I'd probably better wait a bit to see how the renewed maps shake out, but this Supreme Court decision (or non-decision?) requiring Alabama to rewrite Congressional district maps so that there are two majority black districts bothers me a touch. I understand the history of discrimination in the state, but something rankles about a demand to create two safe districts this way. The flip side, I guess, is that it tends to be used to put Democrats in supermajority districts, so it's not that bad of news for the GOP, except for the fact that currently, the lines are drawn (in a somewhat gerrymandered fashion) that gives the Democrats one supermajority district, the GOP one barely majority district, and the GOP five supermajority districts. So the GOP stands to lose a seat from this.
Might be interesting to see how one would draw two majority black districts without totally gerrymandering the state, I think. So I'm torn between the historic discrimination against blacks in Alabama and the reality that when you're trying to cobble together a "ringer" district or two, you're almost guaranteed to get a nasty gerrymander along the lines of what the Democrats have done around Chicago.
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