https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/06/03/this-computer-programmer-solved-gerrymandering-in-his-spare-time/?utm_term=.7c52ee46fed4
And, for reference, here's what it does to NC:
Posted on 05/22/2017 10:11:56 AM PDT by NohSpinZone
Those things are a mockery of what the founders envisioned.
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Clarence getting senile??
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There is that, usually as a compromise, but often resulting in a racial factor. I think, from direct experience, that some gerrymandering is determined by partisan voting statistics; making some districts GOP and some DEM.
Maybe... But with Kagan-Breyer-Ginsburg-Sotomayor voting FOR it, I don’t think they meant to help the GOP.
Here’s my understanding...
By placing all the minorities in one district it overstacks the population in that district so that it waters down the minority vote elsewhere.
So what the democrats want is a district with just enough minorities to win that district and just enough in other districts to win those too. They want the best of both worlds. Racial gerrymandering when it gives them seats, but not too racial to prevent them from being competitive in other areas. They are working to rig the system for themselves (obviously) but they keep getting trapped by their own stupid rules.
Now the GOP can redraw lines so that minorities make the same proportion of the population around them...that means less minorities winning seats.
Unintended consequences here. Personally I think anything that is illegal to discriminate against shouldn’t be allowed to be considered in gerrymandering. Race, Religion, Color, etc...
I think that, with today’s computer technology, we could draw congressional districts which are both geographically compact, and equal in population.
Such a process would ignore the racial/ethnic/political leaning characteristics of the population.
Haven’t we had enough decades of affirmative action, in everything from college admissions to employment to politics????
The first appearance in law of the term ‘affirmative action’ was in the National Labor Relations Act, better known as the Wagner Act, of 1935.
Those advocates (NOT ME!) of affirmative action say that since there was 246 years of uncompensated labor (1619-1865) for blacks in America, there should at least be 100 years of compensatory damages in the form of affirmative action programs.
Usually the gerrymandering id done to sure a black wins and no one complains. Anyone who points out the fact is an automatic raciest. Isn’t this case the same?? And if so, who is complaining? a raciest?
What this means is the racially gerrymandered districts dissapear and toads like Maxine Waters will have to convince a non-black electorate that she isn’t batshit crazy and as dumb as a box of rocks.
Yes, but she is in LA and batshit crazy and box-of-rocks dumb are criteria for all elected officials in that cesspool of a city.
With North Carolina primary runoffs, good luck Blacks winning a Democrat runoff if more white Democrats are in the district.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/primary-runoffs.aspx
Ten states require a candidate to win with a majority of the votes. To make that happen, primary runoff elections are used: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Vermont.
Why is this in Chat and not News?
Opinion at:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1262_db8e.pdf
We need Blacks to be packed to keep other districts from electing White democrats.
Would you rather have 1 black dem and 3 Republicans, or 3 White Dems and 1 Republican?
Dude, Clarence Thomas, WTF!!
Justice Thomas’s concurrence says that the District Court’s opinion that race was a predominant factor in drawing the districts was not unreasonable. This should not surprise us, because Thomas has consistently stated that the VRA does not mandate that states draw majority-minority districts, which is how liberal judges (including Breyer and Ginsburg) interpreted it, and is what forced states like NC to make the NC-01 and NC-12 over 50% black. Obama’s DOJ (which had to preclear maps under the VRA as in the books in 2011) also had indicated that it expected NC to have two black-majority CDs, and Holder precleared the map with the two CDs struck down today. While I would have dissented because the NC legislature didn’t use race as a factor any more than it was forced to do so by prior SCOTUS decisions and the DOJ, Thomas won’t countenance incorrect precedents and thus won’t let the legislature use them as an excuse to use race as an important factor for drawing district lines.
After the District Court struck down the NC congressional map in 2016 and ordered that the map be redrawn for that year’s elections, the GOP legislature redrew the maps, making the NC-01 and NC-12 more compact (and now around 46% and 38% black, respectively), and the GOP still won 10 out of 13 seats. The Democrats are suing over those maps as well, on the novel theory that the legislature, which didn’t use race as a predominant factor, also is prohibited from using *politics* as a predominant factor. While Kagan’s opinion blurs the line between race and politics (and did a 180 on the SCOTUS precedent upholding NC districts that were very similar to the ones struck down today, with the precedent that said that the kegislature could use race as a predominant factor if there was a political aim being turned on its head to say that the legislature couldn’t use politics as a predominant factor when it caused minorities to be grouped together), Thomas does not agree with such foolishness, nor do Roberts, Alito or Kennedy, and I doubt that a judicial-restraint jurist such as Gorsuch would claim the right to tell a state legislature (a political branch) not to take politics into account when performing legislative duties. So we’ll be OK.
This case is about the previous lines that we already didn’t use for 2016? Doh, I didn’t realize that.
Still don’t like it.
And the court refused to hear an appeal to the voter id law being struck down, yes?
Correct on both counts. The latter decision was on an interlocutiry appeal, though, so wasn’t a decision on the merits; SCOTUS merely let the injunction stand while the appeals are heard.
My fault on this. You’re right, it should have been posted under News/Activism.
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