- Joined
- Aug 27, 2005
- Messages
- 43,602
- Reaction score
- 26,256
- Location
- Houston, TX
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
The suits come on the heels of the U.S. Justice Department's approval of the plans that redraw legislative and congressional voting districts for the next decade.
as if the good ole boy republicans would consider doing that [/s]Despite the Justice Department's action, state NAACP President William Barber said GOP mapmakers and their consultants "cut out the heart of black political power."
Texas attempted to get a summary judgment against the US Attorney's office, and have it's redistricting plan implemented immediately. They got a rude awakening instead, when the court ruled that the plan's purpose was to dilute the voting strength of minorities. The Texas redistricting map has been thrown out, and the new map will be drawn by the court system.
Here is the actual decision from the court.
Texas attempted to get a summary judgment against the US Attorney's office, and have it's redistricting plan implemented immediately. They got a rude awakening instead, when the court ruled that the plan's purpose was to dilute the voting strength of minorities.
So it's only ok when Northern states gerrymander their districts to concentrate minority voters?
The law actually REQUIRES you to gerrymander districts to concentrate minority voters. Sometimes that helps the Democrats, sometimes the Republicans. For example, maybe by not concentrating minorities you could have two 40% black districts that would both vote for a Democrat, but if you concentrate the black voters into one district, the other one would go Republican, so the Democrats would actually lose out because of the voting rights act in that scenario.
It's a pretty messy set of rules, but there isn't necessarily a better way to do it either. If you don't have a law forbidding breaking up minorities into politically ineffective groups, the south has proven literally thousands of times that they will still do it today.
A strictly computer generated, voting district map would end all this nonsense.
That's not true.
Gerrymandering isn't about abusing minorities, it's about concentrating power for a political group.
News to the world, the South doesn't hate black people.
Yeah... Maybe... That's one of those ideas I like in principle, but when you dig into the details it's trickier... Like some ways you can design a computer program dramatically tend to favor Republicans, other ways tend to dramatically favor Democrats. For example, Democrats tend to be more concentrated in cities. Some approaches computer programs use end up being way more favorable for the party that is more concentrated, some for the party that is less. Or maybe in key swing states Democrats tend to be more concentrated if you split the state up on east to west bands and Republicans if you split it up on north to south bands or whatever. A neutral sounding logic for how to split them up still has dramatic effects on election results, and the parties are very keenly aware of what those are, so picking a program is basically just gerrymandering all over again, but this time with a more complicated set of tools.
I kind of think that ultimately we'll go the way of a computer program, but so far, it doesn't seem like anybody has really nailed what a fair computer program would be.
Well, it's a tricky issue, right? Trying to squeeze out Democrats so their votes don't really count in the south means trying to prevent the votes of black people from counting. Is the motivation hate for black people? No. Or at least mostly no. But still, we don't allow states to try to prevent minorities votes from being counted.
When you look at the actual cases and maps, the things the south has the gumption to continually keep trying to this day are pretty shocking. For example, there is a case in the courts now about two cities in Georgia that just incorporated. They both have centers that are mostly black and white suburbs. So guess how they drew the city limits? Donuts around the black area with the black middle cut out. Meaning that very few of the black people would be able to vote for the mayor or city council for the city they live in... Now, are they thinking "man, I hate black people"? I dunno. Probably some are. Probably more are on some kind of halfway point where they are thinking they only want "responsible, upstanding, established, long term residents voting" or whatever, and that turns out to mostly correlate to "white people" in their heads. Maybe they are thinking they want the town to be more prosperous, so they want to include only better off areas. Trying to untangle that mess of motives to figure out what to do is nearly impossible. So we have to just look at the actual effects. And, especially given the history in the south, we just can't overlook changes that have the effect of screwing the black people out of voting.
The courts and the legislature tried much, much, less intrusive standards for decades. More than 90 years actually, they just had vague standards saying that you couldn't intentionally discriminate against minorities in voting. Courts applied loose standards looking only for the most blatant stuff. But it didn't work. The south used literacy tests, at large districts, gerrymandering, poll taxes, "moral character tests", gerrymandering, etc, to effectively completely block all attempts for black people to participate in our democracy. For 90 years the courts and congress tried a wide variety of different ways to try to make sure that blacks had a meaningful ability to vote, but nothing worked. The southern states just kept coming up with new schemes, creating new discriminatory procedures right before the election so courts couldn't overturn them in time, etc. Eventually they just had to drop the hammer and force the south to cut it out. The voting rights act is what it took.
