Free Republic

Voters passed the last November as a Democratic countermeasure to Republican-led redistricting efforts in Texas, Florida and other states. California’s controversial Proposition 50 – passed by voters last November as a Democratic countermeasure to Republican-led redistricting efforts in Texas, Florida and other states – is now on a collision course with the Supreme Court. The measure empowered California’s Democratic-controlled legislature to sideline the state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and redraw congressional districts mid-decade. That commission, created by voters in 2008, was intended to curb partisan manipulation by placing map making in the hands of an independent 14-member panel focused on...

Racial GerrymanderingTo the civil-rights community, segregated congressional districts are enlightened public policy. Blacks should know their place, the media seem to think. Increasingly, they are leaving their natural habitat — the inner city — and wandering into residential areas where lots of non-blacks live, the Washington Post and other media outlets report with obvious distress. The black population is shrinking in urban congressional districts and swelling in suburban ones, they note. Indeed, looking at the newest census numbers, the 15 districts with the greatest black-population growth are all in the suburbs. Conversely, the African American population in eight of the...

With Congress poised to extend, for another quarter-century, certain "temporary" provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it's worth pondering some of the political mischief taking place these days in the name of "voting rights." Take New York's 11th Congressional District, a safe Democratic seat covering several neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The seat is currently occupied by Major Owens, a black Democrat who has held it since 1983 and is retiring this year. One of the four candidates to replace him is David Yassky, a white Democrat who represents some of the same Brooklyn neighborhoods as a city councilman. Mr. Owens...