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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.
Purposely changing election maps in order to effectively disenfranchise citizens is unconstitutional? You've got to be kidding me.
...however, I'm not holding my breath.
In all seriousness, I do hope that something like this will be implemented in its stead:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
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...
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
they went along with the Gerrymandering because the R's carved out some safe districts for them. If this keeps up (and if we don't let voter suppression happen) it'll change the political landscape drastically. The part that worries me is the Rs just got out from under that court order that lets them send poll watchers. I some how doubt the reason for that order (voter intimidation) really went away. I know in the last two presidential elections there were armed police stationed outside predominately black precincts... OTOH there's been motions to force paper trails nationwide.
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It's difficult to do. The gerrymandered districts will have a similar number of people in them, but that's not the problem. Imagine you have 10,000 people voting for teams A and B, with a 50:50 split. It's possible to arrange 10 districts where each one will have 500 A voters and 500 B voters, but it's also possible to have 8 districts with 600 A voters and 400 B voters and two districts with 100 A voters and 900 B voters. In the first configuration, you'll end up with some tough campaigns and probably average 5 A seats and 5 B seats. In the second, you'll always have 8 A seats and 2 B seats. That's the essence of gerrymandering: you distribute your voters to maximise the number of seats.
You can automate creating constituencies with even numbers, but that's also biased. The real solution is to move away from single-representative constituencies and closer to an electoral system where every vote counts.
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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:
You are welcome on my lawn.
For example, check out the work of Moon Duchin and the Matrix Geometry and Gerrymandering Group at Tufts: http://sites.tufts.edu/gerryma... Chronicle of Higher Ed profile: https://www.chronicle.com/arti... And other mathematicians also: http://www.ams.org/publication...
Yeah, that's why there's no legal challenges to Maryland's gerrymandering at all. Oh, wait...
Supreme Court agrees to hear Maryland redistricting case
Who gets to train the AI?
Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.
That's because of a tactic called "packing" whereby you try to concentrate the opposition into the fewest districts possible. The other major tactic is "cracking" which dilutes the voting power of the opposition across multiple districts. So it wouldn't be shocking at all to find a highly gerrymandered district drawn by the losing party. They do that so that they can win more seats elsewhere.
Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.
What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Well at some point it does become obscene in the extreme. Looking at these maps and reading a bit at how they are formed... ie throw as many Democrats as possible into a few districts and then spread the remaining Democrats out in all the other districts. I don't really see how this is any different than the prohibition on using race as part of drawing new districts.
The courts should make this simple and delegitimize partisan affiliation and voting history as a valid consideration. The only legitimate data that are used to draw the maps should be where people live and then the districts should be draw to closely match the existing underlying political boundaries (ie cities, towns and counties) in a geographically compact area.
It was a three-judge panel. Wynn just wrote the opinion.
The original term, which you yourself quoted, was "effectively disenfranchise", not just disenfranchise. That lines up very well with the term "effectively meaningless" which you are objecting to. The adjective can't be ignored when you're quoting the definition if Disenfranchisement.
"Fair" has nothing to do with Law once it is passed.
Maybe you should review the equal protection clause.
Strictly speaking, the courts involvement in this at all is unconstitutional. Redistricting is a task left to the Legislature in the Constitution.
Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch? If the judicial branch did not have the constitutional authority to put a check on how the legislature creates its districts then there would be no check against the legislative branch in this matter. As long as someone has the standing to raise a civil matter before the court, the court has every right to hear the case and make a ruling.
Not on a technical nerd news site it doesn't.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
That doesn't mean that we should just continue to accept it as "the way things are".
Several states have placed redistricting in the hands of non-partisan panels of citizens or retired judges. This is more common in western states which have citizens' ballot initiatives, since the politicians have no incentive to reform the process while they are on the "winning" side, and no power to do so when they are in the minority.
Even better would be to get rid of "districts" entirely, and elect representatives by interests rather than geography. So anyone could vote for any representative, and the top 435 get elected. Each rep's voting power would be proportional to how many voters backed him or her. There should also be a website where voters can switch their preference to a different rep at any time, as an "instant recall" to ensure they keep their promises.
The individual right to equal representation is the primary concern. If a state attempts to suppress the political will of its people, its justification for state powers vanishes.
