to judge whether this section of the law is still necessary. Conservatives point to the election of Barack Obama as proof that it is not, while civil rights leaders correctly note that Obama did not win many of the places covered under Section 5.

The likely outcome is hard to predict:

Court observers expect the vote to be close, with four solid conservatives inclined to void Section 5 while four liberals seem certain to uphold it. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes splits from his fellow conservatives but has been skeptical of race-conscious laws, is likely to cast the deciding vote. If the court voids Section 5, it will remove one of the most potent pieces of civil-rights legislation in the government's arsenal.

Any change to the Voting Rights Act will require state lawmakers all over the country to examine closely the way that local elections are conducted, and many are likely to introduce new procedures to protect local minority voters.

Migration trends over the past decade consistently show people moving from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West.

But the recent migration trends are significantly more complicated.

Estimates out last week show that big urban cities are retaining population and the movement toward the Sun Belt has slowed:

Booming Sun Belt cities and exurban counties across the USA are not attracting as many people as they once did while older industrial centers that had lost residents for decades are losing fewer, according to Census population estimates.

Experts believe that high unemployment and the poor housing market are the prime reasons for these changes in long term migration trends.

All of this is interesting to note because projections for gains and losses of congressional seats are based on the trends.

For instance, if growth in Nevada slows dramatically or comes to a halt, the state could lose out on the new congressional district that many now believe it will get -- and last week's estimate from the Census shows that migration to Las Vegas was only a third what it was in 2007.

The Pew Center for Social and Demographic Trends has released an incredible set of graphics which track migration flows in the United States.

The maps and charts are filled with all kinds of interesting data -- and most show one emerging trend: movement of people from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and more recently, West.

For those who are watching projections of new Congressional seats after the 2010 census, the political significance of this trend is already evident.

The South and West will gain seats while the Northeast and Midwest lose them.

That's a challenge for Democrats -- as our strongest regions of support are those losing population.

Luckily, the Democratic state lawmakers and the DLCC are competitive everywhere.

This week, the Supreme Court issued a decision which significantly narrows the protections of the Voting Rights Act.

By a vote of five to four, the Court ruled that the Act does not require state governments to draw districts in a way that favors minority candidates in which minority voters represent less than a majority of the electorate.

The Washington Post reports:

The case before the court, Bartlett v. Strickland, concerned a decision by the North Carolina legislature to enhance minority representation by creating a district that was 39 percent minority. It has consistently elected a black representative. But to create the favorable environment, lawmakers violated a provision of the state constitution that said district boundaries could not cross county lines.

This ruling will have a major impact on the next round of legislative redistricting.

It will almost certainly reduce the number of 'crossover districts' -- where minority voters make up a significant portion of the electorate but not an outright majority. These crossover districts have generally been a boon for Democratic candidates who can build biracial coalitions.

The practical effect of this week's decision will likely result in a reduction of minority lawmakers in Congress and in legislatures across the country.

These new Voting Rights Act guidelines only heighten the importance of the 2010 election cycle.

Democrats have no choice but to win as many legislative races as we can and control the redistricting process in as many places as we can.

With the 2009 legislative ended, the Washington Post offers its first look at the upcoming fall election for the Virginia House of Delegates.

Democrats need to pick up the six seats needed to regain control of the House, which Republicans have held for a decade.

The Post reports that the strategy for both parties is becoming clear:

The Democrats are planning to pour resources into Northern Virginia to target Fairfax Republican Dels. David B. Albo, Thomas Davis Rust and Timothy B. Hugo.

[...]

Republicans, meanwhile, will be out to prove that the GOP brand is not permanently damaged in Northern Virginia. House Republicans are looking to field formidable opponents to Democratic Dels. C. Charles Caputo (Fairfax) and David E. Poisson (Loudoun). Some Republicans are also talking about targeting freshman Del. Margaret G. Vanderhye (Fairfax), a Democrat who represents McLean.

Both parties will also direct considerable resources to Prince William County. Obama won nearly 58 percent of the vote in Prince William last year, but four of the five delegates who represent the county in Richmond are Republicans.

Republicans are vowing to improve their candidate recruitment efforts this year, and the current GOP speaker is planning to launch a national fundraising campaign.

Democrats, led by Delegate Ward Armstrong -- a DLCC Board Member -- plan to pour resources into the take over effort, and Armstrong has said that he plans to raise millions of dollars for the caucus.

If you make a point to read stories about how the economy is impacting states, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the wave of numbers.

That's why I'm a big fan of this map put together by Stateline.org -- the best graphic I've seen of how the recession is hitting all 50 states.

Using public data going back more than a year, you can track unemployment and foreclosures.

It's a great resource.