[a8da6b0c91d]

Doesn't gerrymandering mostly carve out a lot of districts for black congressmen who otherwise wouldn't have districts? I think that's kinda what it boils down to in America. There are conservative areas adjacent to and mixed with majority black areas and they want different representation.

[igonvalue]

I'm not sure how common it is, but the linked site actually has an interesting discussion of this phenomenon, which Wikipedia calls "affirmative racial gerrymandering"[0], and how it would interact with the proposed scheme: http://scorevoting.net/TheorDistrict.html#Minority

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S...

[aaronbrethorst]

Um, no. Here's one example: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/janet-adkins-corinne-...

[panglott]

This was more true in the era of overt white supremacy, when majority-white electorates would refuse to vote for black candidates, and thus black candidates could only win elections in strongly majority-black districts. This has changed from the 1990s, which black candidates started winning even in majority-white districts.

However, this also led political marginalization as well. To tilt a purple state Republican, you gerrymander districts so that you have more slightly-Republican districts than strongly-Democratic one. Concentrating black Democratic voters in one district is a strategy both to guarantee the presence of a few black representatives as well as an overall Republican majority.

[spoiledtechie]

No one ever thinks of it that way.