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Last week, the court struck down a Louisiana congressional map with a second majority-Black district. The decision requires there to be evidence of intentional racism to prove that a map is discriminatory, making it nearly impossible to successfully challenge racial gerrymandering.
6-3 decision along partisan lines
This is what you voted for protest-non-voters, 2016 edition.
Well... without Mitchell McConnell ignoring the Constitution to get two extra appointees for Trump 1, we might be at a 4-5 decision the other way...
Doesn’t this negate any map, then? This seems messed up on its face.
It negates any map that was designed specifically to counteract racism, because considering racism is, by definition, taking race into account. (According to their logic)
Notably, specifically designing a district map to give a specific political party an edge is not illegal. This will be a race to the bottom and all voters should be pissed. The natural end result will be states with GOP-controlled legislature will craft maps such that only the GOP can win and Dems will have to do the same to even hope to keep the playing field level.
People all across the political spectrum will lose any chance at representation, depending on how their political leanings compare with the legislature of their state.
Thank you for explanation. It’s difficult to square away current maps that favor GQP and it not racially leaning.
Yes protest voters did this
More judge approved gerrymandering.
Now we get to wait until after the midterms to see if the Supreme Court shoots down the new maps based on race after ruling that maps can’t be drawn based on race.
I think the reasoning is that since black people vote like 80% Democrat, drawing maps to ensure no black people get elected is fine. There are no federal laws against purely partisan gerrymandering, after all.
And honestly with this Supreme Court, even if the state legislatures involved said very loudly "we changed the voting districts for the express purpose of limiting black representation" they would find some convoluted way of allowing it.
I used to support adding 3-5 seats to the Supreme Court, but no longer. Now I believe we should add around 20 seats, and have a SCOTUS that's 29 or 31 members, with staggered term limits, so that every president gets to choose a few, but not enough to fundamentally change the direction of the court.
SCOTUS shouldn't be so small that one president acting in bad faith can negatively influence American policy for the next 50 years.
honestly you changed my mind on it. I was leaning toward a 15 member court but a 31-35 member court would (1) get so fucking much done and (2) allow each president to seat enough justices that they felt they made a sizable historical dent on the court that hopefully they wouldn't try to ratfuck it so much (and my pony will breath fire). we've been talking (at least amongst my legal circles) about massively expanding the appellate courts for years, why are we not talking the same about the supreme courts?
part of the problem is ruling on nationwide edicts. they'd need to seat the entire damn court en banc and vote en banc (latin legal term. it means the whole damn group of judges). i'm not sure how to make it seem fair otherwise. which slows the court back down to its current pace.
I'm not too worried about the speed, slowing down the process would probably be good in many cases.
I don't see a problem in seating them all. They have to show up for work every day, like anyone else. If it's a court day, they're expected to be there.
justice delayed is justice denied. i know it's a quip but it's true. when you have to go through the legal system what little justice you get comes far too late as it is. we need more judges so we can process things faster so people don't have to sit in jail waiting for their cases because they can't afford bail (which shouldn't exist in the first place but don't get me started. or let me go off further)
If democracy isn't equal for all races, it isn't a democracy. USA is a dysfunctional democracy, and not a real democracy.
Gerrymandering is always a risky gamble...
And lots of times, gerrymandering aims to get what there was there. They lump all of "them" in as few of districts as possible, because anything over 50.1% is "wasted" votes.
Republicans feel like they can win all the seats, and in doing so can lose even more
They constant underestimate how many people don't vote but disagree with them. Staring down two elections likely to have historic turnout for the Dems, this is the absolute worst time to be trying to capture every seat
Like, their intentions are evil here, but they're so stupid they're shooting themselves in the foot again.
Somehow, I hope roberts and his cohorts get replaced by the most liberal immigrants in america. We need real change, not regression.
This whole thing is going to explode in their faces one way or another. I just doubt they'll ever see consequences.
Right now while people are pissed at Republicans, the most progressive candidates need to be running everywhere. Especially places that Dems usually avoid.
Get the protest votes, take Congress back and fix some of the root causes.
Many of the bullshit issues we are dealing with not stem from simple things Congress has passed by regular majority votes over the last 100 years. They don't require Constitutional Amendments or anything complicated, just a Congress doing it's job.
Repeal the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 that artificially caps the House at 435. Passed in large part just because they just didn't want to expand the Capitol Building. Remove the defacto second Senate that created. Give us those additional House seats to actually be represented and make gerrymandering much less effective at the Federal level. If we used the average district size at the time that was passed, we would have roughly 1500 representatives. There would be no 1 or 2 seat majorities to dramatically flip Congressional priorities every couple years, stabilizing Congress and requiring more compromises.
Expand the Supreme Court to the 12 Justices it should be, matching the 12 Federal Circuits as it was originally designed.
Move the US Marshal Service under the Judicial branch to execute Judicial decisions. This allows the courts an enforcement mechanism if the Executive doesn't want to comply, and the Legislative is complicit and unwilling to impeach and remove.
These alone would get us extremely far with fixing the bullshit they've done in the last 200 years to destroy true Democracy in this country.
Then once stabilized, the actual deep issues can start to be addressed.
I hope the vote counting machines crash
Never underestimate how low the usa can go.
And never assumed we've reached the bottom yet.
I used to think we'd hit bottom and bounce back up- at least for a little while, but it seems there is no bottom. Makes me wish Canada and Mexico would just invade. If I heard they were coming I'd stock up on beers popular in both countries and patiently wait to rush outside an greet them.
That was a nice little 5 seconds of fantasizing, back to malicious compliance now.
Well just remember, never burn down a warehouse or shoot a healthcare CEO. Because that would be bad.
Especially without and alibi or and good escape route.
My thoughts are more oi line with publicly marching a guillotine through the streets.
Bad idea. Trump is itching to use the insurrection act to take complete control. Decentralized resistance is best. Don’t give them a head to kill or you end up like MLK and Medgar Evers.
Please allow me my internal daydreams ><
Internal day dreams have been outsource to Google and now available by subscription only. Thank you for your cooperation during this transition.
I'm on graphene and Linux, come get them
I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!
I don’t think they are from the wizard of oz.
They look more like Greeks or Spartans.
Yeah, just thought PHALANX, wasn't really thinking of the wizard. This is related but less fitting. https://youtube.com/shorts/fd5Gcxj9w1Q
Oh, that’s a fun video.
I bet if Canada invaded America, a lot of Americans would side with Canada