|
North Carolina's 12th congressional district is located in central North Carolina and comprises portions of Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Lexington, Salisbury, Concord, and High Point. It was one of two minority-majority Congressional districts created in the state in the 1990s. Since the 2000 census, it has had a small plurality of whites, though blacks make up a majority of its voting population. North Carolina earlier had a twelfth seat in the House in the nineteenth century and in the mid-twentieth century (1943-1963). ==Current district== The district was re-established after the 1990 United States Census, when North Carolina gained a House seat due to an increase in population. It was drawn in 1992 as one of two black majority (minority-majority) districts, designed to give blacks (who comprised 22% of the state's population at the time) the chance to elect a representative of their choice under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibited dilution of voting power of minorities.〔"redistrict">(senate.leg.state.mn.us "North Carolina Redistricting Cases: the 1990s" ), National Conference of State Legislatures〕 In its original configuration, this was a 64 percent black-majority district stretching from Gastonia to Durham. It was very long and so thin at some points that it was no wider than a highway lane, as it followed Interstate 85 almost exactly. It was criticized as a racially gerrymandered district. For instance, the ''Wall Street Journal'' described the district "political pornography." The United States Supreme Court ruled in ''Shaw v. Reno'', 509 U.S. 630 (1993) that a racial gerrymander may, in some circumstances, violate the Equal Protection Clause. The state legislature had defended the two minority-majority districts as based on demographics, with the 12th representing the interior Piedmont area and the 1st the Coastal Plain.〔 Subsequently, the 12th district was redrawn several times and was adjudicated in the Supreme Court on two additional occasions.〔 The version created after the 2000 census was approved by the US Supreme Court in ''Hunt v. Cromartie''. The current version dates from the 2010 census; like the 2003-2013 version, it has a small plurality of whites. Blacks make up a large majority of registered voters and Hispanics constitute 7.1% of residents. In all its configurations, it has been a Democratic stronghold dominated by black voters in Charlotte and the Piedmont Triad. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「North Carolina's 12th congressional district」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|