A strictly computer generated, voting district map would end all this nonsense.
Yeah... Maybe... That's one of those ideas I like in principle, but when you dig into the details it's trickier... Like some ways you can design a computer program dramatically tend to favor Republicans, other ways tend to dramatically favor Democrats. For example, Democrats tend to be more concentrated in cities. Some approaches computer programs use end up being way more favorable for the party that is more concentrated, some for the party that is less. Or maybe in key swing states Democrats tend to be more concentrated if you split the state up on east to west bands and Republicans if you split it up on north to south bands or whatever. A neutral sounding logic for how to split them up still has dramatic effects on election results, and the parties are very keenly aware of what those are, so picking a program is basically just gerrymandering all over again, but this time with a more complicated set of tools.
I kind of think that ultimately we'll go the way of a computer program, but so far, it doesn't seem like anybody has really nailed what a fair computer program would be.
That's not true.
Gerrymandering isn't about abusing minorities, it's about concentrating power for a political group.
News to the world, the South doesn't hate black people.
Well, it's a tricky issue, right? Trying to squeeze out Democrats so their votes don't really count in the south means trying to prevent the votes of black people from counting. Is the motivation hate for black people? No. Or at least mostly no. But still, we don't allow states to try to prevent minorities votes from being counted.
When you look at the actual cases and maps, the things the south has the gumption to continually keep trying to this day are pretty shocking. For example, there is a case in the courts now about two cities in Georgia that just incorporated. They both have centers that are mostly black and white suburbs. So guess how they drew the city limits? Donuts around the black area with the black middle cut out. Meaning that very few of the black people would be able to vote for the mayor or city council for the city they live in... Now, are they thinking "man, I hate black people"? I dunno. Probably some are. Probably more are on some kind of halfway point where they are thinking they only want "responsible, upstanding, established, long term residents voting" or whatever, and that turns out to mostly correlate to "white people" in their heads. Maybe they are thinking they want the town to be more prosperous, so they want to include only better off areas. Trying to untangle that mess of motives to figure out what to do is nearly impossible. So we have to just look at the actual effects. And, especially given the history in the south, we just can't overlook changes that have the effect of screwing the black people out of voting.
The courts and the legislature tried much, much, less intrusive standards for decades. More than 90 years actually, they just had vague standards saying that you couldn't intentionally discriminate against minorities in voting. Courts applied loose standards looking only for the most blatant stuff. But it didn't work. The south used literacy tests, at large districts, gerrymandering, poll taxes, "moral character tests", gerrymandering, etc, to effectively completely block all attempts for black people to participate in our democracy. For 90 years the courts and congress tried a wide variety of different ways to try to make sure that blacks had a meaningful ability to vote, but nothing worked. The southern states just kept coming up with new schemes, creating new discriminatory procedures right before the election so courts couldn't overturn them in time, etc. Eventually they just had to drop the hammer and force the south to cut it out. The voting rights act is what it took.
Now, you can eventually get removed from the list of jurisdictions that is under the strict scrutiny of section 5 of the VRA. That's what this case is about- this jurisdiction in Texas is still held to the tough section 5 standard because of past discrimination. In order to get off the list, they need to go 10 years in a row without a court finding that they were discriminating with relation to voting. Hopefully they'll strive for that goal and get themselves off the list. But until then, IMO, we need to keep watching them pretty close.