You might oppose Indiana redrawing congressional districts mid-decade under pressure from President Trump simply on moral grounds. But an Elkhart common council member says the map released Monday also would seem to break the law.
The proposed map splits what would be the state’s second and third U.S. House districts with the St. Joseph River in Elkhart. Areas north of the river are predominately white voters while the areas south are largely Black and Hispanic.
Democratic Elkhart common council member Aaron Mishler says that would seem to violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
”States can’t draw districts that deny minority voters an equal chance to elect representatives of their choice,” Mishler says.
Mishler says he’s no lawyer but he knows the Supreme Court has a three-part test to determine if a state violates the law.
“Is the minority population large enough and compact enough to matter? We know in Elkhart that it is. Two, do minority voters tend to vote cohesively in the city of Elkhart? Yes they do. And are they consistently outvoted when their community gets cracked apart like this?”
The ACLU of Indiana are lawyers. In a statement Monday, they said, “we are researching and considering the possibility of litigation, but we hope that will not be necessary as we hope that the General Assembly will see the wisdom of not disturbing the maps it has only recently drawn up."
