Challenging the constitutionality of part of the Voting Rights Act.
It’s about time. Voter segregation by fiat should in itself be unconstitutional.
14 thoughts on “Good News”
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Challenging the constitutionality of part of the Voting Rights Act.
It’s about time. Voter segregation by fiat should in itself be unconstitutional.
Comments are closed.
It’s hard for me to believe that a vile thing like this can be constitutional. That’s the infamous I-95 district of North Carolina. I imagine many states have similar gerrymandered districts that make no sense geographically.
Excuse me, the “I-85 district”. Got the wrong highway.
An even worse example from Wikipedia (which has a number of examples of the gerrymander).
Those districts look like they’re trying to swallow-up their neighbors.
Apt.
I think your hearts are in the right place. In other words, I recognize that you are NOT being racist, and that you want to be anti-racist.
But why should geographic continuity be the way district boundries are drawn?
In my district, there is a distinct feeling among nearly everyone that the East side has little in common with the West side in terms of income, income source (white collar vs blue collar), housing type (large houses vs apartments), urban vs suburan, etc, and each side feels their problems and interests aren’t being addressed by politicians from the other side. The next district over is the mirror image. So, if the boundry lines were redrawn so that my district’s west side was joined with the next district’s east side, and my district’s east side was joined with the other district’s west side (which would look highly gerrymandered), everyone would feel more represented. I don’t know a good solution, and I abhor racism, but I do know that the majority would be happier if the district lines were redrawn. One problematic solution I can think of is to have one house of congress be chosen by party as in the parlimentary system.
Thinking about it more: I think what you are seeing is the lack of tradition and historical identity in drawing district lines as opposed state lines. State lines often don’t make any sense — too often a metro area straddles state lines in a way that is against the interests of residents (look at how the time zone boundary divides Indiana as it sensibly skirts around Chicago) but tradition keeps the boundaries static. Since districts might be redrawn every ten years, no natural identity can emerge. But what if we used a modern-version (to the extent possible) of whatever criteria was used to set state boundaries? We wouldn’t get gerrymandered craziness like the examples Karl highlighted, but what would we get? West Virginia’s boundaries, presumably considered legitimate, might be a good place to start this kind of consideration.
But why should geographic continuity be the way district boundries are drawn?
Good idea Bob-1. We can make districts a bunch of abstract groupings that have nothing to do with geography. For example, I think a few 100% democrat districts mixed with a ton of 51% republican districts would be interesting from your point of view.
1) Every city within a state whose last census was larger than the people-per-representative number receives their minimum number of representatives… and a single straight line to slice off the ‘remainder’ of the people within the city limits – but unrepresented by the cities’ allotment of reps. Perfectly happy enforcing “Pie slicing” as the method of determining where the second, third, etc. representatives come from.
2) Everywhere else (non-large-cities) is done as a pure population distribution map (with the already-counted removed) with the mathematically minimal number of straight lines as demarcation. (One plausibility is is again just carving the appropriate number of wedges out of the state ‘pie’, possibly with a normalization technique first.)
“Gaming the system” is then rallying suburbs to accept annexation, or allowing them to secede. The gains and losses of reps would tend to happen inside cities, the shifting of the geographically larger slices would be slower and perhaps even predictable.
At least the state legislatures would have to waste our money doing something else other than reapportionment.
Considering there are only 435 congressional districts to serve more than 300 million people, the idea of drawing districts to diminish rather than enhance the diversity of their constituents is ludicrous.
Considering there are only 435 congressional districts to serve more than 300 million people, the idea of drawing districts to diminish rather than enhance the diversity of their constituents is ludicrous.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. Each state gets at least 1 representative in the House regardless of population. There are currently 7 states with only a single representative (Montana, Deleware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming). The population of these states (2009 figures) ranges from a low of 544,000 to 975,000. By way of comparison, California has 1 representative for every 697,000 people.
Ideally, the political boundaries for each of a state’s representatives would be based solely on population density with no regard for race or political party. Gerrymandering is a time-dishonored and illegal American tradition dating back 200 years. There are many politicians whose districts are deliberately designed to provide a “safe” seat. This is illegal but the courts almost never do anything about it.
The Voter Rights Act specifically mandates a form of gerrymandering on account of racial preferences. This should be stricken down but I doubt it will. After the Kelo decision, I’ve lost most hope in believing the Supreme Court will protect the rights of individuals or enforce the Constitution.
“West Virginia’s boundaries, presumably considered legitimate, might be a good place to start this kind of consideration.”
Bob, you forget we’re called the UNITED STATES of America. I know many native Texans who would be upset to the point of discharging firearms if they woke up one day and found out they didn’t live in Texas anymore. Your assumption that the Federal government has the power to change state boundries would be based on what part of the Constitution? It divides power between the states and federal governments for a reason.
Bill, I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I wasn’t suggesting that the state boundaries be changed, even though some of them don’t really make any sense. But district boundaries must change, and some criterion must be applied to determine new district boundaries. I suggested (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that we at least consider the criteria that originally determined the state boundaries, since those long-ago decisions are still considered legitimate. Just to make things interesting, I picked W. Virginia because the criteria determining its boundaries were the most politically charged among all the states.
Karl, is your suggestion even possible, given the requirements of the Constitution? In practice, aren’t there too many Democrats?
Karl, is your suggestion even possible, given the requirements of the Constitution? In practice, aren’t there too many Democrats?
Yes, Bob it’s not only possible, but more Dems can be a requirement (you need at least one per 51% repub district.)
BTW, the reason Karl chose 51% is because the closer you get the districts to that is the higher ratio of rep to dem.