State Legislature Redistricting

[minionofmidas]

The bush was split into 5-6 districts (depending on how one defines it), with one district stretching all the from the Bering Sea way to suburban areas of Fairbanks.  All are high-numbered districts.  The old huge interior bush house district 6 was split up, with the bulk of the population put in HD-39 with Nome.  That district now stretches from Nome to the Canadian border.  

Arguably more like they added Nome to the old 6th, removed the southwestern prong instead, and renumbered it the 39th.

Numbering starts in Fairbanks and spirals southward toward Anchorage, then the panhandle, then the bush.

Why renumber? I don't get that, but whatever...

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You mean Bethel.

Fairbanks looks ugly and gerrymandered (though I'd have to compare closely with precincts maps to see if it actually is... and even then only in the Senate map.) Haven't looked at Anchorage yet, though what I hear about merging Eagle Pass and parts of downtown Anchorage sounds ugly.

[minionofmidas]

A judge threw out Kentucky's state legislative maps.

Apparently, each house drew their own map.  The Republicans sued over the House map for splitting too many counties; A Democrat senator sued after her district was moved (from Lexington to northern Kentucky) so that she can not run for re-election this year.  Meanwhile, a district that is up in 2014 was moved from western Kentucky to Lexington.

The web pages for the senators have been updated to reflect their new districts.  Click on the Democrat from Lexington, and you will see an 8 county area in Northern Kentucky.

The redistricting requirements for Kentucky date from 1891 (don't split counties unless a county has more than one representative), so it sounds like the legislature has kinda followed the constitution while also trying to adhere to OMOV.

The legislature is still doing congressional districting (or may be stalemated).  Now they can do legislative districting again.

The Kentucky and Pennsylvania verdicts are, effectively, identical.
Except that at least it wasn't the state Supreme Court... which is where the case is now going.

[minionofmidas]

The senate had preserved a FL-3 junior district snaking south from Jacksonville to Daytona Beach (since it was smaller it didn't have to get to Orlando), which also pinned a district along the coast.  An illustrative plan keeping the district in Duval County was presented.

So an unabashed gerry to prevent the creation of a Volusia-based marginal, basically? (There shouldn't be a problem creating a minority Senate district in Duval alone, if somewhat on the close side of 50%.) Sounds like they were right to strike that.

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So they're saying the arm is bad, even though Whites live in it (assuming the arm is where I guess it is... Whites do live there). Highly interesting in that case, as that situation is exactly mirrored in the Congressional map (except the southern district is merely Hispanic influence, there not being the numbers for Hispanic opportunity with larger districts.) That incumbent is of course Dan Webster.

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Uh... that don't sound too reasonable. Of course the congressional map already does that, but it does so with good reason that may evaporate with smaller districts.

[minionofmidas]

It doesn't get to be reviewed by the State Supreme Court automatically, but it might end up there. Mind you, it might not, either. I'm not exactly waiting with baited breath.

How do you "challenge FL-26" without demanding the entire south (minus the Black districts) be redrawn from scratch?

Seems that either I'm remembering something that was ever false or Webster moved at one point. He used to live - or I wrongly heard he did - very close to both Adams and Mica, right about where their new district and his new district meet. But now wiki says he lives in a western suburb. *shrug* Anyways, the design doesn't screw Grayson at all, it screws Polk County Republicans in favor of Orange County Republican incumbents.

The State House district in question in the Tampa Bay might have been an actual Black-majority district? That would kinda make sense. Possibly.

What's the complaint regarding FL-4? Some majority Black bit in Jacksonville that had to be excised from Brown's to make the numbers add up better elsewhere?