Redistricting as a federal mandate, TX

*Texas Republicans poised to redraw state congressional map on the wrecker's orders.*

This is in response to a statement by the injustice department that accuses Texas (perhaps incorrectly) of violating a newly distorted version of the Voting Rights Act (that forbids coalition-defined districts).

*Newsom threatens to redraw California House maps in protest at Texas plan.*

Considering that the Republicans hold a one-seat majority in the House, these plans could make a difference. But that depends on how much additional voter-suppression Republicans succeed in doing.

What's best for democracy in the long term is to draw districts by the algorithm that produces lines that optimize the overall representivity of all the groups of people that might tend to have their own statistical leaning. It generates a large number of possible district maps for the state, and for each, invents many different preferences, each of which conjectures how each demographic group could lean; figures out based on those leanings who would win each district; computes the discrepancy between the hypothetical percentages of the leanings and the resulting percentages in the legislature elected; then averages that discrepancy over all the preference maps. The smaller the average discrepancy for a certain district map, the fairer that district map.