Federal Court strikes down VA districts

[frigidmagi]

thinkprogress

One of the most aggressive gerrymanders in the country is unconstitutional, according to a divided three-judge panel in Virginia. In 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney by three points in the state of Virginia. Nevertheless, Republicans control eight of the state’s eleven congressional districts. Yet, according to an opinion by Judge Allyson Duncan, a George W. Bush appointee, the maps that produced this result are unconstitutional and the legislature must “act within the next legislative session to draw a new congressional district plan.”

Although this will permit the 2014 elections to be run under the old maps, new maps must be in place by 2016 (assuming, of course, that this decision is not reversed on appeal). As Virginia currently has a Democratic governor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe will be able to veto any plan which is unfair to his fellow Democrats, while the GOP-controlled legislature will no doubt push for a map that serves Republican interests. Because the current maps favor Republicans so strongly, however, the likely result will be maps that are much more favorable to Democrats.

The flaw in the current maps arises from the state’s Third Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA). In a professed effort to comply with the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that new congressional maps do not cause a ‘‘retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise,” (a requirement that has since been neutered by the Supreme Court,) the new maps packed an additional 44,711 African American voters into Rep. Scott’s district — thus preventing these black voters from influencing elections in other districts. This decision, according to the court, was not allowed.

The Voting Rights Act, Judge Duncan explained, “does not ‘give covered jurisdictions carte blanche to engage in racial gerrymandering in the name of nonretrogression.’” Scott’s new district has “an odd shape” made up of “a composition of a disparate chain of communities, predominantly African-American, loosely connected by the James River.” Moreover, while the new black voters increased the black voter population within the district from 53.1 percent to 56.3 percent, such packing was completely unnecessary to maintain black voter strength in Virginia. “In 2010,” Duncan explained, “Congressman Scott won 70% of the vote, while in 2012–under the redistricting plan at issue here–he won by an even larger margin, receiving 81.3% of the vote.”

The district, in other words, looked a whole lot like a racial gerrymander. As a practical matter, the map drawers were also quite successful in diminishing the power of Democratic voters because, in a district where the Democrat wins with 81.3 percent of the vote, 31.3 percent of the vote is essentially wasted since it was unnecessary to push the winning candidate over the top.

Should the new maps produce a congressional delegation that more closely resembles the state’s partisan preferences, it is likely that Democrats will gain 2-3 seats in the House.

[White Haven]

Huh.. Interesting. Personally interesting, for that matter, as I'm presently a constituent of Representative Scott. I wonder if that will continue to be the case...

[LadyTevar]

YAY! I hope all Gerrymandering goes the way of the dodo.

[Lys]

This is the only solution I'm aware of that would accomplish the complete elimination of gerrymandering in any objective fashion:

[youtube][/youtube]

[General Havoc]

You'll never get rid of Gerrymandering totally. But you can cut it back a ways.

[Lys]

I'm not sure how using geometry as the basis on which to draw congressional districts leaves any room whatsoever for gerrymandering. The base rules are utterly impartial and the implementation is easily verifiable. At best you get quibbling over city blocks that happen to have the line drawn right through them, which is frankly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

[General Havoc]

Because you will never get people yo accept a system based on math they dont understand from a "neutral" computer program they can't comprehend which tells them they must vote with a demographic group they aren't a part of. Not while both parties so enthusiasticly engage in gerrymandering wherever possible and have no incentive not to. Both parties will actively lobby against it with the message that Calculon 9000 and the shadowy computer geek that runs it is going to take away your vote and give it to Jews, liberals, blacks, rednecks, Mormons, or whatever other group you are calculated to despise.

Trimming the worst excesses of Gerrymandering and getting the boundaries set around natural or traditional local lines, such as county or city limits, highways, rivers, railways, watersheds etc where possible is about the best you can do.

[Lys]

Ah, well if you mean to say that shortest splitline is not implementable as a practical matter, then I don't necassarily disagree. There would have to be some sort of strong welling up of popular sentiment against gerrymandering followed by the algorithm being proposed as a solution by the right people with the right timing. This is more or less always the case for neat solutions to complex problems, which is too bad but that's how it goes. A more practical solution, one that actually worked pretty well in Colorado, would be to hand off districting to panels of judges instead of politicians. There are a lot of problems with the US judicial system, but in general I trust US judges to be reasonably impartial, so this could be a workable solution. Beyond that, doing nothing at all isn't the end of the world. Gerrymandering is nearly as old as the Republic, the term itself dates back to 1812, and yet she has still prospered.