Redistricting Plan

This Mississippi map creates two majority Black districts. A lawsuit might be filed against the state demanding that these (or similar) districts be drawn under Section 2 of the VRA. Such a claim would not be frivolous under Gingles, but would probably not succeed. While voting in Mississippi is overwhelmingly racially polarized (for example, in the 2020 election, A.P.VoteCast estimated that approximately 81 percent of white voters voted for Trump, while about 94 percent of Black voters favored Biden), the Black majority in the proposed CD-2 would not be particularly geographically compact—it combines Black voters living near the border on either side of the state. Moreover, it gives Black voters a disproportionate share of seats in the state. In response to a Section 2 lawsuit, Mississippi could rely on both this lack of compactness and lack of proportionality; it could also assert that these proposed districts are an impermissible racial gerrymander (see Shaw) that could only be drawn if the VRA required them.