It's sad that the federal government needs to address this at all. There are both red and blue gerrymanders out there, and they are both morally wrong.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
> For example, the most common type of gerrymandering in North Carolina is to put all the black voters into one district.
But that's called a majority-minority district and is actually encouraged by some legislation or policy. The idea was to increase the number of black and other minority representatives in Congress and that was done by combining all the voters into districts.
The alternatives would be to slice up the black vote so it i always a tiny minority in white districts. You then lose the black representative.
From this: https://www.brennancenter.org/...
"At a statewide level, Wisconsin is a quintessential battleground where races are often decided by only a few percentage points. Contrast that to the state assembly map the Republicans drew: In 2012, they won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly despite winning only 48.6% of the two-party state-wide vote; in 2014, they won 63 seats with only 52% of the state-wide vote."
Don't get me wrong, this is not a partisan issue as both sides have historically tried to use gerrymandering to influence elections, it is just that lately the Republicans have been particularly aggressive and good at it.
That is because the federal judiciary is biased against conservatives and Republicans, and for liberals and Democrats. It's why Trump and Bush and Reagan were always challenged while Clinton and Obama got away with whatever they wanted.
They allow Ds to get away with this bullshit practice, but spank the Rs.
Just spitballing here but maybe the R's tend to try shit that is truly unconstitutional more often than the D's so get themselves slapped down more often.
No one has ever been denied the ability to associate with members of their own party.
Not sure what point you are trying to make but you certainly missed the one in the discussion. Gerrymandering utilizes the association with a political party to remove the power of their vote by rigging the system. So if Party A draws the districts to favor Party A then members of Party B are being disenfranchised as a result. Members of Party B are effectively being deprived of their vote because their vote will not matter in the outcome of the election. The fact that they actually cast a ballot does not change the fact that their vote won't have any chance to affect the outcome because the electorate has been rigged.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.
You're wrong. Go read Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims.
To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.
Yes, that is what the administration of justice requires. They also have to take children from their parents, seize private property and order people imprisoned.
I admit this is a fairly fundamentalists interpretation, but what objective measurement are the courts using to discern Good O'l Gerrymandering from "Insidious"?
This mystery is revealed in the court order.
Funny how people always resort to "Change the Constitution if you don't like it" whenever two conflicting Constitutional principles have to be weighed by the courts - and the court doesn't pick their choice.
The Supreme Court has jumped through hoops to pretend that, for example, "money is speech" is a more important American value than "government by the people" or "equal protection". And as regards gerrymandering, it has in the past come down on the side of "we can't police partisanship" over "everyone's vote should count". They've yet to rule on the issue since it became possible to mathematically show how gerrymandering causes votes to be effectively rendered useless - and there's still every possibility that the Kennedy will join with the rest of the conservatives and choose the convenient answer that happens to favor their side..
But to say the court shouldn't have a voice when there's such a conflict is to say "I like things the way they are, so fuck you - change the Constitution if you don't like it".
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Political affiliation isn't a protect class.
No but the right to vote and to have your vote count IS protected. Don't confuse the mechanism with the result. Gerrymandering doesn't just affect members of a given political party.
To insist that the redistricting somehow represents the greater population is the usurpation of redistricting task by the courts.
Not even slightly. Courts are the only (ostensibly) neutral party here and their job is to ensure that voters rights are not trod upon. I'm not a member of either the republicans or democrats but I live in a gerrymandered district and so my right to vote is de-facto disenfranchised if I happen to not like the ruling party's candidate. That is a perfect use for a court to protect people like me who otherwise would effectively lose their vote.
Remember back when Democrats were happily using racist assumptions that blacks could only get elected from majority-black districts, which they were all too happy to gerrymander into existence?
The current Republican antics are a direct result of those racist efforts...and redrawing the districts will almost certainly dilute those majority-minority districts (again, which are racist constructs in the first place). And lots of folks will not be happy at all about districts drawn by "colorblind" algorithms that are simply trying to map equal numbers of people into right-sized districts, so the algorithms will have to be made "fair". Good luck with that.
The Atlantic (2013)
Acting under the legal strength and moral authority of the Voting Rights Act, the Democrats led the charge to draw so-called "majority-minority districts" -- ones packed so full of minority voters that they usually resulted in electing a minority representative, as intended. The number of minority representatives jumped exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s, with the number of black House members increasing from five to 24 by 1989.
