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posted by on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the careful-plotting dept.

The Washington Post reports Supreme Court rules race improperly dominated N.C. redistricting efforts

The Supreme Court ruled [May 22] that North Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature relied on racial gerrymandering when drawing the state's congressional districts, a decision that could make it easier to challenge other state redistricting plans.

The decision continued a trend at the court, where justices have found that racial considerations improperly tainted redistricting decisions by GOP-led legislatures in Virginia, Alabama, and North Carolina. Some cases involved congressional districts, others legislative districts.

[...] [The justices] were unanimous in rejecting one of the districts and split 5 to 3 on the other.

AlterNet reports

Republican legislators used surgical precision to pack black voters into just two districts, the tentacular 1st and the snake-like 12th. The lower court found that these districts targeted voters on the basis of race in violation of the constitution, a move that effectively prevented black voters from electing their preferred candidates in neighboring seats. map

[...] This now-invalidated congressional map was one of, if not the very most, aggressive partisan gerrymanders in modern history. North Carolina is a relatively evenly divided swing state--Donald Trump won it by just 3 points last year--yet these lines offered Republicans 10 safe districts while creating three lopsidedly Democratic seats. Amazingly, all 10 Republican districts hit a perfect sweet spot with GOP support between 55 and 60 percent, a level that is high enough to be secure yet spreads around Republican voters just carefully enough to ensure the maximum number of GOP seats possible.


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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:34PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:34PM (#515568)

    What do you call someone wielding political power? The power to draw district lines is inherently political, the ones given the authority to do that will quickly become politicians even if you pick random names from a phone directory. Faster in fact if you do that since they will lack any hardening against the lobbyists who have an ax to grind in the decisions.

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