June 28, 2003
Complicated Case
High Court Orders Review of Redistricting Plan (washingtonpost.com)And here was the most complicated case of the Supreme Court's day the other day.
Every ten years after the census, every state's congressional districts get redistricted by the legislature. It's a bit study of demographics, it's partisan, it's a huge mess. If the republicans are in power of the legislature, then they can redistrict everything in the state so that republicans have the maximum chance of getting elected to the national House of Representatives. This kind of strategy is why over 95% of the house races nationwide are not even competitive, because the districts around the candidate have been districted in such a way that that area's demographics do not threaten the office holder.
In southern states with a lot of black voters, the Republican strategy has been to redistrict in such a way so that the black voters are all clumped together to make very large majorities - this means that black representatives are more common, but it also means a bit of wasted voting power for the black voters, which means that the black representatives are more likely to be participating in a representative body that is hostile to their interests.
In Georgia, a democratic legislature tried to redistrict Georgia so there were as many small black majorities as possible in many different districts, so as to create more democratic districts, even though each had less of a strong majority.
The Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds of the Voting Rights act, by saying that this was reducing the chances that black representatives would be elected to the House of Representatives.
As if that weren't backwards enough, the disingenuous Republicans LOST... by a 5-4 margin... with the conservatives in the majority. The liberals (souter, breyer, ginsburg, stevens) dissented by saying there was still opportunity to use that rational for political abuse, but also agreed with the conservatives' rationale otherwise that the Republicans were full of baloney, dealing a defeat to the Republicans and allowing Georgia a better chance to keep a districting plan that is more uniformly Democrat.
If that don't beat all I don't know what does. It just goes to show you that the folks that more visibly call themselves Republican these days are just completely insane. They are so far off to the right of your basic conservative that they really are insane.