1982 voting rights act amendment

[AlanCranston]

90-95% of the voting rights act is good law, but i object to the 1982 amendment. The VRA originally said that minority members of congress (which at the time were in northern and eastern areas like Conyers Detroit district or Stokes Cleveland district) could not have there districts tampered with to get rid of them. However, they basically said that beginning in the 1990 census, a minority majority district had to be drawn wherever possible. This signaled the beginning of gerrymandered monstrosities like the third district in northern florida and the eleventh district in North Carolina. The people on one end of the districts hardly share the same set of values or customs as the ones on the other hand. There is no such thing as a community of interest in those districts except for the fact that the people there have the same color of skin. If you really want to know why democrats all of a sudden found it harder to retain a majority after the 1990 census, it is because districts like FL 3 or NC 11 were drawn and basically became vote sink districts and all the democrats in surrounding districts were hereby f---ed.

Now if this post will have one of those flame things next to it, I will gladly delete this to avoid getting banned.

[bluestateguy]

1. Racial gerrymandering backfired on Southern Democrats in the 1990's and 2000's

By packing all of the black cites and counties into a few safe minority-majority districts which would be safe for a Democrat, all the surrounding districts became pasty white and safely Republican. That resulted in more good ole boy Southern Republicans in the House who are impossible to defeat.