Earlier this month, after years of litigation, a federal judge in Alabama ordered a new state senate map. In a surprising decision, the map she chose wasn’t one drafted by a court-appointed special master and his expert cartographer, but rather one that had been submitted by an anonymous member of the public, known only by their initials, “DD”.
The decision stunned “DD” – an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama named Daniel DiDonato – who learned his map had been selected as he was preparing to leave for his 9.30am introduction to political science class.
“I was absolutely surprised,” he said in an interview. “Now, nearly 300,000 Alabamians will be voting under new district lines that I drew up at two in the morning in a dorm, a cramped dorm study room.”
Alternate story: Trump judge said the previous lines were too egregious to be legal, but then chose the most conservative map presented by the Special Master.
The kid based his map on the racially gerrymandered map and turned off racial considerations in the redesign. The map minimally tweaked a racial gerrymander, but because he didn’t use racism in his tweak he thinks it’s not racially gerrymandered. Garbage in, garbage out.
Did anyone check it for racism after it was done? He said he took the existing republican map and made as little changes as possible, but went* off population. It could have turned out okay? If you grab someone from “cross the tracks,” he would grab from that. I don’t know if it worked out that way, but I’d like to know myself.