This Stateline article reviews the status of various lawsuits around the country which may result in the need for states to redraw their U.S. House and/or state legislative districts before the 2016 election. These states include Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Since the article was written, the 3-judge U.S. District Court in Alabama has instructed the plaintiffs to draw their own districts by September 25. This suggests that the plaintiffs are likely to win their lawsuit, if they can do a satisfactory job of producing their own plan.
END the nonstop ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymanders since 1776 — inherited from the Brit gerrymanders of the English House of Commons since the 1200s.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
First the pluralists want single-winner districts, then at-large winner-takes all, back and forth and neither of them give unity, equality and fairness.
The only solution for fair representation is pure proportional representation (PR) so please don’t get side-tracked.
The USA Parliament has been using at-large PR for twenty consecutive years and it works fine:
http://www.usparliament.org/
And now the new International Parliament:
http://international-parliament.org/
The article didn’t mention North Carolina and you didn’t mention Arizona.
The case in Alabama is a lot more subtle. The plaintiffs are guilty of gross hypocrisy.
After ‘Reynolds v Sims’, Alabama created whole-county Senate district. This complied with the Alabama constitutional provisional that counties not be split, but ignored the provision that counties have no more than one senate district.
Following the 1970 census, a federal court, taking the lead from extremist justices like Brennan and Douglas, insisted that the senate districts be quite equal in population. Even though the next election was not until 1974, they did not give the legislature any opportunity to redistrict. The court drew a plan that chopped counties all over the place, changed the number of representatives, and since population data was not available for election precincts, based the district on census enumeration districts, which were solely for administration of the census. They said that by 1974, Alabama could change all the election precincts.
Since then, Alabama has chopped counties all over the place and ignored the Alabama Constitution. In the 1990s, the current plaintiffs controlled the redistricting process and created the black-majority districts at issue here.
A problem is that people are moving from those districts, so that every decade they have to expand. Following the 2000 census, Democrats controlled redistricting and deliberately underpopulated the black-majority districts by up to 5%. While 5% would have permitted a lot fewer counties to be split, they didn’t do it, but rather used the extra leeway for partisan purposes (this in the issue in the Arizona case).
In 2010, the Republicans controlled redistricting, and went back to a 1% range. This forced the underpopulated Democratic districts to expand.
Part of the plaintiff’s argument was that use of the 1% range, was racially discriminatory. The SCOTUS was so embarrassed by this claim that they didn’t even ask questions about it in oral arguments, and instead said it was a given that the legislature would seek equality. You might also recall the oral arguments, where the justices argued back and forth whether they were writing the briefs for the plaintiffs, about whether there were claims about individual districts. The majority opinion included a concordance to prove that the plaintiffs had mentioned individual districts.
On remand, the trial court has limited the case to the black majority districts. Redistricting courts like plaintiffs to submit a plan to demonstrate that the state’s redistricting criteria could have been met in a non-discriminatory fashion.
The plaintiffs offered a plan that permitted a 5% range and split a lot fewer counties. IOW, the plaintiffs argued, if the Alabama legislature had not done what the courts have forced them to do for the last 50 years, and not done as they themselves had done, the legislature could have produced a better map.
During the trial last week, the judges asked the plaintiffs whether they could draw a map that met the legislature’s criteria, including 1% maximum range, limited pairings of incumbents, and do it with fewer county or precinct splits.
The plaintiff’s indicated that they might be able to do so. The court orders them to do demonstrate that. What they may be able to do is reduce the black percentage of the black-majority districts a little bit, but not enough to create black influence districts.
And the court could reasonably order the legislature to draw new districts before the next election in 2018.