Speaking of hacking, I wished I had hacked into the conference. I'm jealous!
1. "There may be new challenges that relate to areas where two different minorities are in the same geography, but favor different candidates of choice. Primary election data will be more important in this cycle."
Is this meant to imply that one needs to determine if the two minorities are "friends" or "enemies," and if friends that then you can aggregate to trigger the VRA? If so, is this based on speculation of the legal future or actual case law? Is it further meant to imply that if Hispanic CVAP's don't vote relatively speaking, that there is no safe harbor for a district that is 50% HCVAP, due to poor turnout, such that it elects a white or a black, if a CD with a higher HCVAP that would make it performing, is available that is not unduly erose?
2. "Due to Differential Privacy that expectation of exact equality will be even more suspect, so there may be new challenges to the meaning of one-man-one-vote based on that."
How does this smudging or Differential Privacy work exactly, and how was individual privacy compromised using block data (other than blocks with very few people)"
3. "Partisan gerrymandering will still be challenged
but it will be in state courts. States with an explicit "free and fair" election clause in their constitutions are ones where those challenges are most likely to succeed (as in PA and NC)."
Is the "but" word you used meant to imply that there is some change in the law?
4. "Map makers should use neutral principles to the extent possible and use race in the least disruptive way to those principles, consistent with requirements of the VRA. The VRA is not a crutch to gerrymander districts."
Again, is the above meant to convey speculation as to the evolution of the law, or is it based on something more than the stricture that one cannot, using the VRA as a shield, go over 50% CVAP, pursuant to making an erose performing minority district that, absent the VRA would be illegal, where there is a non erose one available to draw.
In its essence, my understanding of the VRA law, after wading through all the sound and fury, is that aside from other anti gerrymandering laws, you can draw any minority CD you want no matter how erose provided it does not go over 50% CVAP (except maybe if it contains two very separated minority areas such as Yuma and Tucson, or Austin and the Rio Grande Valley), and must draw a performing minority CD (two minorities cannot be aggregated), if it can be drawn compactly with a 50% or more CVAP, and may not gerrymander to go over 50% CVAP if a non gerrymandered version is available that reaches 50% CVAP, and of course may go lower than 50% CVAP, provided it is performing. Are there more lawyers to the onion now, or ones that I have missed in the past?
And that is all I have at the moment. Thank you Muon2.
