2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Alabama

[Storr]

Unexpected consequences of AL-02 being eliminated - the black seat has to move south and give up territory in JeffCo, which will mostly go into Palmer's district. Palmer's seat is going to take a Cook PVI hit
https://davesredistricting.org/join/d0310bcc-d5e0-44ec-876c-1d5abb8ab3cb

The AL GOP will probably something like your map, make one currently Titanium R seat at least somewhat more competitive. In this map, Palmer's district would continue to be the white Birmingham suburbs seat, just with more blacks, going from ~15% of the population of the district currently to ~20% in your map. So unless wealthy suburban Birmingham whites start voting Democratic in droves, this would be a Safe 5R-1D map. Though interestingly, even in its current form, Palmer's district has voted slightly less Republican and more Democratic in each of the last four Presidential elections.
 
R: 2004: 78% 2008: 76% 2012: 74% 2016: 71%
D: 2004: 22% 2008: 23% 2012: 25% 2016: 26%

Probably not enough of a shift to make it competitive, even with new JeffCo territory as in this map, but an interesting pattern nonetheless.

[Storr]

When it comes to Alabama redistricting, I'm of the opinion that there should be a Jefferson County based district, a rural/Montgomery VRA seat, a Huntsville/Northern Alabama seat, a Mobile based seat, and the rest I don't care about. Obviously Alabama republicans would not allow this and Democrats are satisfied with the current VRA seat that reaches into Birmingham, but I don't like splitting the major urban center of any state two ways, as the current Alabama map does.

[Storr]

Glad to see the AL-LEG sticking up for clear communities of interest!  Fight this one all the way back to the Supreme Court, boys! 

I'm being serious.  Kavanaugh's concurrence is quite clear that non-proportionality is ok if traditional redistricting criteria are followed (i.e., compactness, COIs, etc.)  The problem is that Alabama never advanced this argument in Milligan, instead arguing that Section 2 was unconstitutional in its entirety.  Kavanaugh didn't follow. 

Take another swing at it, argue the Legislature's map on its merits, and watch Kavanaugh reverse.  5-4 in favor of Alabama. 

I'm not sure how the snake like 4th and 6th districts are compact or keep communities of interest together.

[Storr]

To be honest, I thought Alabama was more likely to propose a map where at least they could configure the other 5 districts how they wanted, but this is just laughable. Not even one of those Con Twitter maps which have a Trump+2 50.1% Black district. Gonna get laughed out of court

Unlike Louisiana, there aren't that many ways to draw two Black-influence seats, so maybe they feel like it's better to get slapped down by the courts than to irritate influential Republicans in Mobile and the Wiregrass.

Yeah, the two of the three (VRA Plaintiffs Remedial and Hatcher Remedial) maps the committee looked at with two majority Black seats are pretty ugly. The AKC plan [shown previously] is by far the best looking of the three maps.

https://twitter.com/RepEngland70/status/1679997860652150785?s=20

https://twitter.com/RepEngland70/status/1679997868629798923?s=20

[Storr]

Second map up is labeled AKC, from the public submissions. Seemingly Would pass court scruitny.



Third map up is "Whole Jefferson," this is a longshot attempt at 7-0 and would be a punt as well. This one came from the web.



4th Map is Singleton Congressional, this map was seen at previous hearings because Singleton is the plaintiff in the secondary suit on racial gerrymandering which remains in lower court. This group of plaintiffs loves near-enoug to whole counties, so this was probably the best they could do for 2 access seats under those rules.

Racial statistics for the AKC Plan which, after a quick glance of the plans that were being considered, is my favorite one:

https://twitter.com/RepEngland70/status/1679997842922905601?s=20