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After Gutting the Voting Rights Act, Alabama Cites It As an Excuse for Racial Gerrymandering
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/alabama-supreme-court-racial-gerrymanderingYou have to give Alabama credit for its cheek. Last year, the state's Shelby County persuaded the US Supreme Court to find unconstitutional part of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states with histories of discriminatory election laws to get permission from the federal government before changing their voting practices. On Wednesday, Alabama will argue before the court that the same provision it helped decimate compelled lawmakers to racially gerrymander the entire state....
One district in Montgomery—nearly 72 percent black and already represented by an African American Democratic senator—needed an additional 16,000 residents to make up for population loss since 2000. GOP map makers reconfigured the district to add 15,785 new residents. Only 36 of those new residents were white. While working hard to add every possible black voter in the vicinity to the district, legislators moved white people out of the district and creatively drew the map to exclude a majority-white area of Montgomery. The impact of the segregated redistricting on this month's election was stark: The number of white Democrats in the state Senate fell from four to one....
Alabama has defended itself in the case by arguing that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required the state, during the redistricting process, to maintain the same number of majority-minority districts, with roughly the same percentage of minority voters.
Section 5 is the provision of the VRA at the heart of the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder last year. In that case, the court invalidated another part of the law, rendering Section 5 unenforceable and freeing states like Alabama from federal oversight of its voting laws and redistricting plans on the grounds that times had changed. But the federal government could still enforce Section 5 at the time of the Alabama redistricting (a fact that now further complicates the case at the Supreme Court).
One district in Montgomery—nearly 72 percent black and already represented by an African American Democratic senator—needed an additional 16,000 residents to make up for population loss since 2000. GOP map makers reconfigured the district to add 15,785 new residents. Only 36 of those new residents were white. While working hard to add every possible black voter in the vicinity to the district, legislators moved white people out of the district and creatively drew the map to exclude a majority-white area of Montgomery. The impact of the segregated redistricting on this month's election was stark: The number of white Democrats in the state Senate fell from four to one....
Alabama has defended itself in the case by arguing that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required the state, during the redistricting process, to maintain the same number of majority-minority districts, with roughly the same percentage of minority voters.
Section 5 is the provision of the VRA at the heart of the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder last year. In that case, the court invalidated another part of the law, rendering Section 5 unenforceable and freeing states like Alabama from federal oversight of its voting laws and redistricting plans on the grounds that times had changed. But the federal government could still enforce Section 5 at the time of the Alabama redistricting (a fact that now further complicates the case at the Supreme Court).
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