Posted on 03/26/2011 9:53:02 PM PDT by Libloather
Detroit congressional districts likely to cross Eight Mile Road in search for black voters
By Associated Press, Wednesday, March 23, 8:51 PM
LANSING, Mich. — Mostly black Detroit, facing diminished congressional clout after losing a quarter of its population over the past decade, likely will have to reach farther into its mostly white suburbs to keep black majorities in its two congressional districts.
**SNIP**
Nearly four decades after the 1967 riots that hastened white flight, four of every five Detroit residents are black. So are the city’s two congressmen, 81-year-old veteran John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and 54-year-old newcomer Hansen Clarke, who beat incumbent Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick in last year’s Democratic primary.
Because of federal laws that forbid drawing congressional lines to dilute minority voting strength, the 2000 redistricting gave Detroit’s two congressional districts a voting base that was 60 percent black, according to redistricting expert Ed Sarpolus of Target Insyght in Lansing. That was true even though the districts increasingly stretched into largely white suburbs such as Grosse Pointe and Wyandotte in Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit.
Even if the Detroit congressional districts reach into the northern suburbs, the percentage of black voters likely will remain about the same, Sarpolus said. To get there, the districts will have to go in search of about 300,000 more minority voters, since only about 590,000 of Detroit’s nearly 715,000 voters are black.
Each of the two districts will have to have about 450,000 black voters among the 705,000 total to hit the 60 percent goal, Sarpolus said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Maybe they don't want to be a majority anymore.
Same old BS - politicians choosing their voters instead of the other way around. That’s why race questions on censi are unconstitutional.
So, where will the Dingell Family Plantation be moved? Who gets the Islamists?
DISCRIMINATION!
“What voters?”
As a former Chicagoan, I see voters in there. Really.
I did not remember showing a Detroit cemetery. Those are the only voters I know of in Chicago.
Because of federal laws that forbid drawing congressional lines to dilute minority voting strength. Problem is Michigan has lost a Congressional Seat, Detroit lost 25% of their population which lost about 235,000 people, the voting strength is not dilluted if there is this much of a drop in population. Wayne County lost 11.7% or about 200,000. Rest of the State stayed the same.
Also, doesn’t the State legislature draw the Congressional maps in Michigan along with Governor Snyder?
There are only a handful of states, Iowa and Arizona among them, that have "nonpartisan" redistricting commissions, IIRC.
C’mon. How hard can it be to find black voters in Detroit?
Gee only 82% of the voters are black and they can't find enough.....
MIping
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That homie's got a real nice crib out in Rochester...
And his ex-wife has this dump in Macomb where I live.......
“C’mon. How hard can it be to find black voters in Detroit?”
If Michigan law bans felons from voting, it could be very hard to find voters in Detroit.
And why should Detroit maintain two House seats if its total population of 715,000 is approximately equal to the population of ONE congressional district (total population within the state divided by number of districts, since all congressional districts must have equal populations, as accurately as can be determined)? The fairest and most basic way to redistrict would be to have one congressional district covering the whole city of Detroit, give or take the necessary geographic adjustments in order for the population of that district to match the formula.
The author is also remiss to blame the decline in Detroit's population only on the decline of the auto industry. The auto industry was never the only industry in Detroit. The again, it would be politically incorrect to mention Jenny Granholm's leftist regime as governor for eight years of the past decade, the decade where not only Detroit but the whole state of Michigan suffered economic decline to a degree far exceeding the nation as a whole.
Would the VRA prevent us from icing one of the Detroit seats?
They are at their lowest population since the 1910 census.
Look at the districts. If, they go west to give Conyers the numbers he needs he runs into Dearborn.
Dearborn is in the 15th, it is a "U" shape that grabs Ann Arbor as well, it is "John Dingell's"
So with redistricting, do we end up with a new district where Dingell has to go mano-e-mano against Conyers?
We can only hope... That is what they are thinking...
If it would come to pass it would be a schadenfreude moment and yes I would enjoy it...
Usually solidification/expansion of Black votes in districts comes at the expense of solidification of Republican votes in neighboring districts (given that Blacks vote Democrat at a rate of 90%+). Wonder if this has the potential to throw any of the neighboring districts Red (or even Purple)?
The federal law denotes 2 districts that are minority centric, so they can't go to one. My guess they are using the Conyers and Clarke seats as spring boards and try to grab enough to maintain these two via the numbers. Yes the burbs are now very mixed, as many middle class blacks exited Detroit in search of safe communities, Grocery Stores ( not many in Detwaa), and good schools. Many are enrolled in the Detroit Burb "Charter Schools". So they are in essence voting for Charter Schools vs. what the Democratic Apparatchiks will tell you. Other than one community out by Lake Michigan, I can't see carving out another district in the State, the centricity of African Americans are in the Burbs of South East Michigan. They will have to go North, South and West of Detroit to find them. East is a no go, you end up in Canada.
The VRA won’t let you eliminate one of the black-majority CDs—one of them will just have to expand north into Southland and other black parts of Oakland County. Heck, maybe that CD can go through the heavily Dem eastern portion of West Bloomfield to include black-majority Pontiac, which is what I thought should have been done in 2001.
Anither thing that is clear is that the MI legislature can feel free to ignore the state constitutional provision limiting the ability to splut counties and cities among districts when abiding by such provision would restrain its ability to draw black-majority districts.
The problem for GOP redistricters is that after drawing two black-majority CDs (the second of which might have to take in Inkster and Ypsilanti in Dingell’s CD), it would leave two non-contiguous heavily Dem white-majority areas: (i) Ann Arbor and Downriver and (ii) eastern Oakland and western Macomb Counties. Maybe they can be connected through a thin strip of Detroit along the Detroit River, but that would take black voters away from the two black-majority CDs. I hope that this problem can be solved without drawing districts for both Dingell and Levin.
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