US House Redistricting: Georgia

[muon2]

Why wouldn't the second district be protected by the VRA? And maybe you're thinking of the 2002-6 version of the thirteenth or something.

Well, its a plurality, not a majority district.

I thought we'd been over that... random cutoff points have no real relevance to the Voting Rights Act. The relevant question is whether South Georgia has enough Blacks to "deserve" a Representative of their choice, and whether the district boundaries are drawn in such a fashion as to give it to them. There are no two plausible answers on either question.

Didn't the Supreme Court decline to require such a district in South Georgia in the 90s?

That was, precisely, a not-at-all-compact district. That actually anchored into the Atlanta Metro. When the state had fewer districts to go round.

Though yeah (and somewhat bizarrely) it was Republicans who wrote the anti-gerrymandering caselaw connected to the VRA, in a series of partisan 5-4 decisions in the 90s. Basically, you can't legally discriminate Black voters, or Hispanic voters, or Native voters, *either positively or negatively*. Though you have to do so fairly badly to actually be called on it. This is really just Kennedy's and O'Connor's position; Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Ginsburg and Breyer have no record of ruling anything beyond "this is bad for my party and therefore I'm vetoing it because I can", and the Obama appointees haven't been on the court for any VRA case.
The court has been careful never to go so far as to say you can't gerrymander VRA states at all (or, only the areas of the state where race doesn't have anything to do with it - you certainly still can  with Austin liberals all you like), and it will be careful not to in the future either, but it would have been the logical conclusion to its argument.

Given that GA is 30% black, any map that doesn't have at least 4 districts where blacks can elect a candidate of their choice would be subject to a section 2 challenge, and the DOJ would probably reject it under section 5 for the same reason. That wouldn't help the GA AG if he wants to pick a fight over the applicability of section 5.

The legislature may want a map that is as safe from section 2 as they can imagine, but still picks a fight with the DOJ. That would certainly include squeezing out Barrow while making 4 districts with >50% black VAP to meet the standard set in the 2009 Bartlett decision.

[muon2]

What are the VRA requirements for an area to need two such VRA districts? And what line would the Supreme Court take on them?

In De Grandy (1994), the SCOTUS ruled that a state is not obligated to create more minority districts than would be expected based on the proportion of that minority in the state.

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So, as I posted earlier, the magic number for GA is 4 CDs to avoid a section 2 challenge. GA is a section 5 state and requires preclearance. Typically this is done by filing with DoJ. However, the state can also file its proposed district changes with the Federal District Court of DC, and skip DoJ. I presume that the DC Court would look to the section 2 standard set in De Grandy.

[muon2]

You're overstating the PVIs in your calculation. PVI isn't Democratic minus Republican (or the reverse); it's the difference between one party's vote and the most recent result. The absolute maximum Democratic PVI, using 2008 as a base, is D+47; the absolute maximum Republican PVI is R+53.

On the assumption that 2008 was 53D-47R, a 60D-40R seat is D+7, not D+20 or D+14. A 60R-40D seat is R+13, not R+20 or R+26.

Haha, wow, thanks Verily. All these years I've been entirely misunderstood what PVI meant. All I can think to say is, "derp."

More accurately the PVI (or Cook PVI after its originator) is found by taking the average of the last two presidential elections considering only the two party vote. The PVI then measures the difference between the district and the nation as a whole.

Obama took 53.7% of the two party vote nationally, and Bush took 51.2% in 2004. The net is 51.3% for the Dems for the two cycles. A district's current PVI comes by comparing the district average to a baseline of 51.3% Dem.

[muon2]

http://buckhead.patch.com/articles/lindsey-praises-u-s-approval-of-georgia-redistricting-maps

Precleared.

I believe that wraps up the South?

SC, NC, MS, AL, LA area all finished.

I would have thought the DOJ would object to GA-12.  Rather surprising they didn't.  Maybe they feel that GA-02 now provides sufficient opportunity in south GA?

Georgia also had a secondary lawsuit in place to overturn S5.

Is that the real reason DOJ has been so accommodating to the southern state review? By accepting the plans it negates any section 5 challenge. Many observers think that the court could be ripe to overturn section 5 and this way DOJ maintains its authority without challenge.