But just in time for the redistricting in 1990, some enterprising Republicans began noticing a rather curious fact: The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats. The Democrats had been tripped up by a classic Catch-22, as had minority voters: Even as legislatures were becoming more diverse, they were ironically becoming less friendly to the agenda of racial minorities.
Newt Gingrich embraced this strategy of drawing majority-minority districts for GOP advantage, as did the Bush Administration Justice Department prior to the 1991 redistricting, even as GOP activists like now-Chief Justice John Roberts campaigned against the VRA because they opposed any race-based remedies. The tipping point was the 1994 midterm elections, when the GOP captured the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 35 years and Gingrich because speaker. Many experts on both the left and the right, from The Nation's Ari Berman and prominent GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg (who spearheaded the 1991 effort to maximize the number of majority-minority districts), attribute the Republican success that year to the drawing of majority-minority districts; indeed, African-American membership in the House reached its highest level ever, at 40.
VRA districts undoubtedly played a role in the GOP takeover, but they were not the only factor, since Republicans made big gains that year in lots of places outside the South. But in the hardscrabble battles of the 50-50 nation, any advantage at all was embraced, and prominent Republicans like Ginsberg and Gingrich became the loudest proponents of drawing majority-minority districts.
I would say it would be best done as unsupervised clustering tied into a GIS system. I have written my local reps at my state house and state senate about it several times but they never want to hear it because it takes away their power to help ensure they have a safe seat.
Basically my proposal has been:
1. Initially all districts are centered at their current representative's house. If there are fewer seats this time then last then district centers are removed randomly until the correct number is reached. If there are more seats this time then last then district centers are added randomly until the correct number is reached.
2. The district with the lowest population picks first.
3. Areas (houses, town homes, apartments, etc) are added to a district such that the closet one available to the center added first. If there are 2 equal distance then preference is given for the ones that are on the same side of the road, in the same town, then in the same county. If neither of those are better satisfied then pick one at random and add it to the district.
4. Repeat steps 2&3 until all areas have been chosen.
5. Calculate the new center of each district.
6. If the new center of any district has changed areas from where it was in step 5 of the previous run (step 1 if this is the first run) then save the new centers and clear out the districts assigned to each district and start at step 2.
7. if the new centers of all districts have not changed areas from where it was previously this is your new district map.
I am sure that there are a few more tweaks that are need to ensure that each district has the same (I believe MN law is +/- 1) number of people in it but this seems like a much more reasonable solution instead of the bickering that happens every 10 years. As an added bonus this requires writing the program once and then every 10 years drop it on a computer (really any somewhat modern desktop would be able to do this) and let it run for a bit. You no longer need to pay for the old human process and likely would get result much quicker.
Time to offend someone
No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:
A vote rendered meaningless by gerrymandering IS denying the right to vote for all practical purposes. The fact that I technically cast a ballot in a heavily gerrymandered district effectively denies my voice from being heard - i.e. the entire point of a vote. That is disenfranchisement. If you want to call it something else fine but the effect is identical to armed thugs stopping me from casting my ballot in the first place.
My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.
That depends on where in New York you live but since Democrats naturally outnumber Republicans in the state you are correct for statewide offices. But if you live in a gerrymandered district then you possibly are disenfranchised for purposes of congressional election. My congressional district is gerrymandered and I definitely have been disenfranchised for purposes of that vote. You cannot gerrymander for state wide office if the votes are cast by popular vote but for any district with boundaries drawn by partisan hacks you easily can disenfranchise people. The fact that they actually cast a ballot doesn't make any difference in whether or not they have been disenfranchised because the effect is identical to preventing them from casting a ballot.
You are arguing semantics — incorrectly.
You have that backwards and even if it were just semantics, semantics matter. Gerrymandering renders votes meaningless that otherwise would not be meaningless. If you want to call that something other than disenfranchisement I don't care but the effect is identical. It makes the election rigged which is wrong.
Where does the constitution restrict the judicial branch from making a ruling in any matter involving either the legislative or executive branch?
