The battle over congressional district lines in Louisiana involves how much states should weigh race. The state's new map has been called 'morally repugnant.'
  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
    47·
    6 months ago

    32.8% of Louisiana residents are black. There are six voting districts in Louisiana. A fifth grader could do that math.

    The NAACP had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to get a second district with black majority representation.

    Gerrymandering needs to go.

    • quindraco@lemm.ee
      37·
      6 months ago

      But that’s not how geometry works. If the black voters are uniformly distributed, it becomes impossible to have even a single majority-black district. It’d be like trying to draw apple juice divided into water and fructose districts.

      In practice I doubt they’re uniformly distributed, but your math is terrible and such a fifth grader would deserve the F they got for employing it.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
        9·
        6 months ago

        They are not uniformly distributed, and that’s not really the point. Districting is designed to organize voter regions by counties, cities, or population type. Gerrymandering is the practice of dividing districts through homogeneous areas in order to disenfranchise a voter group. Louisiana’s previous districts were intentionally drawn through lower income areas, intentionally diluting the representation of black voters.