<x-flowed>   I think Dan Lowenstein is being too sanguine on what would happen if Reynolds were overthrown.  In Texas, if Tom De Lay survives, I can easily imagine his packing urban and rural Democrats into 5 or 6 congressional, and state senate districts (Austin, D/FW, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, the rest of the Rio Grande Valley).  That would give the Reps 26 congressional and 25 state senate seats, and he could make the same voting rights argument (partisan motives) that he made in Sessions v. Perry.  In Georgia, the fact that the Republicans have been willing to state so unqualifiedly after Judge Murphy's opinion that they never, never had any racial motives in requiring a voter id for in-person voting, while weakening protections against fraud in absentee voting implies to me that they'd be very happy to draw maybe 3 packed Democratic districts -- Atlanta/De Kalb, Augusta, Macon -- leaving all the rest of the suburbs and rural areas for the Reps.  According to Rep. Sue Burmeister (R, Augusta), blacks only vote in Augusta if they're paid to, so there won't actually be many voters in these packed, heavily Democratic districts, anyway.  Burmeister is proof that the New, non-racist South is still a fond dream.
  In the current bitterly partisan environment, 1p1v puts very important constraints on partisan gerrymandering, and I fear the experiment of removing the constraints and hoping for fair play.
Morgan

Prof. of History and Social Science, Caltech
snail mail:  228-77 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125
phone 626-395-4080
fax 626-405-9841
home page:  <http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html>
to order Colorblind Injustice:  http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-388.html
          "Peace if possible, Justice at any rate" -- Wendell Phillips

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