US House Redistricting: Alabama

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

The Obama DOJ better deny preclearance to this map.  You could very easily create a second black majority district here. 

Hopefully the DOJ will force another majority-minority seat.

^^^^

I agree, but AL is only 26% black.

The DOJ would be better off forcing 2 VRA districts in LA and SC. Those states would be more worth the effort.

This is an interesting legal problem. The black voting age population is 24.9% of the state's total, which is equivalent to 1.74 house seats. It's also true that one could certainly draw two-black majority seats in AL. It's not clear whether one must draw two.

The SCOTUS has ruled that if a state creates a number of districts where the minority has control of the district that is roughly proportional to the fraction of the voting age population, then there is no obligation to create additional minority seats. The issue here is what constitutes rough proportionality for a fractional number of districts. Rounding 1.74 to the nearest number gives two seats, but an argument can easily be made that 1 is the nearest whole number that doesn't exceed 1.74, since the decision said that the state didn't have to exceed their standard. Rough is just not a precise term, and the court clearly wanted it that way to avoid the creation of a safe harbor for state redistricting.

I don't buy that logic. If the argument is made that 1 is the nearest whole number that doesn't exceed 1.74, then surely the same logic must be applied to white-majority seats. The white voting age population of Alabama is 69.4% of the state's total, which is equivalent to 4.86 house seats. By that logic, whites are only entitled to 4 house seats, since 4 is the nearest whole number that doesn't exceed 4.86. This would yield 4 white-majority seats and 1 black-majority seat, and leave 2 seats undetermined.

Alternatively, one could simply round both 4.86 and 1.74 to the nearest whole number, yielding 5 white-majority seats and 2 black-majority seats.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

I thought I would look to see how well a district could be drawn in AL with whole counties that would elect a black candidate of choice. Technically the courts have interpreted the VRA to set a 50% threshold to qualify for relief, but have only said that the district should be able to elect the candidate of choice for the minority group. In IL the East St Louis state house district was just drawn with under 50% BVAP, even though a district over 50% could have been drawn.

I started with a whole county district within 0.5% of the ideal population as CD 2. The constraint of the southern population required a path along the eastern edge, which limited the district to 46.0% BVAP. White VAP is at 49.7%, and I suspect this district would elect the candidate of choice for the black minority.

To draw the rest of the map, I used whole counties except for a split of Jefferson, since I found that at least one county needed to be split to maintain districts within 0.5% of the ideal population. The split I used created a second opportunity for blacks in CD 7 which would be 43.6% BVAP.

I realize I'm a little late commenting on this, but this is a really tough sell. The district is R+1, with both Obama and Kerry underperforming their national average. What's more, in 2008, Jeff Sessions carried the district against an African-American challenger with an African-American on the top of the ticket. While it may be the best that one can do with whole counties, it's hardly a lock.