This looks like a terrible gerrymander. But there is actually something of a method to this madness. The GOP actually didn’t have much choice but to pack voters into Detroit- and Flint-based districts. Detroit has had two African-American-majority districts since the 1960s, and Republicans were probably required under the Voting Rights Act to retain both of them.
This was no easy task. The 13th and 14th districts had both seen their African-American populations drop below 60 percent, and both had suffered severe population losses in the 2000s, requiring them to take on quite a few additional citizens. Making matters worse, there were barely enough African-Americans in all of Wayne County to create two African-American-majority districts entirely within that county’s borders.
Since it was impossible (and possibly unconstitutional) to draw lines to make sure every African-American in the county was in the minority-majority district, redistricters needed to add those voters from Oakland County, which has a growing African-American population. This is actually the source of the odd appendage we see jutting northward from Detroit; it crosses Oakland County to take in heavily minority Pontiac. Even with all this, both districts are only 56 percent African-American and the 14th still elected a white Democrat over an African-American incumbent in the 2012 primaries.
The neighboring districts were then all pushed toward Republicans, as the most loyal Democratic constituents were removed to comply with the VRA. Even a Democratic legislature would have drawn something akin to these districts; there just aren’t many other options. No neighboring district is left with an African-American population in excess of 11 percent under this map, suggesting that the heavily African-American precincts in the state were pretty well gobbled up.
Nope. In the US, we don't vote for parties, we vote for individual people. Political parties are not the solution. The FPTP system we have is a reflection of the framers' desire to avoid parties. Unfortunately, in the 200+ years since, parties are now the norm.
> In the US, we don't vote for parties, we vote for individual people.
Proportional representation doesn't have involve voting for parties (party list proportional is one mechanism for achieving proportionality; another method for acheiving proportionality is using voting systems like Single Transferrable Vote in multimember districts -- the latter method is just as candidate-centered as the FPTP-in-single-member-districts system used in the United States, yet provides proportional results [the degree or proportionality varies with the size of the districts.])
While its less proportional, in partisan terms, than party-list proportional (assuming usual sizes of legislatures and manageable numbers of seats per district for STV), it counterbalances that by being more sensitive to general election voter concerns in selection between candidates of the same party.
> The FPTP system we have is a reflection of the framers' desire to avoid parties.
No, its not. The framers were familiar with FPTP, and familiar with the way that parties operated under it. It wasn't a new idea that they were trying out expecting that it would avoid the formation of parties.
It's inaccurate to even say that "the framers" had a coherent desire to avoid parties -- Washington certainly did, and this certainly got more urgent for him as the First Party System took hold during is term as President; Hamilton may have initially opposed parties in the traditional democratic sense since he was more inclined to a life-term aristocracy (remember that he wanted both Presidents and Senators to serve "in good behavior" -- that is, for life subject to impeachment -- the way that in the Constitution-as-it-ended-up federal judges do), but he seems to have readily accepted political parties as the second-best choice; Jefferson clearly saw parties as an inherent part of democracy, and the absence of parties as a feature of despotism, and actually seemed to see a two party system divided on a particular axis -- which he referred to as Whig v. Tory -- as fundamental and inherent in the nature of mankind, though he also was clearly opposed to tribal adherence to parties.
Washington was certainly against the idea of parties, but I'm not sure the rest of the framers' had a specific desire to avoid parties. The two party system developed very quickly with the federalists and anti-federalists.
That is still different than voting for a party. In proportional representation you would cast your ballot for e.g. The Democratic Party. If they got 54% of the vote, they would get to then appoint 54% of the representation for that district. In this way, a very heavily Tea Party district would still have representation for the democratic minority, just less.
> In proportional representation you would cast your ballot for e.g. The Democratic Party.
You are confusing "proportional representation" (which is a continuous-valued property of many election systems) with "party list proportional" which is a particular election system for achieving a high value of proportional representation.
Notably, Single Transferrable Vote is a system in which people vote for candidates as they do in FPTP elections (except using preference ballots), but which is designed to acheive proportional representation.
Any passed law would be appealed to the Supreme Court. If the courts strike the law down, there would have to be a Constitutional amendment. The U.S. has not seen that substantial of an amendment since alcohol was legalized.
> Much of the so-called "gerrymandering" is required by the VRA
Not by the VRA alone, but by the VRA combined with the statutory requirement for single-member districts, combined with the expected outcomes of FPTP elections.
Keep the VRA and eliminate FPTP in single-member districts, and you don't need to gerrymander to preserve expected minority representation (plus, you represent everyone better, not just the particular racial minority being protected by the VRA.)
This looks like a terrible gerrymander. But there is actually something of a method to this madness. The GOP actually didn’t have much choice but to pack voters into Detroit- and Flint-based districts. Detroit has had two African-American-majority districts since the 1960s, and Republicans were probably required under the Voting Rights Act to retain both of them.
This was no easy task. The 13th and 14th districts had both seen their African-American populations drop below 60 percent, and both had suffered severe population losses in the 2000s, requiring them to take on quite a few additional citizens. Making matters worse, there were barely enough African-Americans in all of Wayne County to create two African-American-majority districts entirely within that county’s borders.
Since it was impossible (and possibly unconstitutional) to draw lines to make sure every African-American in the county was in the minority-majority district, redistricters needed to add those voters from Oakland County, which has a growing African-American population. This is actually the source of the odd appendage we see jutting northward from Detroit; it crosses Oakland County to take in heavily minority Pontiac. Even with all this, both districts are only 56 percent African-American and the 14th still elected a white Democrat over an African-American incumbent in the 2012 primaries.
The neighboring districts were then all pushed toward Republicans, as the most loyal Democratic constituents were removed to comply with the VRA. Even a Democratic legislature would have drawn something akin to these districts; there just aren’t many other options. No neighboring district is left with an African-American population in excess of 11 percent under this map, suggesting that the heavily African-American precincts in the state were pretty well gobbled up.