Chloe Holmes

POV: The map for the US House after the 2028 presidential election

It's over: The Liberals have retained the state seat of Nepean, on the Mornington Peninsula. Anthony Marsh, the mayor of Mornington Peninsula Shire, will be the next member for Nepean.

The first C in CNC is very important.

Trying to organise stuff for SRS but god it's all so overwhelming and honestly there's a much easier way to solve my stress with it all

My feelings on today’s VRA decision. The easiest way to understand this is to stop focusing on what politicians say they’re doing and look at what they’re actually doing. If you have a large Black community that could realistically come together and elect a candidate, and instead the state splits that community across multiple districts so they’re always outnumbered, their voting power is basically gone. That’s not complicated, that’s just math. Now the state turns around and says, “Well, we didn’t do that because of race, we did it for politics.” But in a lot of places, race and politics overlap. So if you accept that excuse every time, then the law meant to protect minority voters doesn’t actually protect anyone. That’s the problem. If courts only care about intent, then any state can just say “we didn’t mean to discriminate,” and that’s the end of it. There’s no accountability, even if the outcome is obvious. The point of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is to look at real-world impact. Are people actually losing the ability to elect candidates of their choice because of how the map is drawn? If the answer is yes, it shouldn’t matter what label the state puts on it. You don’t get to carve up communities, weaken their voice, and then hide behind “this was just partisan.” If it looks like dilution and functions like dilution, then it is dilution. That’s what the law is supposed to stop.

"no §2 challenge to districting should ever succeed." — Justice Thomas, concurring