FILE – The U.S. Supreme Court is seen, April 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
July 9, 2024 Story by: Editor
Patrick Marley of The Washington Post has published an article about South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. Here is an excerpt:
This spring, the Supreme Court approved district boundaries in South Carolina that Republican state legislators claimed were designed to benefit their party. The 1st District, represented by Rep. Nancy Mace (R) for the past four years, was previously competitive but is now considered solidly Republican by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. The redrawn boundaries increased the number of Republican voters in the district and kept the percentage of Black voters at 17 percent, preventing any increase.
A federal three-judge panel last year determined that the district lines constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, which “exiled” tens of thousands of Black voters, who predominantly vote for Democrats, to a neighboring district. However, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing in May for a six-justice Supreme Court majority composed entirely of GOP nominees, argued that there was minimal evidence that South Carolina lawmakers focused on race when drawing the lines to maximize Republican advantage.
In South Carolina, the ruling essentially cemented a 6-to-1 House majority for the GOP in a state where Donald Trump won 55 percent of the vote in 2020. The sole Democrat, Rep. James E. Clyburn, is also the only Black House member from South Carolina, and his district is the only one in the state with a plurality Black population. Statewide, just over a quarter of the population is African American. Source: Election Law Blog
