Plessy v Fergusson Lives!

[Jimmy Higgins]

Louisiana v Callais is out.

A legal expert can prove my ignorance, but from the Exec Summary of the case, it sounds like the court ruled in a paraphrase:

• Minorities can contest illegal racial gerrymandering after a while, but not until they have evidence they were illegal racially gerrymandered
• "their analysis did not control for partisan preferences".
  • It sounds like SCOTUS is saying that if the state merely redistricted for partisan gain, makes it irrelevant if minorities were impacted in the election result.
• The standard now being required is absurd and can't be reached without a decade or two of evidence, of which, even then, can be handwaved as being partisan, not racial.

This smells like Plessy v Ferguson, but in the flavor of partisan motives not racial motives.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A good read from SCOTUS Blog.

In this case, Alito said, Louisiana’s goal in adopting the 2024 map “was racial”: the state enacted it in the wake of the lower court’s finding that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and sought to avoid having the court impose a different map that would have created a second majority-Black district but which would also “have imperiled one of the influential incumbents the legislature sought to protect.”

The state did not have the kind of compelling interest that would have justified considering race in drawing the 2024 map, Alito wrote, because – among other things – the plaintiffs challenging the 2022 map “did not provide an illustrative map that” protected the state’s Republican incumbents, and because the lower court in that case “relied on the ‘sordid history’ of intentional discrimination by Louisianian officials in the decades before the Voting Rights Act’s passage,” even though Section 2 focuses on “‘current conditions.’” “And none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

“In sum,” Alito concluded, “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

SCOTUS - Partisan gerrymandering and making voting matter isn't a Constitutional issue.
SCOTUS - Allowing minority majority districts is unconstitutional because it violates equal protection.... but we aren't overturning the Voting Rights Act.

WTF?!

 

[Playball40]

Such bullshit. "Partisan gerrymandering" is a dog whistle for minority voter disenfranchisement and they know it.

 

[Tigers!]

Gerrymandering is always a disenfranchisement of any group of voters.

 

[ideologyhunter]

This is the SCOTUS that tells us we're now in a post-racial America.

 

[Jarhyn]

The problem here was that when we looked at the problems unfounded prejudice created, we let race dominate the text of the protections rather than access to selection in political representation.

Acting to restrict, dilute, or rug-pull access to selective power in a political race should in fact be a crime.

People who pass laws which do this thing, people who act in seats of power to do this thing, people who design districts so as to do thing? We should unmake their laws which do this thing, and if they had every expectation to understand that this would result from their actions, see censure and possibly criminal charges, namely "conspiracy to deny representation".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Gerrymandering is always a disenfranchisement of any group of voters.

No, it isn't but thanks for playing. For more info for why you are wrong on minority majority districting, please read up on US racial history between 1890 and 1960.

These districts came forth because of decades of proven disenfranchising of minorities.

 

[Tigers!]

Gerrymandering is always a disenfranchisement of any group of voters.

No, it isn't but thanks for playing. For more info for why you are wrong on minority majority districting, please read up on US racial history between 1890 and 1960.

When you remove the principle of 1 vote, 1 value you are causing a disenfranchisement of that particular group. The proportion may vary but the end result of 1 vote != 1 value has been achieved.

These districts came forth because of decades of proven disenfranchising of minorities.

So continuing the gerrymandering will somehow make it all right? How many elections or how many years will it take?
2 wrongs still do not make a right.

 

[laughing dog]

Gerrymandering is always a disenfranchisement of any group of voters.

No, it isn't but thanks for playing. For more info for why you are wrong on minority majority districting, please read up on US racial history between 1890 and 1960.

When you remove the principle of 1 vote, 1 value you are causing a disenfranchisement of that particular group.

Gerrymandering doesn’t disenfranchise anyone because eligible voters don’t lose their vote. They still cast ballots. Gerrymandering is a form of redistricting happens every ten years in the USA.

Gerrymandering is an attempt to group voters to obtain more “desired”outcomes (one party over another, prevent or ensure winners from particular groups, etc).

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Gerrymandering is always a disenfranchisement of any group of voters.

No, it isn't but thanks for playing. For more info for why you are wrong on minority majority districting, please read up on US racial history between 1890 and 1960.

