Swing State project continues its gerrymandering prediction series with Pennsylvania. They’ve come up with some terrifically ugly districts - nice job.
More to come on the actual production of the film (including two recent trips to Florida, an interview with Howard Dean, and the addition to our team of a great editor) shortly…
George Will tackles the implication of Bartlett in his most recent column. We’re going to probe these kinds of claims around racial redistricting in the film - it’s pretty nasty stuff, tough to disentangle, and both sides are pretty entrenched. I do like that he talked about race-based gerrymandering during Reconstruction, which I’ve seen reference to in other texts, but never so specifically.
A few weeks ago I was waiting to meet a friend in Barnes & Noble and happened upon Mark Stein’s How the States Got Their Shapes and instantly grabbed it. Stein proceeds alphabetically through all fifty states, and tackles each border (North, South, East and West) in turn, creating an unbelievably rigorous (and anal) accounting of all those map lines we’ve grown accustomed to through the years. I bought it hoping to find some mentions of gerrymandering in the traditional sense, but after spending a few weeks with it, have found it invaluable for making the U.S. map strange again, a reminder that those things we consider fixed and immovable usually weren’t always that way. The word “gerrymandering” isn’t in the text at all as far as I remember, but there are enough line-based hijinks in it to make me think an interview with Mr. Stein might make for a nice tangential bit of scope-broadening.
The Bartlett decision came down yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to go through the decision yet, but the basic thrust is that the court has ruled against interpretations of the VRA that demand the creation of minority-influence districts. A “minority-influence district” is generally one in which the minority, while under 50% of the population, can team up with liberal (or other like-minded) populations to elect the candidate of their choice. There’s an interesting breakdown of the implications here.
I also hadn’t realized Section 5 of the VRA was under challenge…will have to pay attention to how this plays out. Section 5 demands pre-clearance from certain areas for any changes in the way elections are managed.
I’ve been meaning to throw up a link to Swing State Project’s invaluable redistricting project in which Nathaniel90 is looking at states that will gain or lose seats after the 2010 Census and making some calls about what new maps could look like, so here it is. In this installment: Iowa (which we’ll be covering) and Ohio (on the maybe list). You can also find links to the earlier editions of the piece. Good stuff, and really helpful for the film at our current stage.
Over at Dailykos is a great breakdown of what’s happening in Florida redistricting. We’ve completed great interviews with Ellen Freidin and Thom Rumberger who are running the initiative, as well as frmr. U.S. Senator Bob Graham, who is a co-chair of the campaign. State Senator Dave Aronberg, who is also mentioned in the piece, will be one of our main characters. His district runs from the Atlantic to the Gulf, encompassing a wide variety of folks, so we’ve been following him to local events in different parts of his district to show how a legislator actually works within the confines of a gerrymander.
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