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Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)
Fri Mar 10, 2017, 01:07 PM Mar 2017

Georgia Republicans Pass Racial Gerrymander to Kick Black Voters Out of GOP Districts

Georgia is starting to look like a swing state, and Republicans aren’t happy about it. In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by just 5 points, and demographic trends may continue to erode Republicans’ grasp on the state. Yet because of the state Legislature’s egregious gerrymandering, Republicans hold a near-supermajority in the state House. They’d like to regain an actual supermajority in 2018. So last week, the House passed a bill that would kick black voters out of several GOP districts, trading them for Republican-friendly white voters. The bill will become law with the approval of the Republican-controlled Senate and the signature of Republican Gov. Nathan Deal—both of which seem likely given the enthusiasm that the Georgia GOP has already shown for the measure.

As Aaron Gould Sheinin notes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the gerrymandering bill was introduced with no prior notice and passed in just two days. Its Republican sponsors didn’t even bother to inform Rep. Sheila Jones, a Democrat, about it—despite the fact that it takes two (predominantly white) precincts from her district and gives her two (predominantly black) precincts in return. Republican Rep. Rich Golick will receive Jones’ white precincts. He, along with several other recipients of white-majority precincts, has seen his margins of victory narrow in recent years, hence the desire for more white voters.

Is this legal? Almost certainly not! Under the Equal Protection Clause, Georgia is barred from using race as the “predominant factor” in redistricting. Indeed, last Wednesday, the very same day Georgia Republicans introduced the bill, the Supreme Court affirmed that a gerrymander violates equal protection when a state “subordinates traditional race-neutral districting principles to racial considerations” and views race as the key criterion in redistricting.

Georgia Republicans do not even pretend to have a legitimate reason for this gerrymander. Indeed, they haven’t really attempted to explain why the bill is necessary at all. The timing is very strange—redistricting typically occurs after each decade’s census—and the purpose is obvious: to bolster Republicans’ electoral advantage by removing black voters from their districts and replacing them with whites.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/07/georgia_republicans_pass_racial_gerrymander.html


http://www.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/democrats-cry-foul-house-republicans-redraw-district-lines/sOOXVi3vMCWJCB7gpAntTN/

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Georgia Republicans Pass Racial Gerrymander to Kick Black Voters Out of GOP Districts (Original Post) Blue_Tires Mar 2017 OP
This is why you pack the courts with dishonest sycophants, which the Trump team are about to do. Eliot Rosewater Mar 2017 #1

Eliot Rosewater

(31,097 posts)
1. This is why you pack the courts with dishonest sycophants, which the Trump team are about to do.
Fri Mar 10, 2017, 01:09 PM
Mar 2017

Constitutions, voting rights, these are roadblocks to a political party who is in the minority and knows it.

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