The Supreme Court is allowing Alabama's regime to move forward with a congressional redistricting map while it hears and decides the suit against that map. Not permanently. But you'd think it was the end of the world, or at least the return of Jim Crow. Here's the supposed issue:
The order pauses an opinion by a panel of three judges that held that the Alabama map likely violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it only includes one district where Black voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.
I find both the map and the complaint remarkably, well, racist.
Both seem to assume that the only thing that matters, or should matter, to black and non-black voters when choosing public officials is race. The supporters of the map seem to be going out of their way to ensure that only one district has a black majority, and the opponents of the map want it altered to ensure that at least two districts have black majorities. And of course the historical trend is that in southern states district electorates tend to vote for one or the other party based on racial demographics, so the map is designed to delivere only one, rather than at least two, Democratic US Representatives from Alabama.
Should women get a given number of female majority districts? How about electricians? Philatelists?
Why assume that only black voters will vote for black candidates, or that black voters will only vote for black candidates, or the same thing of whites, that race is the supreme, essential characteristic that drives, or should drive, political decisions, or that if it is such a characteristic it should be humored and catered to rather than ignored?
As an anarchist, of course, I'm agin Congress anyway.
But if we're going to do this, I'd prefer to see it done one of two ways:
- Districts drawn by an open source, population-density based algorithm that starts at a random corner of the state and works its way to the opposite corner drawing districts of equal population without regard to race, sex/gender, profession, party registration of voters, or stamp collection size. Credit where credit is due: I remember reading that Robert Bork (of failed SCOTUS nomination fame) recommended a system like that when, as a lower court judge, he somehow got asked to suggest a settlement proposition for a gerrymandering case.
- No districts -- all US Representatives elected at large by the entire population of the state, using either ranked choice or approval voting.
