The recent Associated Press "analysis" of congressional and state legislative district gerrymandering (published under the headline "Redrawing America" in the July 3 Times) seems to indict Republicans for their manipulative partisan map drawing while completely ignoring a historical fact: The federal Voting Rights Act and court-mandated split districts are as much to blame.

Historically, African Americans were under represented in Congress. To fix that, the courts mandated that "minority-majority" districts be drawn, such as Florida's 3rd. In Pennsylvania, the current boundaries of its 2nd Dist. were not mandated, they but served the same purpose.

The lines drawn for "PA-2" are as racially sensitive as your average Ku Klux Klan barbecue. Drafters made sure that, block by block, majority-white streets were excluded and majority-black streets were included. This helped create a reliable and safe "minority" district such that former Demcratic U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (now convicted of corruption charges) didn't really need any campaign funds for election purposes.

Of course, packing racial or ethnic minorities into a district does not necessarily disadvantage one party. The reality is that African Americans have become such a reliable bloc of Democratic votes that those court mandated districts are now seen by poorly educated political scientists as Republican political tricks. And newspapers print ill-informed and poorly researched articles on their front pages and questionably title them as "analysis."

Philip J. Donohue, Alloway Township

Note: The writer is a Republican candidate for a 3rd Dist. New Jersey Assembly seat in the Nov. 8 election.

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