As readers now know, TBE submitted Congressional redistricting plans last week for consideration by the Court. The Plaintiffs, led by Hillary Clinton’s legal team, successfully showed to a three judge panel that the 3rd Congressional district is invalid as a racial gerrymander. The Plaintiffs have also sought to prevent the Division of Legislative Services from publishing the various proposals for public scrutiny.
Either the Plaintiffs do not want the public to view their plan, or they do not want the public to view the other plans. All other parties that have opined support publication on the DLS website. As sunlight is the best antiseptic here is a copy of the Plaintiffs’ plan based on the underlying data not currently publicly available on Pacer so the public at large can analyze it.
Here is a link to a beautiful user friendly version of the statewide map.
Here is a copy of the same vicinity from the Plaintiffs’ brief:
Notice any differences? This is likely some kind of user error.
Just as a comparison, here again is the same area in TBE Plans.
Analyses of these plans is still forthcoming, nonetheless the public should not be delayed in having access to this information.
2 comments
What’s the difference between the plaintiff’s proposed map and the current lines? That kind of analysis would reveal a lot about their intentions.
After a quick glance, this is what I came away with:
The 3rd would be slightly more competitive, but still a safe Dem seat. The 2nd picks up a larger slice of Norfolk and the 4th picks up a larger slice of Richmond, likely making both more competitive.
What’s most interesting is the 5th and 6th. Right now, Lynchburg is in the 6th and Charlottesville is in the 5th, but on this map those are swapped. Without diving into the voter data, I’d have to guess it’d make the 6th more competitive and the 5th less competitive.
The 1st, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th have very slight changes that probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.