Alabama Republicans on Monday defended their decision not to create a second majority-Black district in a hearing before a panel of federal judges over the state’s redrawn congressional maps.
State Republicans continue to resist court orders, including from the supreme court in June, to amend the congressional maps to give Black voters increased political power and representation.
Lawyers for voters called Alabama’s plan, which maintains one majority-Black district, discriminatory. Abha Khanna, an attorney representing one group of plaintiffs in the case, said Alabama chose “defiance over compliance”.
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In response to the ruling, Alabama Republicans boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white second congressional district, now represented by Republican representative Barry Moore, from about 30% to 39.9%, failing to give Black voters a majority which would allow them to elect their candidate of choice.
A lawyer for the state accused plaintiffs of seeking a “racial gerrymander” over traditional guidelines for drawing districts, such as keeping districts compact and keeping communities of interest together.
Congressional boundaries need to be drawn by a neutral party, not the political party which happens to be in power.
Maybe that’s a potential use for generative AI?
“Draw up a congressional boundary map for Alabama being sure to allocate each of the seven districts with an equal population and with two of the seven being a majority of African Americans.”
Shortest straight line method is perfectly fair, non-partisan, and super easy to implement with basic GIS tools and a free map from the census bureau. It wouls take literally minutes to determine every congressional district in the country, and every 10 years you could spend 30 seconds importing the new numbers to get new maps.
Yes, sometimes the lines separate neighbors. So what?
I don’t care if my neighbor is in a different congressional district.
I mean, the line has to fall somewhere and there are neighbors in different towns and cities and even states in some places, what’s the big deal about a district?
https://theconversation.com/can-math-solve-the-congressional-districting-problem-44963
Just get rid of districts! They don’t need to fucking exist!
Whatever we do, and we need to do SOMETHING, it should probably be defined by a Constitutional amendment.
Right now, you’re right, congressional districts have no constitutional mandate other than “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers”
It’s already been updated once thanks to that ugly 3/5ths language:
“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
And again since that update only specifically mentioned male voters. :(
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/19th-amendment
But at no point did we define HOW the congressmembers are to be selected.
Nor that there should be winner take all districts. I think reps should be based on population and then reps allotted based on the percentage of votes the party received. Each party can have their own district maps.
There are already algorithms for gerrymandering based on whatever you require the final product to be.