As much as it hurts to post anything from David Weigel because of his wholly inaccurate and incomplete coverage of the New Black Panther controversy,  he has an interesting piece at Slate about whether Democrats should scrap Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act:

“How obvious should this be? In 1990, 27 African-Americans were elected to the House of Representatives. In 1991, there was a round of congressional redistricting, and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was applied to carve new majority-minority districts. In 1992, the number of African-Americans in Congress increased by 13, but even though Bill Clinton was winning the presidency, the number of Democrats in the House shrunk by 9. There were plenty of reasons for the Democratic losses, but the new majority-minority districts were key. They were key to GOP gains in 2002, after more redistricting — especially in Florida and Michigan — that shored up minority members, and they were key to the 2005 re-gerrymander of Texas.”