Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision

Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision

New maps that added five Republican districts in Texas hit a legal roadblock on Tuesday, with a federal judge saying the state cannot use the 2025 maps because they are probably “racially gerrymandered”.

The decision is likely to be appealed, given the push for more Republican-friendly congressional maps nationwide and Donald Trump’s full-court press on his party to make them. Some states have followed suit, and some Democratic states have retaliated, pushing to add more blue seats to counteract Republicans.

A panel of three federal judges in Texas said in a decision that the state must use previously approved 2021 maps for next year’s midterms rather than the ones that kickstarted a wave of mid-decade redistricting. The plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, are “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map”, so the court approved a preliminary injunction to stop the map’s use for next year’s elections.

  • __dev@lemmy.world
    5·
    14 hours ago

    Without FPTP, the district result doesn’t matter at all, since it is the total number of votes that matter, not a designated winner of a district.

    That depends entirely on what FPTP is replaced with. Any system with local representitives can be gerrymandered to reduce the representation of certain groups, with the exception of MMP where you can still gerrymander but it doesn’t affect representation. That includes ranked choice, approval voting, etc. That’s not to say these aren’t better, of course with better local representation the effectiveness of gerrymandering is reduced, but it is not eliminated. The only way to eliminate gerrymandering is with a proportional system.

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      14 hours ago

      that’s largely correct, but there are multiple parts to the ballot system: FPTP, RCV, etc are means of counting ballots, but another part is proportional vs representative

      you can have representative with RCV (that’s what australia is)

      • __dev@lemmy.world
        4·
        13 hours ago

        Yes that’s true, systems like FPTP and IRV (as used in australia) are single-winner and thus require a local representation system, but you could use ranked-choice in a proportional system.