• hypna@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    This issue is actually pretty weird. Racial gerrymandering is a violation of the voting rights act, hence illegal. Partisan gerrymandering is completely legal.

    In practice this seems to mean that it is harder to gerrymander in states where racial voting patterns align with party, e.g. whites vote Republican, blacks vote Democrat. In states where party lines do not predominantly fall on racial lines, you can hack up the districts to favor your party as much as you like.

    • dogerwaul@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      3 days ago

      wow, i did not know that. thank you for elaborating. i looked into it further and found SCOTUS asshole Roberts: "The Constitution supplies no objective measure for assessing whether a districting map treats a political party fairly.” lol cool, cool…

        • tomenzgg@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          So much of their arguments rely on that; “clearly the Constitution says nothing explicitly on this issue (or alternatively, the constitution wasn’t microscopically specific this was a case it had in mind so, really, who are we to allow it to apply to this scenario?); as an originalist, I just presume that there was no intent rather than assuming anyone in the project of writing a founding document has any interest in it working fairly or well.”