When you remove the principle of 1 vote, 1 value you are causing a disenfranchisement of that particular group. The proportion may vary but the end result of 1 vote != 1 value has been achieved.

Yes, in a textbook. I'm talking about real life and the historical intentional disenfranchising of millions of people because of race that required the Voting Rights Act to be passed in the first place!

These districts came forth because of decades of proven disenfranchising of minorities.

So continuing the gerrymandering will somehow make it all right? How many elections or how many years will it take?

Well, with this latest ruling on the Voting Rights Act, the minority majority districts are going to disappear. So, apparently six decades wasn't enough to prevent disenfranchising an entire race of people.

2 wrongs still do not make a right.

It must be nice to live in a black and white world. As note, white people in America are actually well represented.

 

[Patooka]

Gerrymandering is always a disenfranchisement of any group of voters.

No, it isn't but thanks for playing. For more info for why you are wrong on minority majority districting, please read up on US racial history between 1890 and 1960.

When you remove the principle of 1 vote, 1 value you are causing a disenfranchisement of that particular group. The proportion may vary but the end result of 1 vote != 1 value has been achieved.

These districts came forth because of decades of proven disenfranchising of minorities.

So continuing the gerrymandering will somehow make it all right? How many elections or how many years will it take?
2 wrongs still do not make a right.

This is such 90s Aussie cringe bullshit that I feel the need to apologise. And I don't believe in collective punishment.

 

[Jarhyn]

Gerrymandering doesn’t disenfranchise anyone because eligible voters don’t lose their vote

This is like saying that polling place closures don't disenfranchise because eligible voters don't lose their votes -- they just have to go further to place them.

But that still disenfranchises them, if not in "binary" ways, then on continuous, relative,nor partial ways.

Its still a disenfranchisement by degrees when someone has a vote that is made more onerous to execute or which is more dilute due to gerrymandering.

Pretending or even saying words that imply it's not disenfranchisement because it wasn't made technically impossible or illegal to vote is kind of disingenuous, and you shouldn't be one of the folks playing into that kind of newspeak -- preventing or clouding the discussion by enforcing particular definitions which kneecap practical discussion and force tangents rather than allowing words to be flexible enough to discuss things plainly.

If it's a manipulation (it's a manipulation) to achieve an artificial rather than a representative result against the distribution of the electorate body, it is sufficiently disenfranchisement to expect and demand consequences for doing it, and I think it is sufficient to use the term.

It is in fact more scummy than normal disenfranchisement because it attempts to hide or obfuscate who is the victim of the activity.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Simply put, districting should be about creating districts with common needs. The whole point of a district is for the people to generally have a localized need for their own representative. Urban areas have their unique, rural areas have their own, and suburbs have theirs as well. Then add in geography, industry, which can also impact the unique needs for a representative.

Right now, the urban voters are getting dissected and diluted. A portion of a major municipality will have little in common with needs as the middle of bleeping nowhere.

However, the issue at hand is specifically regarding the historical disenfranchising of black voters. As Kagan notes:

The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’ It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.

It wasn't put into law because of some arbitrary desire of the Government to force minority majority districts. It came about because of centuries of Government endorsed slavery and bigotry. States were allowed to choose and chose poorly. It had to be fixed.

In some Southern states, there are still rules on the books to try and prevent a black from winning state office, such as the requirement to have 50% or more of the vote. Between 1900 to about the 1990s, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana had ZERO black Representatives, despite having large percentages of blacks living in these states. After Reconstruction, the locals ended it.

 

[laughing dog]

Its still a disenfranchisement by degrees when someone has a vote that is made more onerous to execute or which is more dilute due to gerrymandering.

What do you mean by "diluting" a vote?

I suspect that the creation of any new voting region ends up "diluting" someone's vote in some fashion.

The issue as JH points out is creating districts with common needs. And I would had, common histories.

Ideally, voting districts in the US would be created by non-partisan entities that are independent of the state and local governments with judicial oversight to insure all issues of constitutionality and fairness are met.

But, we certainly don't live in such a world. And, IMO, the current SCOTUS is tipped in the direction of derangement with Alito and Thomas as as prime examples.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'd say dilution comes from taking a population of disinterest and scattering them among several districts to lessen their impact in elections.

