Reply #101: You can't do that unless

[lastliberalintexas]

the geometric grid lines also account for population density. Otherwise you've simply created an electoral college for Congressional elections, which the SC has already ruled is unconstitutional. One person, one vote.


What ultrax missed is that the gerrymandered Dem created seats of 1990 and the gerrymandered (republican, btw) federal court created seats of 2000 were far more contiguous and compact than DeLay's districts. For example, in the re-re-districting, Travis county was divided into THREE separate Congressional districts, all creating splotches which would have made any abstract painter proud. Jefferson County, a county of (probably) less than 500,000 people, was carved into 2 separate seats, just because it also votes Dem.

Courts have ruled that *political* gerrymandering of Congressional districts is legal, so both parties are free to do it. However, those districts must still be compact and contiguous and hold similar interests (yes, unfortunately all subjective criteria). That wasn't the case with the DeLay re-re-districting. Also, the Dem party has not undertaken an off year redistricting just because it was able to assume control and wholly unrelated to the Census. That is what DeLay and his cronies did.

To then compare the deeds of the 2 shows just how little s/he actually knew of the situation. And to try to say that anyone defending the Dem party was merely being a partisan was also completely off the mark.