BREAKING: Federal Court Strikes Down One Of The Most Aggressive Gerrymanders In The Country

[kpete]

Source: Think Progress

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.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/10/07/3577120/breaking-federal-court-declares-virginias-congressional-maps-unconstitutional/

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/07/1334998/-BREAKING-Virginia-s-Gerrymandered-Congressional-Districts-Struck-Down-by-District-Court

Link to Decision Here:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Virginia-Gerrymandering.pdf

[elleng]

1. Unfortunately, this decision won't affect this year's elections.

'new maps must be in place by 2016.'

[TDale313]

2. Good, but sadly too late for this cycle.

But perhaps this is the start of a trend towards undoing the ridiculous gerrymandering the GOP has gotten away with. A girl can hope, anyway.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. What I like are those districts where there's a long thin line that goes on for miles....

Usually connecting a tiny portion of an urban area with a vast chunk of rural farmland.

[former9thward]

4. The OP is not correct.

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,)

That section of the VRA is still there. It was not "neutered" by the SC or anyone else.

[Fred Sanders]

5. Gerrymandering is another thing legally permitted by the corrupted system that was allowed to

rot while the citizens slumbered.

[Liberalynn]

6. I Hope McAuliffe

is a truer blue democratic governor than Cuomo. He had the power to challenge gerrymandering that was completely ridiculous as far as the way districts were drawn and which totally favored the elephants. Instead he let it stand and thus not only hurt Democratic chances in NY State but in the House of Representatives!

I will still vote for Cuomo because I don't want Astorino, but I will be holding my nose so as not to smell the Dino poop.

[happyslug]

7. On the surface, the Districts look kinda reasonable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia's_congressional_districts

The Third District, the one in question:

[Man from Pickens]

8. devil is in the details

these districts ought to be drawn by the mathematical solution that makes each district most geographically compact. Leaves no room for funny business.

[Fred Sanders]

9. The devil is in Democratic Party getting 52% of the vote and 3 of 11 Congressional districts.

[groundloop]

13. Yep, It's almost like they did a little too good of a job

That number just absolutely stands out like a sore thumb, there's no way in hell that statewide representation should be THAT lopsided.

[jeff47]

14. IMO, there's a better fix.

We've had the same number of House seats since 1911. Population in the 1910 census? 92,228,496. Or one representative for about every 211,019 people.

Population today? 316,148,990 Or one representative for about every 726,779 people

How 'bout we go back to something closer to the 1911 density? 1 representative for every 250,000 people. Or about 1,264 representatives. Seats would be added after every census, just as seats are reapportioned after every census. Seats would still be handed out using the same concepts, there'd just be about 3x more seats.

Why?
1) Smaller districts. So you have a much better chance of actually meeting and talking to your representative, and your representative has a much better chance of actually representing you.
2) Lots more districts. Which makes it much harder to gerrymander as effectively.
3) We can stop pretending that members of the House are like "executives" instead of representatives.

[joshcryer]

15. This and approval voting saves American democracy.

Otherwise it becomes more and more of an oligarchy.

[Man from Pickens]

16. the country has too many people for that

Can you imagine trying to manage a Congress with over 2000 representatives? Party leaders wouldn't even be able to manage to remember everyone's names, even in their own caucus alone.

[jeff47]

20. Which is why those party leaders will have deputies.

And why party would be less critical than the issues your constituents actually care about.

[Nye Bevan]

18. Really? The problem is that we have too few congressmen?

I beg to differ.

[jeff47]

21. Yep. We do.

Right now, with 700,000 other voters, your congressperson doesn't have to give a fuck about you. There's plenty of other voters, and party apparatus is more important than constituents.

With only 250,000 other voters, you're now 3x more important. And party becomes so unwieldy that it can't dominate the House nearly as much as it currently does.

