My read of the article I posted was that the obligation exists when the right people are asked to create the minority majority district and a proposal of how to draw it is presented.
I assume the obligation falls away when it becomes not feasible to keep it. In the case of Illinois, I rather doubt that going from 18 to 17 seats makes it no longer feasible given that Hispanics are between 1/5th and 1/6th of the population and do have some fairly tightly packed neighborhoods. (Registered voters probably lower than overall population since Hispanics will skew younger, but still.)
IANAL, and I am certainly not a VRA expert, just my take.
Yeah, that’s not even slightly surprising. The question is, how harmful is it for people to self-segregate into neighborhoods of people like them? I get that this is something that will perpetuate. Is that harmful? Or is it useful for Indians to live near other Indians near restaurants and food markets that have items that might be harder to find in chain restaurants and grocery stores? Or for Jews to live within walking distance of synagogues so they can walk to services on the sabbath, thus significantly reducing the neighborhoods they may choose from?
I’m certainly not saying that I specifically want segregation… absolutely not. But given that it’s somewhat natural, is it worth expending time and energy to overcome? And if it is, what would that even look like? You’re surely not going to force people to live places they actively don’t want to live, right? Certainly in the case of religious segregation that will fly in the face of the first amendment.
Interesting simulation. It’s especially telling that if you start with a segregated pattern, it doesn’t become mixed by simply having everyone say “I’m not sensitive to square/triangle neighbors”. And, we are starting with a segregated pattern.
But, that’s not all. We’re not only segregated by shape, we are also segregated by income.
Suppose that people tend to buy a house with a price that is consistent with their incomes.
Modify the simulation by giving every location a price. Create a new board with a rule where each house added is more likely to be around similarly priced houses than differently priced houses.
Assume that both both squares and triangles have both higher and lower income individuals. But, one is clearly shifted more towards “high” and the other is clearly shifted more toward “low”.
Now we have two sliders. One might say I have a preference for mixed neighborhoods. The other says I have a preference for buying a house that reflects my income. And, of course, I can’t really buy a more expensive house than my income allows.
I expect it would take a very strong desire to live in a mixed neighborhood vs. my desire to live in a house that reflects my income, to get substantial mixing. High income shapes will have to have an extremely strong desire to live in shape mixed neighborhoods to get them to live in houses that are far less appealing than the houses they can afford. And then you’ve got high income individuals moving into priced neighborhoods and squeezing out the individuals who can only afford low prices.
Of course you can. The so-called protections they put in now mean that instead of being capable of buying a house that costs 4x what you can afford, now they will only let you buy a house that costs 2.5x what you can afford.
Interestingly, probably the most economically diverse place I ever lived was the condo. Units that were fixed up and had mountain views went for $750K+. Unrenovated units with no view went for $300K.
Probably the most racially diverse too, but certainly not the most age-diverse. It was me and the seniors. But that was fine. Old people make fantastic neighbors.
Not gerrymandering, but something I heard about on the radio today that made me want to share:
It’s pretty well known that the person listed first gets an advantage, isn’t it?
I don’t know much about election logistics, so maybe there is a good reason why all of the ballots should be printed in the same order. If so, it seems like they should do the opposite of this - make the party that did the best last time prove that they can overcome the disadvantage of going 2nd.
Completely randomized on each ballot would be best - including any 3rd party candidates.
CAS ballots are just randomized. It’s a nuisance if I stop part way through to research something, and have to re-load the ballot. All of the names are in different places.
So a couple years ago Utah passed a citizen initiative to have a commission determine the congressional districts and the legislature having to vote that up or down. Can’t remember exactly what happened if it was voted down.
The legislature decided to repeal it but the backers of the initiative negotiated a compromise with the legislature to keep it and just modify it. Modification basically said the commission would propose a map but the legislature could still have their committee draw up a map. The legislature committee could then determine which map to propose to the full legislature.
So now the legislature’s committee drew up a map that essentially guarantees 4 R dominated districts and splits up the SLC which is predominantly D into the 4 districts. Now the backers of the initiative who agreed to the compromise are crying foul. I’m floored they believed that this wouldn’t be the result of their compromise.
Probably would have been better to let the legislature repeal the voters choice and then start again and campaign against those who worked to repeal the voters decision.
yeah, their surprise seems odd. Maybe the people who agreed to that “compromise” weren’t actually the backers of the initiative, but politicians who benefit from gerrymandering?
On NPR this morning, an expert pointed out Oregon’s districts are splitting up overwhelmingly Dem. Portland into three separate districts that also encompass some rural areas, and have not-quite-so-overwhelmingly-but-still-reliable D majorities.
Well, it was the leaders of the groups that funded the initiative that negotiated with the legislature. I know the legislature was not happy with the initiative to begin with.
There has been a number of things pushed through the initiative process in Utah recently that have tried to reduce the Republican control of the state. Many of these have been pushed by fairly loyal Republicans but they are those who are more moderate Republicans and have seen how the party has been moving to the right and are trying to keep it from moving too far.
Not sure if anyone remembers but a sitting fairly popular Republican Senator Robert Bennett was ousted in the convention and the race still went to a primary. So Bennett was beaten in convention by 2 candidates. I’m fairly sure had he gone to a primary he probably would have won the primary and then the general election.
After that, these moderate Republicans got a citizen initiative to create a 2 prong method to get to the primary. You could go through the convention process or you could gather signatures to go directly to the primary. Or you could do both. That law has been modified a number of times by the legislature but has yet to be fully overwritten, meaning the 2 prongs still exist.
Interestingly, one R house member from Utah retired in 2012 rather than run in his redrawn district because the legislature had redrawn the districts to give R’s a better chance of getting all 4 seats. But that made his district larger and more diverse geographically and politically and he decided he didn’t want to put out the effort to campaign as hard as it would require to win his seat again. He was promptly replaced by another Republican anyway and fairly easily at that.
Hey look! NC back in the news for gerrymandering! Who would’ve thought?
North Carolina map-makers used “concept maps” unseen by the public to draw parts of the state House map now under scrutiny in an ongoing gerrymandering lawsuit, according to a key lawmaker’s deposition in the case.
…
Those maps were not saved and are “currently lost and no longer exist,” Hall’s legal team said in its response filing.
Interesting to think we might actually be a blue state if we weren’t already a red state.
