I am sure a fair action will be taken to right this wrong.

Does this make a substantial difference? Did we have to prove the gerrymandering was racist to overturn the SC ruling that it's ok? Is this sufficient proof that it's use is discriminatory?

I suspect, at most, it will force a redraw of the specific maps involved, and it won't be more broadly applied. This will be treated as bad gerrymandering, not proof gerrymandering is bad.

There is a small problem that gerrymandering is sometimes used to provide minorities with a representative of their own, often on racial lines. So there's also a "good" racist gerrymander.

On its face the "good" racist gerrymander may seem okay ( it may even be done with actually good intentions) but by moving enough minorities (say NC blacks in to district 12) to allow them to elect a minority representative, you are removing them from other districts were they could have provided a margin of victory for a sympathetic, though non-minority, candidate. Removing 3 percent of the strongly democratic voters from 6 swing districts means they are sure to win the one they are concentrated in and sure to loose the 5 others.

That's what gerrymandering is all about.

So when we're not evil, we're stupid. Awesome.

Yeah, unfortunately the "gerrymandering is bad because it's racist" argument runs the risk of undermining the "gerrymandering is bad because it's fucking wrong" argument.

I always feel the same way about the ‘Torture is bad because you get unreliable intelligence’ argument.

Use whatever reasoning works.

Not if it boxes you in later by precluding a better argument.

It's more that the pragmatic argument that you shouldn't torture because it produces bad intelligence leaves you open to the counter-argument that we just need to develop more effective methods of torture.

Agreed, but that's usually used in response to "but what if torture was the ONLY WAY to get the information you needed!?" If it's the only way to get that information, it's probably not possible to get the information.

Devil Advocate: It's impossible to not gerrymander. All voting block decisions are in effect, gerrymandering. It's just different choices in who gets to decide those. Even if a program was written or an algorithm, someone is deciding the grouping of voters.

The problem is more probably first past the post than gerrymandering. Since there is no such thing as not gerrymandering. Just different metrics you are trying to attain.

lol. right.

Obviously done for political reasons. But what if that was a contiguous group of people. They were put together so they wouldn't be disenfranchised by splitting them up in "normal shapes" or whatever. Is that shape now fair? Or would it be better for an algorithm to make their voices unheard? What would be the "fair" way to divide up Austin?

But does the devil need to be advocated for when the present situation is so clearly in defiance of the very concept of democracy? Either our vote matters and the overall will of the people or the closest thing to it should be the goal with which we design our system, or this whole voting thing is a farce. Advocating that "it works both ways" kind of detracts from the point that this shit is clearly and provably being abused, don't ya think? It might be best to worry about the consequences of breathing after we've removed the devil's boot from our neck that is in many, non-metaphorical ways, killing us.

Sure - the advocating for the Devil is just that the "Solution" to gerrymandering is just as political as gerrymandering is in the first place. Someone is deciding winners and losers. The solution is a different system, which obviously is going to be a bigger fight.

Meanwhile Republicans have desperately filed to destroy all of this guy's evidence files because, um, privacy! Trade secrets! Shut up we're not racist, you are!