[yellowcanine]

24. Or we could do both - add more reps and stop gerrymandering.

I don't think we need one rep per 250,000 people though. With modern communications and travel, a rep can get around a district much more effectively than in 1911. I would go for more like 1 rep per 400,000 people. And draw the lines with a computer using a model which creates the most compact districts possible without regard for the effect on incumbents.

[jeff47]

26. Compact doesn't actually get you fair though.

http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/02/why-computers-alone-cant-eliminate-corruption-redistricting/4790/

But that is only the beginning of the computational complexity of automating our internal political borders. In a landmark 2010 paper in the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, Micah Altman and Michael McDonald argue that "the problem of creating optimally compact, contiguous, equal-population districts is provably 'NP-hard.'" In other words, with only a small handful of variables the problem becomes incredibly complex very quickly, so complex that it is "probably impossible to create a computer program that solves these problems optimally and reliably except in very small or limited cases."

Creating "optimally compact" districts is, by itself, a complex quandary as there are an exponential number of ways that a district can be drawn to be compact. And those are just the basic variables. There are often a host of other concerns that are worked into region definition that complicate the situation: coincidence with other boundaries, easily identifiable regions, geographic monuments, defining an area by "communities of interest" or what is termed "vernacularly insular" – a complicated way of saying the designated region should actually be representative of a community that has historically lived there.

Fundamentally, the problem is we don't spread out uniformly on the map. So compact does not necessarily mean fair. For example, the role of the Mississippi and Katrina in LA means that the most compact Congressional districts actually don't represent the people well.

[Blue_Tires]

27. Never knew my Second district was so small...

[KoKo]

10. Sounds Great Doesn't it...April, 2015.....then to the Supremes.....

Whatever. We have to deal with this on State Level. If we waited for this it would be like Eric Holder holding off prosecuting the NC Voting Suppression Law until AFTER THE MID TERMS...He didn't help the challenge to 2014 Mid-Terms.

Holder didn't help protect Voters from Koch Bros./Alec Changes UNTIL AFTER THE MID-TERMS... Now he's gone.

Just to set the record straight about these BIG NEWS from CAP that "supposedly" get our hopes up only to be dashed by a higher Court Ruling and then going to the Supremes AFTER the Damage is done.

Anyway...looks good on first read...but, folks don't ever go into the Details to see the truth of the delays and eventual demise of what looked good on lower Court Rule but then doesn't ever work out the way the Headlines and first paragraph or so reads seem to indicate.

[gopiscrap]

11. Excellent!!

[Cha]

12. At least! Mahalo kpete~

[starroute]

17. As I recall, it's legal for one party to outrageously favor itself

It's only when the gerrymandering has a racial impact that it falls under the Civil Rights Act and can be overturned.

What we need, of course, is a decision that makes all this kind of extreme gerrymandering illegal. It shouldn't be impossible -- the "one man, one vote" decisions in the 1960s in made it illegal for districts in a single state to have wildly different populations, citing the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection.

A Supreme Court that wasn't as skewed to the right as ours is should be able to conclude that extreme gerrymandering also disenfranchises vast number of voters. Of course, it's anyone's guess when that might become possible.

(And some of the GOP-controlled state legislatures are trying to have presidential electors also chosen by congressional district, plus two at large -- which strikes me as a sure recipe for civil war.)

[Nye Bevan]

19. In the UK all district boundaries are set by a strictly nonpartisan Boundary Commission

based purely upon geographic considerations and population densities.

We should do that too.

[Javaman]

22. And what of Texas? I thought so. never mind. nt

[yellowcanine]

23. I wish Democrats were "clean" on this but we aren't. Check out Maryland.

Check out the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th districts and tell me that these all meet the spirit of the law requiring geographically compact districts. Maryland is a very Democratic state, but not THAT Democratic (7 out of 8 Reps) We need a Constitutional amendment taking it out of the hands of the state legislatures.
?v=1387255734

[True Blue Door]

25. Now the case can go to the Supreme Tort, where it will rule 5-4 in favor of the GOP.