Tennessee redistricting plan splits Memphis neighbors and reshapes midterms as other states follow

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — For 21 years, Steve Fowler and Sam Wilson have performed together in a band on Memphis’ renowned Beale Street. And for the past decade, the men have been neighbors on a quiet, leafy avenue.

But as of Thursday, they will no longer cast the same ballot despite living across the street from each other.

That’s because Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the congressional district of Memphis, which has long enjoyed its own Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat. Now, the city is split into three Republican-leaning districts, its majority-Black population sliced up and bound to mostly white, rural and conservative communities along lines that branch away from Fowler and Wilson’s East Memphis neighborhood.

A line runs down the middle of the street, placing Fowler in the 8th Congressional District, which runs hundreds of miles to central Tennessee across a dozen counties. Wilson is zoned for the 9th District, which extends across most of the state’s southern border before curving up to encompass the largely white and affluent Nashville suburbs.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/tennessee-redistricting-plan-splits-memphis-122653794.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. This hurts the quality of representation for virtually everyone living in a city by diluting their voices

to rural areas which in many ways have different needs, and realities.


Thanks for the thread Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

[Jilly_in_VA]

2. Why

is it okay for the governor and a legislature to redraw a map, but not for the voters to vote on one?

Oh, I know the answer already. IOKIYAAR.

Maybe the VA legislature can just redraw one, then, and the governor can sign it.