North Carolina Congressional Map Ruled Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina's congressional map on Tuesday, condemning it as unconstitutional because Republicans had drawn the map seeking a political advantage (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because of a partisan gerrymander, and it instantly endangered Republican seats in the coming elections. Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina's Legislature had been "motivated by invidious partisan intent" as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The ruling and its chief demand -- that the Republican-dominated Legislature create a new landscape of congressional districts by Jan. 24 -- infused new turmoil into the political chaos that has in recent years enveloped North Carolina. President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, but the state elected a Democrat as its governor on the same day and in 2008 supported President Barack Obama.

Comments

Automation

[ThosLives]

How is this not automated? Should just be a computer program that does "find the N points such that each point is the closest point to exactly P/N people."

That is, make a Voronoi diagram on population, not geometric distance.

No politics involved at all, but probably people wouldn't like it...

Re:Gerrymandering?

[PopeRatzo]

Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.

That's how gerrymandering works. You don't create districts for your own party to win, you create single safe districts for the other party to win to "contain" the opposition votes in one district so they don't affect the others.

For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district. By sacrificing that one district, you improve your chances in the five surrounding districts. This is from the article you cited:

"Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably. "