You’re missing something. African-Americans, like other Americans, are actual human beings. That makes them different in some ways from geographical artifacts.
What is your point?
Again, that demographics doesn’t doom the GOP.
Back to gerrymandering, one reason for the greater number of red-leaning districts is that the Voting Rights Act requires the stuffing of minorities into their own districts. You’ve got a lot of blue districts that are 70%, 80%, and even 90% Democrat.
What’s more, it seems that Ascenray is suggesting that we should draw districts to ensure partisan balance, rather than just drawing logically shaped districts. Put some squares on the map, make sure your districts have roughly equal population, you’re done. Many states now have computers draw the districts.
The Voting Rights Act does not require that.
Nonsense.
That’s not anything close to how districts are drawn now.
The number of half-truths you spout is mind-boggling.
Yes, they have computers draw districts. They have the computers draw districts to favor the party that controls the drawing.
The judicial interpretation of the voting rights act created minority districts. As a matter of fact, there is some fear that minority districts might go away because of the SCOTUS decision on the VRA:
http://www.wltx.com/news/article/224580/2/Minority-Districts-at-Issue-in-Voting-Rights-Case
Majority-minority districts are mandated. The main effect of that was to make it difficult for white Democrats to win seats in the South. But that is a result that is very different from the claim you are making.
Drawing majority-minority does not necessarily result in dilution of Democratic votes to the extent that there will be inevitable underrepresentation of Democratic votes in the results
Now you’re ignoring simple math. If you squish minorities into a district so that it’s like D+15, that’s going to mean all the surrounding districts lose some Democratic voters.
Let’s say the city of Metropolis has six districts and an overall rating of D+4. You draw a squiggly line through the minority areas and create a D+15 district there. That reduces the partisan makeup of the remaining 5/6ths of the city substantially.
Who told you the majority-minority district had to be D+15?
D+15 is pretty mild for a majority minority district. Some are D+30. Which reduces the Democratic vote in the other districts even more.
Anyway, Cook Political Report calculated the number of strong GOP seats created by redistricting: 8. Lost strong Dem seats: 4. So figure the GOP gained 12 seats purely from redistricting. Which means they still hold the House in 2012 even if we assume a fair process.
Actually, Cook says GOP gained only 6 from redistricting.
http://cookpolitical.com/house/pvi
Most startling, there were 32 more strong GOP seats BEFORE redistricting than strong Democrat seats. Which I think settles the issue pretty definitively. According to Cook, the “natural” GOP majority is 45. Which says what I’ve been saying for awhile: the GOP underperforms relative to what they should be accomplishing. They should be dominating Congress nearly all the time as the Democrats did from 1933-1994
Basic adaher math: Just because there are more Democratic voters than Republican ones does not mean that Democrats should have more seats than Republicans. In fact, it is impossible to draw lines that would result in a majority of Democratic seats even though there are more Democratic voters. Those are postulates of adaherism and cannot be disputed.
Those are simply the reality. Since Democrats are concentrated into small geographic areas, you’d have to draw crazy lines to be able to get an even number of blue and red districts. You’d have to make it even more crazy if you wanted to keep the minority districts.
Fact: Prior to 2010, there were 45 more R leaning districts than D.
. . . draw geographically smaller districts in those areas than in rural areas to achieve districts of equal population, which is how it is done now.
No one here has suggested that should be a goal of redistricting.
Democrats try to do that. It’s a challenging task, especially when you have to draw all these D+30 districts for minorities.
Again, you are pretending that you have to draw districts with huge majorities for Democrats. You don’t.
(1) Utter nonsense. (2) district lines are already crazy.
And what makes 2010 a landmark for you? Republicans have been taking over state legislatures since the early 1990s.
Cite?
Democrats don’t try to draw districting maps that benefit them?
Of course they do. You said they tried to equalize the number of red and blue districts. No party does that when it has control of redistricting. That is why the whole thing should be left to an independent commission, like in Canada. But, neither would nor should an independent commission try to equalize the number of red and blue districts, that is never a legitimate goal. Where are you getting that nonsense anyway?
I meant they try to draw more Democratic districts, but it’s challenging to do so.
It’s not even the least bit challenging. The do exactly what the Republicans do. They hire a consultant who licenses software to draw the districts for them according to the parameters they choose.
Then why do they fail? It’s not as if Republicans were dominating state legislatures in the 2000 election.