Federal judges panel finds state redistricting plan an "unconstitutional gerrymander"

Re: Federal judges panel finds state redistricting plan an "unconstitutional gerryman

Casper said:

People have been b*tching about this for Decades, I know I have, the districts are supposed to be census driven not political but both Parties abuse it in an attempt to break up voting strongholds for the other Party and is not what the founders wanted. Redistricting should be done by a nonpartisan group that ensures those lines are based on the numbers, not political agendas.

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Gerrymandering has been going on since 1812 when Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry first designed the jury rigged district. Also the founding fathers and framers were against political parties, they called them factions. They feared that once political parties were established it would end up for the good of the political party over the good of the nation. It would be loyalty to party and not country. Their fears are certainly true today.

Re: Federal judges panel finds state redistricting plan an "unconstitutional gerryman

NIMBY said:

The CD method of allocating EVs in the EC must be done by states, as we currently see with NE and ME. And as we saw with ME-2 going to Trump, ME-1 to Clinton and the two for the Senators to Clinton.

GOPs in PA toyed with this in 2011 but were pressured by DC GOPs not to do it.

Another aspect not addressed in this thread so far are the 30 or so minority Majority CDs.

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Good to see you back. I'll address minority majority CD's which in my opinion is nothing more than federally mandated gerrymandering. But if the state legislature is in Republican hands such as in my home state of Georgia, they make the federally mandated gerrymandering work for them. They place as many blacks into four districts as possible. So that those districts not only contain a majority of blacks, but also as many precincts that are Democratic in their voting habits as possible. Having the black Democratic candidate win with 80% or more of the vote is the norm. Heck, I am in the southern end of one of the majority black or minority districts and the Republicans didn't bother to run anyone against the incumbent democrat. Why waste the time, energy and money.

We have four majority minority districts, we also have only four Democratic Representatives. While those four democrats are winning 70-30 or 80-20 or unopposed, the Republicans in the other ten districts are winning 55-45 or there about. Democratic congressional candidates received an average of around 46% statewide, but have only 4 of 14 house seats to show for it thanks to the federal/SCOTUS mandate for majority minority districts. One would expect more of an 8-6 split instead of 10-4.

There are 31 such districts nationwide which of course guarantees a Democrat win. But stacking as many blacks and other minorities into these districts, I have to wonder how many seats over all it costs the Democrats in the remaining 404 other districts. The Republicans received 50.1% of the total congressional vote for 2016 vs. 47.2% for the Democrats. The results is 240 seats for the GOP, 195 for the Democrats. If one went by proportional representation instead of by districts the Republicans would have 218 seats to the Democrats 205 seats with the remaining 12 seats going to third parties.

Without going real deep into the numbers, I would estimate that having the 31 majority minority districts costs the Democrats at least ten seats by packing minorities into these districts. If I were a Republican, I would want to maintain these majority minority districts forever. They actually help all the other GOP candidates in all the other districts.