Jacksonville is a segregated city tailor-made for the Voting Rights Act, yet for a second time the city chose not to conduct a mathematical analysis to determine whether minority-voter protections in the federal law would apply here.
To defend itself, the council deployed subterfuge, insisting race was not a driving factor in its map despite making comments like,"... I want to make sure that he's comfortable and I'm comfortable in terms of the ethnoracial black and white."
Stunningly, one council member would later insist the judge had praised the redistricting process despite finding a few flaws, almost a preview of what was to come: a redistricting process every bit as dysfunctional and unacceptable as the first one.Jacksonville is a segregated city tailor-made for the Voting Rights Act, yet for a second time the city chose not to conduct a mathematical analysis to determine whether minority-voter protections in the federal law would apply here.
Even though Howard's ruling noted that the original map confined the influence of Black voters to just one corner of the city, the council used the remedial process to further dilute their power. In practical political terms, the stakes were small: The difference between the map submitted by the plaintiffs and the map the council ultimately passed is one district. In the plaintiffs' map, Democrats are favored in six districts; in the council's map, they are favored in five.
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