Latinos Lose, Democrats Win In Nevada Redistricting

An interesting story about redistricting out of Nevada. In order to cement more Democratic districts, Democrats there argued against creating Latino majority districts, instead advocating that splitting up Latinos into different districts would not affect their ability to elect candidates of their choice.

The result is that Democrats gained power under the redistricting and Republicans lost some. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported:

The goal of Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, Republican legislators and their party’s lawyers for most of the year had been to create one Hispanic congressional district and as many as 12 Hispanic-majority state legislative districts. Democrats had argued Hispanic districts were not needed to elect Hispanics, who usually vote Democratic, and that the Republican plans would dilute the influence of Hispanics…

District Judge James T. Russell, who appointed the panel of special masters, said in an order that the panel decided “bloc voting by the white majority was not shown to usually defeat a minority’s preferred candidate” and, therefore, rejected a Hispanic majority district for Congress.

And only four of the 42 legislative districts have Hispanic majority under the panel’s plan.

The result is that Democrats will probably win two of the four congressional seats, another is solidly Republican and a third is up for grabs, the Review-Journal reported. It may be debatable whether Democrats were cracking the Latino vote, or whether Republicans wanted to pack it, but ultimately Latino voters will be influential in next year’s election, just as they were in last year’s.