Partisan-wise, slicing urban areas into several districts that cover a huge amount of territory and make them red (see Ohio and the proposed 2022 map the GOP came up with). Or likewise, using urban centers to reduce the influence of rural voters (see Virginia).

Race-wise, see the South in 5 years.

SCOTUS ruined our democracy in saying partisan gerrymandering was kosher enough for the Federal Government. It is still at the whims of the local courts, but we are bastardizing those too. And now with the Voting Rights Act ruling, which effectively ignores Congress, a state is free to disenfranchise minorities, as long as it is for partisan sakes.

This is the 21st Century Plessy v Ferguson Court. Pretend these things will work out just fine.

 

[Jarhyn]

Its still a disenfranchisement by degrees when someone has a vote that is made more onerous to execute or which is more dilute due to gerrymandering.

What do you mean by "diluting" a vote?

I suspect that the creation of any new voting region ends up "diluting" someone's vote in some fashion.

The issue as JH points out is creating districts with common needs. And I would had, common histories.

Ideally, voting districts in the US would be created by non-partisan entities that are independent of the state and local governments with judicial oversight to insure all issues of constitutionality and fairness are met.

But, we certainly don't live in such a world. And, IMO, the current SCOTUS is tipped in the direction of derangement with Alito and Thomas as as prime examples.

Diluting, as in the chemical meaning: taking something, and mixing it with a concentration of something else with the specific intent of reducing the sum total of unit mass of stuff similar to the original lot.

Gerrymandering dilutes the representational concentration of a region beyond "majority" status, even when the people there have concentrated in that region so as to concentrate their power over themselves.

By mixing swaths of the country into the city regions, you literally dilute the power of each to represent themselves, but because there is a simple majority requirement to gain representation, the dilution doesn't generally matter.

Similarly to chemical dilution, dilution past a certain threshold can suddenly and completely change an environment, such that something dissolves away or precipitates out.

Notably, in politics, gerrymandering creates not just non-representative districts and infighting in a constituency (and the perception that the representative doesn't listen to the constituency), it also creates a system very close to the threshold where the other district end instead has their vote diluted past meaning, and it can happen suddenly.

Ideally, each representative of such local contests ought have a more one-sided race, as they ought represent their constituency well.

Gerrymandering takes these natural concentrations of interest and literally mixes them together so each is weakened and one side more than the other.

Diluting the power of a vote.

Creating a new district does not do this in the same respect: so many people need so much representation, and other people having it doesn't mean you don't.

Including people from elsewhere so as to mix who is represented and weaken BOTH group's ability to see representative representation, that is a dilution.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I don't think it is possible to look at this without being biased.

That said, the SAVE America Act now feels like a "hey, look over there" moment, while the Supremes snatched the rug out from under us.

If they didn't bias the elections for MAGAs in one way, then they'd do it in another.

 

[Derec]

I wish SCOTUS would ban gerrymandering altogether, and mandate the use of an outcome-invariant, independent process that takes into account things like district compactness (i.e. no salamander-shaped districts).

That would then mean that we should not gerrymandering to achieve black majority districts either. We do not do it for any other subpopulation, and is impossible to do it for several subpopulations anyway. So why should blacks be singled out for special treatment under the law?

Ultimately, all this redistricting back-and-forth shows the superiority of the proportional system.

 

[Derec]

SCOTUS - Partisan gerrymandering and making voting matter isn't a Constitutional issue.

It should be.

SCOTUS - Allowing minority majority districts is unconstitutional because it violates equal protection.... but we aren't overturning the Voting Rights Act.

It's more about mandating a proportional number of so-called "minority majority districts". If for example a neutral districting algorithm results in "too few" black majority districts, the Voting Rights Act seems to mandate that gerrymandering be performed to increase the number of black majority districts.

 

[Derec]

Gerrymandering doesn’t disenfranchise anyone because eligible voters don’t lose their vote. They still cast ballots.

So why mandate guaranteed majority districts for certain favored groups?

Isn't the excuse that black voters would be "disenfranchised" unless we gerrymander in order to obtain a guaranteed number of black majority districts?