Alabama officially has a new congressional map that will increase the power of Black voters in the state, giving them the chance to elect their preferred candidate in at least two of the state’s seven congressional districts in 2024. The decision could help Democrats secure a majority in the US House next year.
After the US supreme court twice rebuffed Alabama’s request to block drawing an additional district, a three-judge panel chose the new map on Thursday from three proposals offered by Richard Allen, a court-appointed special master. Black voters make up about a quarter of the population in the state, but comprised a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts under the map Republicans adopted.
The new plan maintains a majority in one of the state’s districts and creates a second district where Black voters make up 48.7% of the population. That percentage is enough to allow Black voters in the district a chance to elect the candidate of their choosing, the special master’s analysis showed.
Black-preferred candidates in the district would have won 16 or 17 recent elections analyzed by the special master. The plan the judges chose splits just six counties and left the cities of Mobile and Birmingham largely whole. In total, the panel ruled, the proposal they adopted made as few changes necessary from the plan the legislature adopted to cure the illegal dilution of Black votes.
The new district stretches from the city of Mobile across Alabama’s Black belt, named for its rich topsoil. The region has been marked by extreme poverty and the new district will give voters there more of a voice at the federal level.
“Under the Voting Rights Act and binding precedent, the appropriate remedy for racially discriminatory vote dilution is, as we already said, a congressional districting plan that includes either an additional majority-Black district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice,” the judges said in their order. “This plan satisfies all constitutional and statutory requirements while hewing as closely as reasonably possible to the Alabama legislature’s 2023 plan.”
Voting in Alabama is highly racially polarized, with Black voters preferring Democrats and white voters preferring Republicans in a general election. Any district that allows Black voters to elect the candidate of their choosing is therefore likely to favor Democrats. Republicans currently have a razor-thin 221-212 advantage in Congress’s lower chamber.
The Alabama secretary of state, Wes Allen, a Republican elected last year, said in a statement the state would “facilitate the 2024 election cycle in accordance with the map the federal court has forced upon Alabama and ordered us to use”.
Alabama Republicans fought aggressively to try and stave off creating an additional Black opportunity district. After the three judge panel initially struck down its map last year, it appealed to the US supreme court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling in a surprise move. Alabama then essentially defied both courts, drawing a new map that preserved a Black majority in just one district and increased the Black population in a second district to 41%, not enough to give Black voters the chance to elect the candidate of their choosing.
The three-judge panel bluntly rejected that effort, saying it was “disturbed by the evidence that the state delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy”.
Alabama again appealed to the US supreme court, which declined to step in and stop redrawing of the map.
The case is seen as a major victory for section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any practice that discriminates on the basis of race. Conservatives have long sought to hollow out the law by making it harder to prove racial discrimination under section 2. The fact that the conservative US supreme court agreed Alabama had crossed a line in this case was understood as a signal that the provision still has some force. Litigation is proceeding on similar grounds in Louisiana and Georgia, which could result in similar additional Black opportunity districts. Last week, the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit took the highly unusual move of stepping in to halt the redrawing of the state’s congressional map.
“In spite of the shameful intransigence of Alabama Republicans, justice has finally prevailed in the state. With this new, fairer map, and for the first time ever, Black voters in Alabama could have two members of Congress representing their interests at the same time. This historic development will strengthen voting rights and ensure equal representation for so many Americans,” said the former attorney general Eric Holder, whose non-profit backed some of the plaintiffs in the case.
He added: “Other states with pending section 2 cases should view this map, and this process, as both an example of basic fairness and a warning that denying equal representation to Black voters, violating the Voting Rights Act, and defying federal court orders is a direct tie to an odious past and will no longer be tolerated.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