Now, you can eventually get removed from the list of jurisdictions that is under the strict scrutiny of section 5 of the VRA. That's what this case is about- this jurisdiction in Texas is still held to the tough section 5 standard because of past discrimination. In order to get off the list, they need to go 10 years in a row without a court finding that they were discriminating with relation to voting. Hopefully they'll strive for that goal and get themselves off the list. But until then, IMO, we need to keep watching them pretty close.
The rules should be applied to all states, not just southern states.
Who wants to pay for policing the ****ty part of town, that's just being blunt.
I'm more than sure that race has very little to do with it.
The rules should be applied to all states, not just southern states.
Agree...let the people dictate their representatives not lines on a map.
I also agree with you on the minority districts. Honestly, if a district has 40% latino's or blacks and the district is up for grabs (not a safe seat do to gerrymandering) then you better believe whoever runs will pander to either the blacks or latino's because they can't win without them.
The only reason we need laws protecting minorities currently is they are sticking latino's in "safe" districts where the politicians just ignore them because they don't need their votes.
The states all do this. The power in charge during the census always redraws lines that try to unfairly give that party an advantage. Democrats are just as guilty of gerrymandering.
Yeah... Maybe... That's one of those ideas I like in principle, but when you dig into the details it's trickier... Like some ways you can design a computer program dramatically tend to favor Republicans, other ways tend to dramatically favor Democrats. For example, Democrats tend to be more concentrated in cities. Some approaches computer programs use end up being way more favorable for the party that is more concentrated, some for the party that is less. Or maybe in key swing states Democrats tend to be more concentrated if you split the state up on east to west bands and Republicans if you split it up on north to south bands or whatever. A neutral sounding logic for how to split them up still has dramatic effects on election results, and the parties are very keenly aware of what those are, so picking a program is basically just gerrymandering all over again, but this time with a more complicated set of tools.
Yeah, absolutely. The case isn't about gerrymandering in general though. You can legally gerrymander. It's when you try to gerrymander minority groups out of having an effective vote that you run afoul of the voting rights act.
I would be okay with a rules-based districting system. I would allow anyone to propose a district map. Rate the proposal on 1) total linear length of the district lines. Favor shorter district lines, which indicates that the district in enclosed with the most efficient border. Also, favor district lines that correspond to existing political divisions within the state, such as county and township lines. Allow anyone to propose a districting map and select the one in which 1) the districts are even in population, 2) the district lines follow as much as possible the existing political boundaries, and 3) has the highest district area to perimeter ratio. What ever proposal best matches the rules, gets accepted.
That's a really good set of rules. Justice Stevens pushed for something similar at one point. But it has some weird effects. It forces the map makers to basically try to include a bit of city in each district because otherwise they end up with these sprawling rural districts. So, in some places that is a huge win for the Democrats, in others it is a huge win for the Republicans.
That's a really good set of rules. Justice Stevens pushed for something similar at one point. But it has some weird effects. It forces the map makers to basically try to include a bit of city in each district because otherwise they end up with these sprawling rural districts. So, in some places that is a huge win for the Democrats, in others it is a huge win for the Republicans.
Minorities tend to vote Democrat. Is it ok to violate the rights of white rural areas that go Republican?
what is the down side of having sprawling voting districts?
Thanks.
Another option would be to entirely dump the idea of districts and have "at large" elections for congressmen. This would allow minorities to pool their votes, no matter where they live within a state.
Nothing necessarily. I'm saying that you would not get sprawling districts under the standard Centinel proposed, you would get what they call "spoke districts" where each district was part in the city and then going out like spokes in a wheel. Which isn't necessarily good or bad either, but you can see why some parties in some states would love that and some would hate it.
what i don't understand is if there is nothing inherently wrong with having sprawling rural districts then why do we avoid creating them
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?