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.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyz
      1·
      7 hours ago

      I understand what proportional representation is.

      I asked how you transition the house to it. You can’t do that for each race that’s currently done so you’ll have to merge some, or add more representatives. In Australia, it’s done at the state level, but it’s done like that in the senate only. If you did it in the house in the US it’s pretty similar to the regions senators represent, right? And a representative in the house is designed to represent a more local, smaller region aren’t they? These days those regions are pretty gerrymandered so the system is pretty broken already but my question still stands: How do you do transition to that with the house?

      • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zipEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        You could do PR with the ballot of potential Reps distributed by district. When the election is settled the district Reps are assigned starting with the highest-skewed district. E.g.:

        Overall vote: 60:40 (red:blue)

        D1: 80:20
D2: 40:60
D3: 70:30
D4: 45:55
D5: 30:70

        You can go randomly, round Robin, or winner-first to divvy up the districts, but essentially you would expect D1, D3, and D4 to be assigned their local red Rep (even though red “lost” in the close D4 race) and D2 & D5 to go blue

        With more parties, random or round robin are a little more “fair” for the third party - winner first allocation could result in 3rd party getting the “whatever’s left” district where they didn’t actually get any votes.

        It’s not perfect, but neither is the current system.