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Voting Rights & Redistricting blog
Allen v. Milligan, Alabama's Second Black District and the Ruling of June 2023 The Supreme Court told Alabama in June 2023 to draw a second district where Black voters could elect a candidate. The state refused, and a court-drawn map finally did it. Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the Law Signed Five Months Later On March 7, 1965, Alabama troopers beat marchers on a Selma bridge. Five months later the Voting Rights Act was law. How one afternoon became a statute, and what courts have done to it since. California's Proposition 50 and the Argument Over Fighting Fire With Fire Why California voters set aside their own independent map in 2025 to answer Texas, what Proposition 50 actually does, and the honest case for and against fighting a gerrymander with one. Fannie Lou Hamer's Televised Testimony and the 1964 Convention Credentials Fight A Mississippi sharecropper told the Democratic credentials committee what voting had cost her. The president tried to bury it; the party ended up rewriting its rules because of it. Florida's 60 Percent Rule and the Amendment That Won a Majority and Lost Florida's abortion amendment won about 57 percent in 2024 and still failed. Where the 60 percent rule came from, the honest case for supermajorities, and the case against them. Freedom Summer 1964 and the Mississippi Volunteers Who Changed the Rules How a summer of voter registration and Freedom Schools in Mississippi, begun with three murders in Neshoba County, forced the country and the Democratic Party to change their rules. From Seneca Falls to Harry Burn's Vote, Seventy-Two Years to the Nineteenth Amendment The Nineteenth Amendment came down to one young Tennessee legislator and a letter from his mother, after seventy-two years of conventions, arrests, splits and pickets. Guinn v. United States and the 1915 Ruling Against the Grandfather Clause How Oklahoma's 1910 grandfather clause worked, how a young NAACP filed its first Supreme Court brief against it, and why the 1915 victory was followed by a quieter trick that took decades to undo. H.R. 1 in 2019 and What a New Majority's First Bill Is Meant to Say The For the People Act passed the House in March 2019 and never became law. Here is the case that a symbolic first bill still shapes what a majority becomes, and what 2027's should say. How Independent Redistricting Commissions Work, From Arizona to Michigan How Arizona, California, Michigan and Colorado choose their mapmakers, what happened when commissions in Virginia and New York stalled, and how to judge whether a commission is working. How Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act Worked, and What Louisiana v. Callais Changed For forty years, Section 2 let minority voters challenge maps that diluted their votes. How those claims worked, how Louisiana got a second Black district, and what Callais narrowed in 2026. How the Voting Rights Act's Preclearance Worked Before Shelby County For nearly fifty years, some states needed federal approval before changing a voting rule. How that system worked, why the Supreme Court switched it off in 2013, and what states did next. How to Put a Citizen Initiative on Your State's Ballot Which states let citizens write their own laws, and how drafting, signature gathering and legal review work, from Michigan's volunteer-built redistricting amendment. How to Testify at a Redistricting Hearing and Keep Your Community Together A step-by-step guide to defining your community of interest, drawing it on a free mapping tool and giving testimony that a redistricting commission or legislature can actually use. Medgar Evers and the NAACP Field Office in Jackson, Mississippi How Medgar Evers built the NAACP's Mississippi operation from one office in Jackson, what he was organizing when he was killed in 1963, and why it took 31 years to convict his killer. Mid-Decade Redistricting Explained, From Tom DeLay's 2003 Texas Map to Today How a Texas walkout to an Oklahoma motel in 2003 led to LULAC v. Perry, why the Supreme Court let states redraw between censuses, and how that ruling set up the map wars of 2025 and 2026. Packing and Cracking, the Two Moves Behind Nearly Every Gerrymander How mapmakers turn a split electorate into a lopsided delegation by packing opponents into a few districts and cracking the rest, with a worked example and the tools used to measure it. Rucho v. Common Cause Closed the Federal Courts to Partisan Gerrymandering Claims What the Supreme Court decided on June 27, 2019, why it called partisan maps a political question, and the routes that remain open to anyone who wants fair districts. Shelby County v. Holder and the Day Preclearance Went Dark On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court struck the formula behind preclearance. What preclearance did, why the Court ended it, and what changed in the states it had covered. South Dakota, Oregon and the Progressive Invention of the Ballot Initiative How South Dakota in 1898 and Oregon's William U'Ren invented the citizen initiative, how the tool works step by step today, and why legislatures keep trying to rein it in. State Constitutions Are Where Rights Are Being Won Now From Pennsylvania's 2018 map ruling to abortion ballot measures and youth climate cases, state constitutions now protect rights federal courts will not. Here is the case for fighting there. The 1982 Voting Rights Act Amendments and the Results Test Reagan Signed In 1980 the Supreme Court said voters had to prove intent to discriminate. Two years later a bipartisan Congress wrote a results test into the law, and Ronald Reagan signed it. The Original Gerrymander Was a Salamander-Shaped District in 1812 Massachusetts The story of the 1812 cartoon that named the gerrymander after Governor Elbridge Gerry, and how a crude partisan trick became a precise science over the next two centuries. When Texas Democrats Left for Illinois in August 2025 to Stop a New Map In August 2025 more than fifty Texas House Democrats left the state to block a mid-decade congressional map. Why they left, why they came back, and the redistricting war that followed. Why State Supreme Court Elections Now Help Decide Congressional Maps Wisconsin's 2023 court race was the costliest judicial election in US history because state justices now decide map fights. Why these races deserve your vote.