Talk Elections

Check out my disgusting Democratic gerrymander that I made in 30 minutes:
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District 1: This is the ultimate packing of less-Democratic whites into one district. Notice that I tried to connect Madison/Limestone whites to the rest of the ultra-White hinterlands. This happened for a reason. 86% White/8% Black/6% Other

District 2: My first Democratic district. Black belt + African-American areas of Birmingham + University of Alabama = Democratic stronghold. I'm confident this district voted for Obama by over 60% which means virtually any Democrat could be elected here. No need for blue dog to hold this down. 43% White/53% Black/4% Other

District 3: This is my Blue Dog-mander and my attempt to create a somewhat swingy district to add to the two heavily Black Democratic districts. It connects Black areas of Huntsville, Decatur to the traditional hinterlands of DeKalb and Cherokee. The idea was to remove the exurban ultra-GOP strongholds from the area that would be AL-5. This district might be winnable by a Blue Dog in a wave election. A Bobby Bright toolbag wouldn't be necessary, the old version of Parker Griffith that is slightly better would suffice. 74% White/18% Black/7% Other

District 4: Another attempt to pack whites. This district is even worse than my AL-1 because it has Birmingham's whitey suburbs. At least my AL-1 has some white trash that would vote for a guy like Ron Sparks. This district would vote for a Satanic Republic over Jesus. 85% White/9% Black/5% Other

District 5: This is Alabama's equivalent for Stanford Bishop's seat. Democrats should run a somewhat populist liberal like Ron Sparks here in order to lock this district down. However a white Democrat winning a primary here would be very, very difficult. A generic Black candidate would probably win 9 times out of 10 but I'd be nervous about this one. 48% White/48% Black/4% Other

District 6: Unlike AL-3 this district could never vote for a Democrat, even though there are a decent chunk of African-Americans here thanks to Mobile. This district actually doesn't look gross (!) 68% White/27% Black/5% Other

District 7: Contains a few clumps of Blacks, but other than that is a hellish district. 74% White/21% Black/5% Other

The idea roster for Alabama would be with this map: 3 Democrats and 4 Republicans. Not bad. I probably could work to make this much better but whatevski.

If I was the GOP there, I would draw the AA sections of Montgomery into either the 7th or Spencer Bachus's 6th to prevent any Bobby Bright comebacks, and also swap some territory between the 3rd and 4th.

Overall very minor changes.

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72% black district in Alabama

Raising it to that high might be problematic in court, seeing as the district is "so extremely irregular on its face that it rationally can be viewed only as an effort to segregate the races for purposes of voting, without regard for traditional districting principles".

Oh I know. I don't think its necessary to do so anyway. I just wanted to see how high the number could go.

I'm sure there won't be all those tentacles into the 1st, and that the 7th will stop at Montgomery County rather than going into Macon/Bullock.

Then you just use Spencer Bachus and Aderholts R+26 districts to take in the necessary population in Jefferson county.

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Something like this is what I guess is the final product. Only a handful of county splits, really, and it safeguards the purple 3rd.

I really like how the teal district looks like a duck or a dragon, depending on your view.

On an aside... just read the profile of the new Congresswoman for AL-07. She is ridiculously impressive. Too bad she's in Alabama, so she'll never be anything more than a Representative unless she gets appointed to something (or runs for President, but I'm not convinced any Representative could leap straight from the House to a Presidential nomination these days).

She was at Princeton at the same time as Michelle Obama, it looks like.

Funny thing is that Artur Davis has just as impressive of a resume.  Wish her the best, though, she seems like a very intelligent woman.

What is untraditional about a map like that in Alabama?

In 2000, AL-7 was 70.0% black and included an arm over towards Birmingham.  The 2000s redistricting dropped to 62.0%.

In 2000, AL-7 and AL-6 were 70.0% and 14.9%, after redistricting 62.0% and 26.0%.

I didn't say it's untraditional. Justice Kennedy says it's unconstitutional if he can be bothered on that particular day. (Actually the words are Sandra Day O'Connor's.) The current AL-7 unites urban Birmingham with the western half of the Black Belt. That's necessary to create a certainly Black seat even though the percentage is well in excess... cause if you swap out the rural parts for an equally sized part of lily white suburbia from Bachus' seat, you're on highly polarized bellwether territory. It also includes Tuscaloosa because it was in the way, even though it's 60odd% White. The eastern half of the Black Belt is instead divided between two usually Republican seats, and one of those fell in 2008 and wouldn't have if it didn't include some Black influence. (There aren't enough Blacks for a second Black seat without some really "extremely irregular" mapmaking, so let's ignore that option.)
Any attempt to further pack the seventh will end up in court. A well-done one like krazen's second will be upheld there. A seriously overstretching one like his first might or might not be, and it's just not a risk worth taking.

Most of the black pack occurs from the move into Montgomery. The district goes up from 61% to 69%, from there all the chopping in the world only gets you another 3-4%.

The third district was actually drawn being designed for a conservative Democrat.

