2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Alabama

[MaxQue]

Let’s say by some miracle this decision stood. Would such a rational be applied to other southern high African American states with GOP gerrymanders? How many seats could that net Dems?

At most, 2. LA and NC (and the NC map is already in front of courts).

[MaxQue]

I doubt you actually believe what you are saying. We both know your “COI” argument is ridiculous in a state where politics and culture largely is racially polarized. You are advocating for splitting up a community of interest, not for keeping one together.

This was a partisan decision as is your support. Just be honest.

I'm passionate about this case because it's a matter of local representation for a community to which I have multiple connections.  My dad worked on the Alabama Gulf Coast while I was growing up, and my brother and his wife live in Mobile.  It's always been somewhat of a second home for me.  I haven't posted any about the redistricting drama happening in NC, FL or even LA, because I don't see this as a partisan issue.  It's about this specific community.

As Alabama's only two coastal counties, Mobile-Baldwin (which together are ~90% of the population needed for a district, btw) is a clear community of interest.    Whether by the French, the Spanish, or the early United States, this region along the Gulf Coast was always grouped together—and separately from the parts of Alabama to the north.  It's still very culturally different from the rest of Alabama today (a fact to which you're happily ignorant); just listen to how effusively it's described in an animus brief that was submitted by Gulf Coast business and civic groups for this case:

Anyone from other parts of Alabama will tell you coastal culture is, well, different. It is difficult for outside observers—even from places as close as Huntsville, Birmingham, and Montgomery—to get their heads around how important Mardi Gras is to Alabamians on the coast.  Stemming from its French Catholic heritage, Mobile is the source of America’s first Mardi Gras celebrations—a fact people from both counties are quick to note when they make friends from New Orleans.  Schoolkids have actual Mardi Gras holidays each year: in 2022, they got—in combination with President’s Day—three straight days off.  Businesses
shut down. Lawyers stop billing hours and get frustratingly hard to find. But the pause is good for the local economy, creating 12,811 jobs.

And as the quote ends with, it's the economy too. The shipping, shipbuilding, commercial fishing, and tourism economy supported by the Gulf Coast make this economy unlike any other in Alabama.  Mobile-Baldwin has been very successful in attracting new jobs and investment over the last 15-30 years, in no small part because the region benefits from having a single congressman who can focus on priorities like navy funding, fishing, coastal infrastructure and hurricane mitigation.  The people of this community share those interests regardless of their partisan affiliation or race. 

Black Mobilians deserve to be counted among and have influence in the community where they actually live, not to be attached to far-flung corners of the state with very different interests.  Each of the proposed remedial maps removed central neighborhoods of the City of Mobile, the beating heart of Alabama's Gulf Coast, and combined them with distant rural areas hours east on the Georgia state line.  The only way to justify such a district is by letting race predominate, which is transparently what you and other liberals believe:  race must come first when drawing districts.  Such explicitly race-based criteria are exactly what the VRA was written to eliminate.

My only question to you and other liberals cheering this case is this:  can you describe, succiently and in common language (which is something Roberts' opinion is not) what evidence there is the map passed by the Legislature in 2021 was an illegal racial gerrymander?  by what metric can we say this map prevents Black Alabamians from participating in an "equally open" political process?  You cannot make that argument without advancing an implicit claim of racial proportionality, which Congress and the courts have been clear Section 2 doesn't require.  That is SCOTUS' error.     

Do you seriously believe most black voters in Mobile would rather be represented by a Republican than a Democrat from outside Mobile?

It doesn't matter.  Section 2 isn't about making sure Black voters are represented by Democrats.  It's about eliminating discriminatory election practices.  No voter has the right to a congressman of his choosing; he only has the right that the election is not stacked against him on the basis of his race.   

And, as a wise jurist once said:  "the best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."  Mandating a second majority-Black seat in Alabama is opening the door to election practices and proceedings that enhance race-based categories under the law.   

That wise jurist isn't very wise, he's just not smart enough to see beyond tautologies.

[MaxQue]

Another affirmative action congressman coming for Alabama it seems.

Alabama dems have 8 state senate seats, a fair and compact map would leave them with 4.
28 house seats, with a fair map they would only have 16-20.

4 Senate Seats?!?  Birmingham alone should be 3, those districts are all close to 60% black or even above that in the case of SD-20.  Are you splitting the city five ways or something?

Montgomery and Mobile Counties should both have Black majority districts too (1 each) especially with how concentrated the minority populations are.  They'd have to be intentional cracked to not have them.

On top of that at "least" two black rural districts should come naturally too, it's not like they need any special tentacles or county splits to make them happen.

This doesn't even touch how Republicans gerrymandered Madison County just perfectly to not have any D seats.

Birmingham should only have 2 safe D state senate seats, it doesn't make any sense to do 3 unless you're consciously using race-based gerrymandering like what we have now to unnaturally minimize white Republican representation in favor of black.
This requires splitting cleanly splitting Bham into two districts, one north-eastern district which also includes Center Point and the white liberal parts of the city, and one southwestern which includes Pleasant Grove, 90% of Bessemer and a few other towns.
You have to split Birmingham three ways and dilute strongly white, republican areas in order to unfairly create more democratic districts.

Then you have one black district which includes Dallas, Lowndes, and the black-majority part of Montgomery. Then you have one-more black majority seat which includes most of the rest of the black belt, perhaps with a sliver of tuscaloosa county, which comes out as roughly even in partisanship.

Mobile County doesn't need a black-majority seat, if the black community needs a black senator (since it seems racial nationalism is good when minorities do it), they should get behind a black Republican. Madison County, which is less than a quarter black, obviously doesn't either. There's your 4 seats (3 in a good republican year, maybe 5 or 6 in a good democratic year).

Then you aren't really making a "fair and compact map" since the City of Mobile has well over a Senate seat worth of population and would deserve it's own senator, same would really go for Tuscaloosa to some degree, although some rural population is needed and would be a swing seat more than anything.  Huntsville has crazy borders but making a "fair and compact" Dem seat in the city limits is very easy.  

One of the three rural seats can probably be eliminated but there should be one in the east and one in the west, both very compact.

If all you're doing is drawing the lines to the benefit of Republicans while ignoring municipal lines, then there's nothing "fair and compact" about that.

The Mobile senate seats I drew make more sense then they're drawn currently, with the black seat spanning across the river into Baldwin county. And they're all at least likely R. Mobile is a solidly Republican county, there's no reason democrats need to be given a freebie state senate there just because it's feasible.

There isn't anything fair about using racial quotas to maximize democratic officeholders in an overwhelmingly republican state. There's no self-evident universal principle that there needs to be any blue districts drawn, even giving the democrats 3 or 4 is practically charity.

I think you missed the day where black people stopped counting as 0.6 persons.