Not sure why you were down voted without refute. Gerrymandering is a known and ignored problem in a lot of states, including my home state of Kansas (where Lawrence is split down the middle).

I just assume it's because it's inconvenient to someone's preconceived political notions. Happens all the time around here.

I've also been modded down to oblivion recently for saying that I don't like exercise because I find it boring. Whatev.

Aren't both Lawrence and Austin big college towns?

Maybe the state does not want its representatives chosen by out of area students who will not be around long term to deal with the outcome of their votes, good or bad.

So the students shouldn't have representation from the place where thy live anywhere from 9 to 12 months out of the year, but instead have repeentation in a place they live 0 to 3 months in? That doesn't make any sense.

Also, Austin is... wait for it... THE STATE CAPITAL, with a population of 912,000 people. UT Austin Has an enrollment of 50,000. Even if we held for sake of argument your statement that college students should vote in "home" districts where they don't live for more than half the year, and for simplicity say that all 50,000 students are not from Austin, what of the remaining 862,000 Austin residents? Don't they deserve to have their city represented, like every other city of similar size?

Calling Austin a "college town" is as nonsensical as calling Boston one.

The reason why college towns get gerrymandered to dilute their representative power in Republican dominated states has everything to do with the fact the fact that college students tend to vote Democratic. This is the same reason why "voter fraud" became an excuse to target minority voting patterns. It's a partisan power to try to create and maintain structural bias into the electoral system.

You actually give an example to reinforce my point. Austin has to be gerrymandered, because it is already so blue - if it weren't, they wouldn't bother. Gerrymandering is moving the goalpost (of what it takes to get political representation), but as a technique, it has a limited range. At some point the supermajority is sufficiently super that no amount of fooling around can suppress it.

My point is that things don't change fast. Multigenerationally, sure. Fast? No. Not even close.

I don't know. NC already changed fast enough that I would hesitate to call it multi-generational.

HB2 says otherwise.

HB2 is only one piece of the puzzle. The state did vote for Obama in 2008, and presidential elections are a big part of political representation, too (in fact, the 2016 one may well even take care of HB2 in a roundabout way, via SCOTUS).