So, how likely is it that Alabama be required to have two black-majority seats? It's 26% black, which is much closer to 2/7 than 1/7, and two black majority seats are not only possible but fairly easy. Map below has seats that are 55% black (the Birmingham seat) and 64% black (the Montgomery seat).

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These districts are not genuine communities of interest, and the population is still below exactly 2/7th. You might have a chance forcing it if the Black population were over 2/7th, or if your seventh seat were entirely in the Birmingham metro or at very maximum extended only to Tuscaloosa. As is though, nigh on zero.

It could probably be cut back from Etowah and Calhoun Counties in exchange for some rural areas to the south if they would be better suited to communities of interest analysis. I don't think you could do a 50% black seat in just the Birmingham MSA, though.

Can the green seat be done without chopping CD-1 in half and forcing water continuity? And I'm not talking a single precinct chain, but rather cutting the Mobile leg out entirely.

Probably. I didn't try it. It has a LOT of wiggle room, though.

You could also get land continuity by just drawing out the southern and coastal parts of Mobile to get the western areas connected to one of the bridges across Mobile Bay while leaving the other black parts of Mobile in the Montgomery black seat. That's definitely feasible, especially because I-10 runs right along the water on the Mobile side so you don't need to cut through the populated areas.

The Alabama map with updated census figures.

Not much to say; the urban Birmingham districts contract a bit and the rural southern ones expand a bit.

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By VAP CD-7 is 64.8% black. CD-1 is 24.5%, CD-2 is 28.1%. The rest are in the teens.

One could accuse that map of packing the blacks in CD-7. I did the following map back in '09 with estimates, but a quick check of the 2010 data shows that basic idea still works. With 2010 data one can make CD-2 51.4% black VAP and CD-7 53.5% black.

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I'm sure they could, but I doubt they get anywhere. I would expect the Alabama redistricters to draw this kind of map I made.

It goes to my same argument I made yesterday on the LA thread. An aggressive DoJ could try to challenge mapmakers in R-controlled states by demanding better minority representation. AL is 26% black, and 2/7 is 28.5% so two districts is in better proportion to the state's black population than one district.

If they want the fight, then they'll get it.  One would think they would choose better cases, given prior precedent. 

Also, one wonders how happy the blacks will be down there.

Lame state legislators are bickering about the congressional plan again. Some chump wants to keep Tuscaloosa County whole in the 4th (including the black areas). The 4th is R+28 or so now so its completely irrevelant and stupid.

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/05/alabama_redistricting_panel_ba.html
http://www.whnt.com/news/whnt-congressional-redistricting-to-shake-up-north-alabama-20110518,0,4465368.story

Montgomery blacks of course go into the 7th.

Beyond that, Brooks wants to drop some of the Northwestern Alabama counties (historically Democratic) to Aderholt in exchange for heavy GOP counties in Northeastern Alabama. Doesn't look like he's getting it.

That would be what is called "packing" and the Obama Justice Department should deny preclearance to any map that packs blacks into one district when it would be easy to create two black majority districts that are both about 53% black. 

Yes, it was very simple to accomplish that

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Districts are 52% and 53% Black respectively.

Well if South Carolina, probably won't work out, at least it should be fairly easy to force a minority-majority seat here.

If you wanted to get three leaning Democratic seats in Alabama you could give Jefferson County it's own seat (it's exactly the right size and it went for Obama in '08) and aggressively gerrymander two black-majority seats (one would probably have to reach up to Huntsville).

A district voting for Obama does not make it "leaning Democratic". After all, it went Democratic by a slightly smaller margin than the nation and importantly, did it with a black surge that may not be present in later elections (the county went 54% for Bush in 2004, for instance).

Well, the whiners about Tuscaloosa were shut up.

New plan in action, pdf here. Really awesome map, passed almost unanimously too. The monkey business proposed by some here is not being seriously contemplated by the Alabama democratic party.


http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20110519/NEWS/110519696/1016/NEWS?p=all


The joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment by a 19-1 vote on Thursday approved a congressional redistricting plan that would keep Etowah County in the 4th Congressional District.

Moving Democrat-leaning Colbert County voters from the 5th District into the majority-Republican 4th District potentially will dilute Democratic voting strength in the 5th District that only recently elected its first Republican.

Hopefully the DOJ will force another majority-minority seat.

Nobody seems to care, but Alabama has a new map. (http://mobile.al.com/advstate/db_96766/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=b4dcOQMl&src=cat&full=true#display) Here it is:

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They actually improved slightly on my plan. I'm impressed.

^^^^

I agree, but AL is only 26% black.

The DOJ would be better off forcing 2 VRA districts in LA and SC. Those states would be more worth the effort.

So is the atrocious three-way split in Montgomery a race thing, or is it just to prevent a Bobby Bright comeback?

It was probably just a way to prevent a split in a different county. No racial element as most of the Montgomery blacks went into the black district.

The Obama DOJ better deny preclearance to this map.  You could very easily create a second black majority district here. 

More likely to protect Mike Rogers. His district currently has a very consistent floor of about 40% for a Democrat; even in 2010, with a nobody opponent, he only won 59-41, and he lost four counties: Coosa (moved to the 6th), Macon, Montgomery (mostly removed), and Russell.

I think he was referring to the fact that they could (and probably should) have moved Rogers out of the County entirely and split it between 2 and 7. That of course would have meant that 2 and 3 would have to split something else.

This is an interesting legal problem. The black voting age population is 24.9% of the state's total, which is equivalent to 1.74 house seats. It's also true that one could certainly draw two-black majority seats in AL. It's not clear whether one must draw two.

The SCOTUS has ruled that if a state creates a number of districts where the minority has control of the district that is roughly proportional to the fraction of the voting age population, then there is no obligation to create additional minority seats. The issue here is what constitutes rough proportionality for a fractional number of districts. Rounding 1.74 to the nearest number gives two seats, but an argument can easily be made that 1 is the nearest whole number that doesn't exceed 1.74, since the decision said that the state didn't have to exceed their standard. Rough is just not a precise term, and the court clearly wanted it that way to avoid the creation of a safe harbor for state redistricting.

I don't buy that logic. If the argument is made that 1 is the nearest whole number that doesn't exceed 1.74, then surely the same logic must be applied to white-majority seats. The white voting age population of Alabama is 69.4% of the state's total, which is equivalent to 4.86 house seats. By that logic, whites are only entitled to 4 house seats, since 4 is the nearest whole number that doesn't exceed 4.86. This would yield 4 white-majority seats and 1 black-majority seat, and leave 2 seats undetermined.

Alternatively, one could simply round both 4.86 and 1.74 to the nearest whole number, yielding 5 white-majority seats and 2 black-majority seats.

Whites are not a protected minority. We're dealing with case law about a minimum number that must be drawn unless it would look totally ridiculous and throw together areas that absolutely don't belong together (which two Black seats in Alabama wouldn't... but two Black seats in South Carolina would... though really it would only look ridiculous... South Carolina, of course, having right about Black population for 2.0 seats, and looking the more winnable case).

They probably just wanted to include Autaga and Elmore in AL-2 and needed a connector, while shoring up the the black percentages in AL-7 and AL-3.  They also appear to have tried to avoid splitting too many counties.

Precleared.

This VRA is a nightmare. I wish the courts would cut it back to the pornography standard, which means it needs to be pretty gross before the courts move in. Better yet would be to just repeal it, which will never happen anytime soon.

This district in particular would be no different. It makes too much sense in the south to shove all the obama vote into 1 district.

Yeah, I understood that adding Montgomery would not be deemed packing when I noticed it was done in the 90s too...

I thought I would look to see how well a district could be drawn in AL with whole counties that would elect a black candidate of choice. Technically the courts have interpreted the VRA to set a 50% threshold to qualify for relief, but have only said that the district should be able to elect the candidate of choice for the minority group. In IL the East St Louis state house district was just drawn with under 50% BVAP, even though a district over 50% could have been drawn.

I started with a whole county district within 0.5% of the ideal population as CD 2. The constraint of the southern population required a path along the eastern edge, which limited the district to 46.0% BVAP. White VAP is at 49.7%, and I suspect this district would elect the candidate of choice for the black minority.

To draw the rest of the map, I used whole counties except for a split of Jefferson, since I found that at least one county needed to be split to maintain districts within 0.5% of the ideal population. The split I used created a second opportunity for blacks in CD 7 which would be 43.6% BVAP.

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I realize I'm a little late commenting on this, but this is a really tough sell. The district is R+1, with both Obama and Kerry underperforming their national average. What's more, in 2008, Jeff Sessions carried the district against an African-American challenger with an African-American on the top of the ticket. While it may be the best that one can do with whole counties, it's hardly a lock.

Ah, as expected, the Alabama House has adopted McClendon's redistricting plan (http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120521/NEWS/305210021/Alabama-House-adopts-redistricting-plan?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage).

Now waiting on the Senate to produce theirs....  

Senate plan:

http://www.legislature.state.al.us/reapportionment/Dial_Senate_Plan_Map.pdf

House plan:

http://www.legislature.state.al.us/reapportionment/McClendon_House_Plan_Map.pdf

The Senate has just approved its redistricting plan. (http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/05/senate_passes_redistricting_pl.html)  

Does anyone think the Justice Department will approve these maps? 

Based on the softball approach to redistricting that the DoJ has taken so far, probably so.

1) First of all, the DoJ has played hardball witness Texas. Since the other maps have complied with the VRA, there has been no basis for an objection.

2) Any serious attempt to play hardball is apt to be meet with a giant judicial bitchslap from the Supreme Court that would not only overrule the DOJ in that case, but might strike down the VRA itself. Notice how the DoJ slinked away in Kingston NC, I think it was.

They could have drawn additional VRA seats in SC, LA and possibly AL.

TX chose to go to the DC circuit while the others went through DOJ first. It sure looks like DOJ thought retaining its position as the first choice for states was more important than seeing minorities get a chance to be represented proportionally to their numbers.

And the fear of Section Whatever (I have no memory for names of things like that) being struck played a large role in that.

But Texas went that route because a) they're morons b) soft enough a ball to okay their first map attempt hasn't been invented yet.