LAT: For Democrats, Power to Remap Congressional Districts Is Tricky Tool

SUPREME COURT RULINGS
For Democrats, Power to Remap Is a Tricky Tool
The high court decision gives the party a chance to gain House seats. But redrawing districts may alienate minorities or stir other tensions.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
June 29, 2006

.... the Voting Rights Act, which was changed in the 1980s to require that more districts be drawn to elect minority lawmakers, also has led to a so-called whitening of surrounding districts that, in effect, guarantees the election of greater numbers of Republicans. An element of Wednesday's high court ruling faulted the Texas plan for diluting Latino voting power in one district.

Creating more Democratic seats could require shifting African American voters from districts designed to elect black lawmakers into neighboring districts more likely to elect a white candidate. In California and New York, and across the South, Democrats who want to redraw the maps would be forced to confront black leaders who have long advocated electing minorities to Congress even if it means handing the majority to the GOP.

In the early 1990s, Republicans made gains — leading to their 1994 takeover of the House — after GOP lawmakers across the country teamed up with civil rights leaders to draw maps creating more minority seats than had been proposed by the Democrats, who held power in many places at the time.

Wednesday's ruling forces Democrats to face that uncomfortable political reality once again.

"It requires a very solid Democratic coalition, with white Democrats and black Democrats together, to be willing to strike a bargain where both sides take some hits in hopes of capturing more seats," said David Epstein, a Columbia University political scientist and co-editor of a forthcoming book on the Voting Rights Act. "There's a great tension between the emotional tradition of voting rights politics on the one hand and the more strategic gerrymandering calculus on the other."...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-states29jun29,0,587928.story?coll=la-home-nation

Win elections, and do the exact same thing to them.

...doesn't!

I don't like it; this having to stoop to their level, but if this is what it takes, then we should go for it otherwise America is doomed, and this is about rescuing her from those rightwing-nuts determined to destroy the greatest democracy the world has ever known.

You need to break eggs to make an omelet.

I mean, they leaked the same info that the NY Times did . . .

CBS, NYT....

funny how the NYTimes sat on its ass when it came to things which might have sunk Bush in 04 . . .

If the Dems want more seats, can't they just do that now in every State that flipped Democratic in 04?

But doing it in enough states to give us the majority would still keep those Dems winning with significant margins.

My head wants them drawn so wildly gerrymandered that we never lose another election.