In this case the article describes the opposite. There was one predominantly black district (out of six, and 1/3 the population are black) that the state was forced essentially forced to split in two. In the article I think they even mention civil rights groups prefer the two districts.
There are two ways of fucking with district maps. The one you are thinking of is “packing,” which puts as many voters as possible in one district. Another is “cracking,” which spreads a large number of voters (who could win their own district-sized contest) across several other districts. This contested map seems to be undoing a “cracking.”
The goal of election map fuckery is to have districts that are all either 100% or 49% opponents, that takes both packing and cracking to make it happen.
In this case the article describes the opposite. There was one predominantly black district (out of six, and 1/3 the population are black) that the state was forced essentially forced to split in two. In the article I think they even mention civil rights groups prefer the two districts.
There are two ways of fucking with district maps. The one you are thinking of is “packing,” which puts as many voters as possible in one district. Another is “cracking,” which spreads a large number of voters (who could win their own district-sized contest) across several other districts. This contested map seems to be undoing a “cracking.”
The goal of election map fuckery is to have districts that are all either 100% or 49% opponents, that takes both packing and cracking to make it happen.
Interesting. TIL about cracking.