My goodness. I get to keep my congressman after remap. (Assuming he keeps getting elected, that is.) Most people were betting that they'd make his district make more geographic sense (it was sort of horseshoe-shaped; now it's got a lump at one end of the shoe's U) and it would essentially go away. (There's also the small fact that the Hispanics in the district aren't all the same ethnicity -- some are Mexican-American, some Puerto Rican, many from elsewhere in Central and South America -- and have resented being lumped together in "the Hispanic district".)
It will be interesting to see if they challenge the district in court again; they sued about it last time. (Which, before the state won, resulted in me voting for two different congressmen in three elections without either me or them moving.) It sounds like they might have better grounds; while producing a reliably Democratic district is clearly allowable, it sounds like the fact that the new voters for the district are Hispanic is more prominent in considerations this time. And that, according to Queen Sandra Day, is a no-no.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!