In what should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, the state of Alabama has used a gerrymandered congressional map that literally shuts out the power of the racial minority vote. On Tuesday, voters pushed back against that map in a time where voter suppression laws are springing up all across the country in places where officials were aligned with the ex-president Donald Trump.
🚨ALERT: Voters in Alabama SUE the state, claiming that current congressional districts are malapportioned, racial gerrymanders in violation of the 14th Amendment. The voters ask the court to step in & ensure new fair maps are in place for 2022 elections. https://t.co/wd4XdYgV5Z
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) September 28, 2021
Alabama voters filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Alabama’s secretary of state, John H. Merrell, saying that since 2011, racist gerrymandering had prevented black and brown people from being represented. The six voters named in the lawsuit are from a number of different districts with election maps that take away their voices in electing legislators to represent them.
The official legal complaint notes that:
‘Alabama’s current Congressional redistricting plan, enacted in 2011, Ala. Act No. 2011-518, is malapportioned and racially gerrymandered, packing black voters in a single majority-black Congressional district and minimizing their influence in five majority-white districts. This action is brought to require the Alabama Legislature to enact a new plan with 2020 census data that remedies the existing unconstitutional gerrymander by restoring Alabama’s traditional redistricting principle of drawing its Congressional districts with whole counties.’
Returning to the congressional map in use prior to 2011, the voters said, would restore “the integrity of county boundaries” and “will advance the representation of black citizens and, indeed, the fair representation of all Alabamians.”
Twitter had a lot to say about the new lawsuit to protect voting rights. Read some of their comments below:
