Legal Partisan Gerrymandering: Oh You Silly Americans

Did you know that in the United States it's completely legal to gerrymander for partisan reasons? That just seems so messed up to me. This means that a party who holds the hosue can willfully redistrict seats to ensure that even if the state could go to the other party, that they win, no matter what voters want. Gerrymandering is one of the sleaziest tools in the conservative playbook. They want the win, they don't care if they earn it.

So the party that has incredible pools of dark money, that are being controlled by business interested Koch Brothers and ALEC, that has been working to completely fuck US citizens by screwing them out of money in order to give corporations tax cuts, that shut the government down at a massive cost in order to repeal a law that was legally and constitutionally passed, can legally redraw districts so that they have an unfair advantage in elections. And the worst part? It's legal even if they know that it will disproportionately impact minorities because those minorities may vote democrat. Lovely

 DEFENDANTS’ RESPONSE TO PLAINTIFFS AND THE UNITED STATES
REGARDING SECTION 3(C) OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

"In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats.6 It is perfectly constitutional for a Republican-controlled legislature to make partisan districting decisions, even if there are incidental effects on minority voters who support Democratic candidates.

See Hunt v. Cromartie, 526 U.S. 541, 551 (1999) (“[A] jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact.”); League of United Latin Am. Citizens, Council No. 4434 v. Clements, 999 F.2d 831, 854 (5th Cir. 1993) (en banc) (“[Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act] is implicated only where Democrats lose because they are black, not where blacks lose because they are Democrats.”)."

http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Texas-reply-on-Sec.-3-of-VRA-8-5-13.pdf