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26 how it has actually functioned. The facts described in a recent opinion by a three-judge District Court detail the partisanship that has affected the Commission on issues ranging from staffing decisions to drawing the district lines. See Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n, 993 F. Supp. 2d 1042 (Ariz. 2014). The per curiam opinion explained that “partisanship played some role in the design of the map,” that “some of the commissioners were motivated in part in some of the line-drawing decisions by a desire to improve Democratic prospects in the affected districts,” and that the Commission retained a mapping consultant that “had worked for Democratic, independent, and nonpartisan campaigns, but no Republican campaigns.” Id., at 1046, 1047, 1053. The hiring of the mapping consultant provoked sufficient controversy that the Governor of Arizona, supported by two-thirds of the Arizona Senate, attempted to remove the chairwoman of the Commission for “substantial neglect of duty and gross misconduct in office.” Id., at 1057; see Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n v. Brewer, 229 Ariz. 347, 275 P. 3d 1267 (2012) (explaining the removal and concluding that the Governor exceeded her authority under the Arizona Constitution).

Judge Silver’s separate opinion noted that “the very structure of Arizona’s reformed redistricting process reflects that partisanship still plays a prominent role.” 993 F. Supp. 2d, at 1083. Judge Wake’s separate opinion described the Commission’s “systematic overpopulation of Republican plurality districts and underpopulation of Democratic plurality districts” as “old-fashioned partisan malapportionment.” Id., at 1091, 1108. In his words, the “Commission has been coin-clipping the currency of our democracy—everyone’s equal vote—and giving all the shavings to one party, for no valid reason.” Id., at 1092.

The District Court concluded by a two-to-one margin that this partisanship did not rise to the level of a