Ive been to Atlanta. I wouldn't describe the weather, especially the summers, as "nice". 90 F with 100% humidity[0], isn't "nice." I grew up with it. It sucked.
Also, I don't really think the Confederacy is a welcoming place.
Ugh! As a kid, I visited Atlanta during the summers of 1990 and 1991. My Yankee ass was not prepared for the laser light show at Stone Mountain. The encore was a celebration of the Confederacy, complete with a laser portrait of Gen. Lee in his most resplendent military regalia. People began chanting the South will rise again. That's when I realized I couldn't live anywhere in the South besides Miami.
What other nation state tolerates such salient scenes of seditious activity?
It was an explicit reconstruction policy. The government wouldn't prosecute the traitors for treason, because we were once again a big happy family. This is why 10 Army bases are named after confederate generals[0]. Sometimes, even after really crappy generals. (See Fort Bragg [ibid.])
The modern movement of embrassing "southern heritage" with the confederate flag, holidays, and monuments come from an reaction to the civil rights movement. Stone Mountain in your example was the site of the founding of the second Klu Klux Klan, which was then purchased by the state in 1958. The site and the history of memorial are deeply entwined with the KKK. I truly urge everyone to read the Wikipedia page about this site if you have any doubts about this.[1]
Nope. See Austin. Largest city in the US without its own congressional representative. Instead, it's gerrymandered into 6 other districts to minimize Democratic representation.[0] See the latest disenfranchisement laws.[1]
Not sure why you were down voted without refute. Gerrymandering is a known and ignored problem in a lot of states, including my home state of Kansas (where Lawrence is split down the middle).
Aren't both Lawrence and Austin big college towns?
Maybe the state does not want its representatives chosen by out of area students who will not be around long term to deal with the outcome of their votes, good or bad.
So the students shouldn't have representation from the place where thy live anywhere from 9 to 12 months out of the year, but instead have repeentation in a place they live 0 to 3 months in? That doesn't make any sense.
Also, Austin is... wait for it... THE STATE CAPITAL, with a population of 912,000 people. UT Austin Has an enrollment of 50,000. Even if we held for sake of argument your statement that college students should vote in "home" districts where they don't live for more than half the year, and for simplicity say that all 50,000 students are not from Austin, what of the remaining 862,000 Austin residents? Don't they deserve to have their city represented, like every other city of similar size?
Calling Austin a "college town" is as nonsensical as calling Boston one.
The reason why college towns get gerrymandered to dilute their representative power in Republican dominated states has everything to do with the fact the fact that college students tend to vote Democratic. This is the same reason why "voter fraud" became an excuse to target minority voting patterns. It's a partisan power to try to create and maintain structural bias into the electoral system.
You actually give an example to reinforce my point. Austin has to be gerrymandered, because it is already so blue - if it weren't, they wouldn't bother. Gerrymandering is moving the goalpost (of what it takes to get political representation), but as a technique, it has a limited range. At some point the supermajority is sufficiently super that no amount of fooling around can suppress it.