OK … this is my third diary on this subject in three days. It appears there are a lot of competing interests within the Democratic Party and I just wanted to see how a map can be drawn that satisfies all those concerns, namely:
- Keep all incumbent Democrats happy by giving them new districts with plenty of their existing constituents and ones that are Democratic enough where they don’t have to sweat elections too much (about 60% Democratic districts).
- Maintain the two existing black-majority seats and make sure the African-American percentage does not decrease in either (MD-4 is currently 56.6% black while MD-7 is currently 56.4% black).
- Create a seventh Democratic seat.
- Create a third real minority-majority seat (by “real” I mean not just create one that is 49% non-hispanic white, but one where a minority candidate would have a real chance of winning).
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