Next week, lawyers for the State of Alabama will have to defend the irrational lines, when it argues the 2012 redistricting before the United States Supreme Court. The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus has challenged the new lines in court, and although a lower court ruled in the states favor, the high court has agreed to hear the case. The plaintiffs in the case have argued that the courts decision could determine how legislative districting works in the 21st Century, and if the court rules in the plaintiffs favor, it could even potentially force a do-over election within the next two years. al/news/index.ssf/2014/11/alabama_democrats_take_redistr.html In our county, they rearranged HD-8 so that a large number of blacks were REMOVED from HD-8 and put into HD-4 and HD-7 which reduced their impact. PLUS, as a favor to the 2010 GOP winner in HD-8, they did fancy map drawing of a little ARM from HD-7 across the top of the county, so that Terri Collins Dem opponents house street was GRABBED and tossed into a separate county, so that she couldnt run against Terri this year. And for SD-1 (Tammy Irons) instead of her having a concise district of the Shoals area (in NW AL), they split up Florence from the other Tri-Cities, and stretched that district all of the way to Madison County. What most Alabamians dont realize is that this map increased the percentage of black voters in Montgomery districts SO HIGH, then REMOVED a black district (number) from there and plopped it into the middle of Birmingham. Then it did similar rearranging in Bham, then pulled HD-53 out of there and dumped it into the black areas of Huntsville. So, technically it maintained the same number of black majority districts, but it caused incumbents to run against each other in merged districts (or move).
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 21:57:58 +0000