A specific restriction isn't necessary, because the judicial is only empowered to do the things which the constitution and the law states the judiciary is empowered to do. The Judicial branch is ONLY able to make their rulings on what is law and Orders enjoining against furthering harm from violating the law or the constitution based on the dispute before them --- the Legislative and Executive branches have their own agency (Independent judgement), and the Judicials are not superior to the Legislative or the Executive branch in their power or authority: Fundamentally the judiciary IS RESTRICTED and cannot order around other branches, And if there is a disagreement --- it's called a constitutional crisis, because they are 3 equal branches of government.
Our constitutional form of government is NOT a hierarchy with the Judiciary branch at the top, and our supreme court is not a "Ruling Committee" who can hand down any order desired to alter or delete any law at will or increase or decrease or change the enforcement of any law in whatsoever manager as the committee desires. The Judicial branch makes orders based on law, and it is up to the elected leaders and bureaucrats in other branches of government to follow lawful orders (or to ignore them, as they have in some cases)
In the same manner that the president cannot order the court to rule X on case Y, or order the court to consider case Z, and the legislature cannot pass a law that the court must never review law Y and the feds can't pass a law that state laws about X be held unconstitutional; the Judiciary has its own independent agency that cannot be taken on by other branches of government -- its rulings on cases.
In exactly the same way the Legislative and Executive branches of government have specific agency in the powers granted them by the constitution --
the judiciary does NOT have the power to override the agency of other branches of government and take actions on their behalf, And the judiciary does not have the power to Order another branch of government to do X with their agency ----- for example, the court cannot order congress to pass law Y, or create tax Z. Although the court CAN invalidate law Y or provide taxpayer relief by declaring debts under tax Z invalid.
The Judicial branch is not empowered to take over any legislative or executive duty and exercise that role on its own.
If the law doesn't say the court can draw their own map, then the court does not have the power to simply draw their own map, and that is true even if the legislature fails or refuses to draw a new map on its own that satisfies the court.
Washington Post article on gerrymandering in California...
"California just proved how cracking down on gerrymandering isn’t all it’s cracked up to be"
For the fourth time in 12 years, not a single one of the state's 50-plus congressional districts switched parties. Just as in 2010, 2008 and 2004, every single seat returned to the party that previously controlled it.
And if you exclude the post-redistricting election of 2012, only two California districts have flipped parties since 2004. That's two out of 314 individual races — 0.6 percent. (And one of the two was a fluke in which the GOP briefly held a blue-leaning seat thanks to two Republicans advancing to the general election in 2012.)
So why do we bring this up now? Well, partly because it wasn't necessarily supposed to be this way again. Before the last round of redistricting, Californians voted for a redistricting commission to take the process out of lawmakers' hands.
But in the end, California might be Exhibit A in the limits of redistricting reform's impact on competition. The state's population is very segmented, and drawing competitive districts isn't easy given the self-sorting that people have done.
California's districts were actually drawn irrespective of competitiveness and partisanship. The commission decided not to even look at such data when drawing its districts, preferring to focus on what it called "communities of interest" and other demographics.
Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert based in California, said that means the results since then are no real surprise. “When you draw lines to keep communities of interest together, you wind up creating districts that, by proxy, are partisan — as partisan as if you drew them with party labels — because you’re drawing them with values that are definitive of partisan labels themselves," Mitchell said.
And that's real the takeaway here. Gerrymandering is increasingly viewed as a political ill that must be dealt with. And there is generally considerable public support for redistricting reforms whenever they are on the ballot. But given our increasing tendency to live around people with whom we share a worldview, creating competitive districts often requires its own brand of gerrymandering that doesn't jibe with grouping people who share things in common.
Admittedly this is from my mere two semesters of Business Law, but the Courts are limited to ruling on Legal issues...laws.
Which is what the court did. The judge ruled that the gerrymandering was unconstitutional.
As for your law courses ... ask for your money back.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
While enumeration of the representative is included in the constitution, districting is not. As it is not specifically granted to the federal government, it devolves down to the state governments, see Art 6 sect 2.
You can't have the courts always stepping in because you don't think something is "fair".
Actually, one can and that is actually how the law and courts work. If one believes a law is unfair, one can go to the courts and the courts will determine if it is fair and legal. This is how the Miranda rights came about. Someone claimed it was unfair for the police to not inform a suspect of his rights. This is also how the "fruit of the poisoned tree" principal concerning illegally obtained evidence came about.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.