Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision

New maps that added five Republican districts in Texas hit a legal roadblock on Tuesday, with a federal judge saying the state cannot use the 2025 maps because they are probably “racially gerrymandered”.

The decision is likely to be appealed, given the push for more Republican-friendly congressional maps nationwide and Donald Trump’s full-court press on his party to make them. Some states have followed suit, and some Democratic states have retaliated, pushing to add more blue seats to counteract Republicans.

A panel of three federal judges in Texas said in a decision that the state must use previously approved 2021 maps for next year’s midterms rather than the ones that kickstarted a wave of mid-decade redistricting. The plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, are “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map”, so the court approved a preliminary injunction to stop the map’s use for next year’s elections.

  • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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    6 hours ago

    that’s largely correct, but there are multiple parts to the ballot system: FPTP, RCV, etc are means of counting ballots, but another part is proportional vs representative

    you can have representative with RCV (that’s what australia is)

    • __dev@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Yes that’s true, systems like FPTP and IRV (as used in australia) are single-winner and thus require a local representation system, but you could use ranked-choice in a proportional system.