Five out of 14 members are black!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2023

Judge says that isn't enough: Reports about the legalities of congressional redistricting have been quite prevalent lately. 

In general, these reports have involved Republican redistricting efforts in various Southern states. Indeed, two such news reports appear in this morning's New York Times. In each case, we'll provide the dual headlines:

North Carolina Republicans Approve House Map That Flips at Least Three Seats
The gerrymandered congressional map, made possible by a new G.O.P. majority on the state Supreme Court, ensures Republican dominance in a closely divided state.

Georgia’s Voting Maps Are Struck Down
Republicans in the state violated a landmark civil rights law in drawing maps that diluted the power of Black voters, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled.

We'll focus on the Georgia case, and on the unexplained legal strictures which lie at the heart of these matters.

First, a bit of statistical background:

Georgia currently holds fourteen seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nine of the state's representatives are white. The other five are black.

Those fourteen members were elected using the current redistricting map—the redistricting map which has now been "struck down." With that in mind, let's retabulate what we've said:

In the 2022 elections which were conducted under terms of the disputed map, Georgia voters sent five black members to the House of Representatives—five out of fourteen in all.

Five out of fourteen seems like a pretty good chunk of the delegation. But for reasons the Times never tries to explain, it now seems to have been ruled that it isn't good enough.

Headlines excluded, here are the parts of the New York Times news report which explain, or which perhaps pretend to explain, yesterday's legal ruling:

COCHRANE AND ROJAS (10/27/23): Republicans in Georgia violated a landmark civil rights law in drawing voting maps that diluted the power of Black voters, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled on Thursday, ordering that new maps must be drawn in time for the 2024 elections.

 Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia demanded that the state’s legislature move swiftly to draw new maps that provide an equitable level of representation for Black residents, who make up more than a third of the state’s population.

In the ruling, Judge Jones wrote that the court “will not allow another election cycle on redistricting plans” that had been found to be unlawful.

“Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting,” Judge Jones wrote, referring to a troubled history of racism and disregard for voting and civil rights. “However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.” 

[...]

Judge Jones, an Obama administration appointee, had allowed the challenged maps to go into effect in 2022, calling it a “difficult decision” that “the court did not make lightly.” That decision was one of several that found it was too close to that year’s elections to implement new maps.

In those passages, you see a lot of fuzzy language concerning what was wrong with the prevailing map.

For starters, Judge Jones is quoted saying that Georgia "has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone."

You can file that quoted statement under "unhelpfully fuzzy word salad." For their part, Cochrane and Rojas paraphrase Judge Jones in the following way:

In their paraphrased account, the reporters say that Judge Jones found that the existing map doesn't "provide an equitable level of representation for Black residents." Judge Jones is further said to have said that the existing map "dilutes the power of Black voters."

Those representations have the flavor of salad too, not excluding the imprecise claim that black residents "make up more than a third of [Georgia's] population."

There's a lot of word salad in this morning's report. Meanwhile, if it's hard numbers you like, here are the numbers in question:

According to the Census Bureau, Georgia's population was 33.1% black as of July 2022. (Warning! Due to the clumsy way the Census Bureau handles certain issues of race, the actual number may have been somewhat higher, or then again possibly not.)

Also this:

Under the congressional map which Judge Jones has struck down, Georgia voters elected five black reps out of 14 total. According to experts, that works out to 35.7%.

Summarizing, Georgia's congressional delegation is 35.7% black. That percentage may slightly exceed the percentage of black residents in the state. 

That said:

According to Judge Jones, the disputed map does not "provide an equitable level of representation for Black residents." The disputed map "dilutes the power of Black voters," in a way which goes unexplained within the Times report. 

On its face, it's hard to understand the logic at play in this matter. In their report, Cochrane and Rojas make exactly zero attempt to puzzle the matter out.

Along the way, they do report this:

COCHRANE AND ROJAS: In the legal challenges to the maps, critics argued that the size of the Black electorate in the state warranted at least one additional majority-Black district in Congress, as well as additional majority-Black districts in the State House of Representatives.

Critics want a Georgia map with one additional majority-black district. We'll now tell you how that highlighted passage reads to red tribe Others:

Under the Republican map, black candidates won five seats out of fourteen. "Critics" want the number to be six.

For the record, these disputes about redistricting operate under certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Some of those provisions are extremely hard to paraphrase, parse or explain. 

The word salad tends to start within those jumbled legal provisions. You'll almost never find a journalist who chooses to enter that maze.

There's actually less word salad in this Times report than one ordinarily finds in reports on these disputes. But we can assure you of what red tribe Others think about this particular case:

A power grab is being staged, and it's being okayed in the courts. 

In our view, it's often hard to say why such impressions are wrong. In this morning's news report, the Times doesn't even try.

Disputes of this type have been prevalent of late. Whether in the New York Times or on the PBS NewsHour, reporters who went to the finest schools rarely succeed in puzzling the law or the logic out.

Federal judges are handed the task of applying the jumbled provisions of the Voting Rights Act. We don't envy them this task.

Word salad tends to be general over the mainstream reporting. As the later Wittgenstein might have predicted, very few of our finer people seem to notice this fact.

For extra credit only: The Times report gives the percentage of the Georgia population which is black. It doesn't give the percentage of the Georgia congressional delegation which is black.

Does that seem like good journalistic practice? Compare and contrast! Explain!