US House Redistricting: Alabama

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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".

What is untraditional about a map like that in Alabama?

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.

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