NEW ORLEANS — So, what’s the big deal?

As a reformed sportswriter who once asked ChatGPT to plot out the best road trip for visiting national parks in Utah – and got what appeared to be a suitably Mormon answer in five seconds – I wondered how long would it take for the free AI analytical tool to create a reasonable redistricting plan for Louisiana that would map out six contiguous, right-sized congressional districts for the state’s 4.6 million residents.

In this case, about 3.7 seconds.

But, as with all things Louisiana, where politics is waged as 4D chess, checkmate is not that easy, says Greg Rigamer, one of those rare people with the ability to decipher and accommodate both the unswerving validity of mathematical equations and the relentless warrior mentality of politicians, for whom this take-no-prisoners game of redistricting comes down to: “Find me one more vote.”

Throw in the bitter divide of race, the bane of the United States for 250 years, and finding a voting solution that satisfies the most Louisiana residents becomes an AI hallucination.

Louisiana currently has six congressional districts, four of them largely white and Republican, and two that are mostly Black and Democrat. Now, the burning question being debated in the back chambers of the Baton Rouge Capitol and in the Oval Office of the White House is whether that 4-2 tilt in favor of the Republicans will become 5-1 or even 6-0, given President Donald Trump’s desire to extend the Republican runway in Congress.

“The easy part is to divide 4 1/2 million by six,” said Rigamer, a New Orleans political data consultant whose facility with polling and statistical modeling is legendary in and beyond Louisiana. “It’s absolutely simple. But, dealing with decision-makers is almost impossible because they want their mother-in-law, who lives on this street, in their district, but they don’t want the people on the next street over.”

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling April 29 in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s current congressional map was unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered – the significant legal sticking point was the creation in 2024 of a second majority-Black district that snaked its way from Shreveport to Baton Rouge – I wondered if AI was equipped in a “post-Callais” world to handle this simple task: “Can you develop a new congressional district map for the state of Louisiana using the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Callais decision as guides?”

Faster than former Gov. Bobby Jindal could zip through prices at an Angus livestock auction, ChatGPT came back with assurances that it would not just “draw a map of Louisiana the way a politician might sketch lines (uh-oh, that’s a real problem). It would follow a structured, data-driven pipeline with explicit rules and tradeoffs.”

ChatGPT’s non-negotiable “criteria” would be equal population (“one person, one vote”), compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act (where there could be no racial vote dilution) and contiguous districts (“no disconnected pieces”). It would use the most recent census data, parish boundaries, voting-precinct maps and geographic features such as rivers and bayous.

It also claimed it would take into account compactness (“avoid weird, snake-like districts”: Did someone mention Louisiana’s 6th District?), respect community lines, promote fairness and protect minority representation.

“Here’s the catch,” ChatGPT cautioned. “These goals can conflict (umm, yes). Algorithms must balance tradeoffs (e.g., compactness vs. minority representation).”

ChatGPT advised that an AI system likely would “anchor districts around population centers (New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport), ensure at least one or two majority-Black districts to comply with federal law, balance rural vs. urban populations across districts (and) minimize splitting parishes where possible.”

In 3.7 seconds, ChatGPT’s work was done, producing a map that looked, to the unpracticed eye, sleek and coherent. ChatGPT spit out a 5-1 Republican-Democratic map, with the Democratic district centered on New Orleans.

That was the moment Dorothy returned to Kansas.

For his political clients, Rigamer has used a proprietary data-crunching program that essentially can identify what a person on a certain block had for breakfast last Tuesday morning. He also is a pro with the AI tool Gemini and adept with the data-slicing ability of DavesRedistricting.org, an open-source program with a state-by-state breakdown of voter information and district maps.

Still, Rigamer said Gemini failed the test for meeting his exacting standards.

“I told Gemini, ‘I want six congressional districts in Louisiana,’ and it spit out a map pretty quickly, but it was wrong on so many points,” Rigamer said.

Rigamer told Gemini it was “hallucinating” because some of the districts were not contiguous.

“There was a piece of a district here and a piece of another district here,” Rigamer said. “I think what it was doing was grouping communities of interest, irrespective of geography. It did fix that. Then I told it some of the districts were much smaller than the others. Districts have to be within three-quarters of a percentage point in total population.”

Rigamer and other political experts said dispassionate math is one thing. Human maneuvering is another.

“This is not like medicine, where there’s a million different variables,” Rigamer said. “It’s just straight numbers. But where it gets difficult is the people who are drawing the map saying, ‘Well, I’m really popular in this area. This area has got to be in here.’ You get into those kinds of things that are personal judgments. You have all these things that come into play that have nothing to do with math.”

The redrawing of the snake-like 6th District in 2024 was steeped in political intrigue because it turned a Republican-majority district into one that was majority Democratic. It was widely viewed as Gov. Jeff Landry’s payback for Rep. Garret Graves’ endorsing Landry’s 2023 gubernatorial opponent, Stephen Waguespack, and also for Graves’ reluctant support for Steve Scalise for speaker of the U.S. House.

Graves chose not to run in the newly constructed district.

In his behind-the-scenes conversations with several Louisiana lawmakers since the Callais decision – both Republicans and Democrats – Rigamer said the upcoming redistricting battle will be how many of the state’s six congressional districts will maintain a Black voting majority. Currently, there are two. Will that shrink to one – or zero?

“A number of people I’ve been speaking to – and it’s been a whole bunch since Thursday – they’re really OK with 5-1, but out of D.C., I think there’s a real interest in the 6-0,” Rigamer said. “I can guarantee you it ain’t going to be 4-2.”

Rigamer said the Baton Rouge buzz is that Trump, to whom Landry has pledged unswerving loyalty, has made it clear exactly what he wants.

“I’m sure the White House wants six Republican districts,” Rigamer said. “You can do it, but it gets to be very challenging. I think what you would see happen – and I‘m not suggesting this, I’m just saying the math on this is such – is that you would have to put New Orleans with St. Tammany and some of the Northshore parishes where you don’t have any significant minority population.”

“Another reason I say this is because in Louisiana, the vast majority – 95% of African Americans – are Democrats and consistently vote Democrat. So, if you wanted to do a 6-0, you couldn’t really put New Orleans and Jefferson together because Jefferson is a large parish and 30% African American, and you can’t make that work. So, what you would do is grab African Americans from Orleans and put them with St. Tammany and Washington and Tangipahoa, where you have a pretty good population base but not a high number of African Americans.”

The political headwinds against doing anything that would redistribute voters in Jefferson Parish, Rigamer said, would be significant because Scalise has built an impenetrable base there.

“Scalise is very popular, and he wins his elections in a landslide all the time,” Rigamer said. “He’s worked very hard since he was elected in 2008 to really get to know his district and have them know him. He wants to keep that district as close as possible to what he has been working on for the last 18 years. So, now, rather than have it 75% Republican, we’re going to have it 55% because we’re going to dilute Troy Carter’s (Democratic) district? That’s just repeated with every congressman.”

Political consultant Ron Faucheux said the outcome of the upcoming deliberations is simple to predict.

“It gets down to what Landry wants and what (Attorney General) Liz Murrill thinks they can get through,” Faucheux said. “The simplest thing would be to just go back to what they had, in effect, when there was one Black seat. But with all these parties trying to kill the other side – not just picking up a seat here or there but just wiping them out – there’s a lot of talk that Trump and the national Republicans want them to go for it, to wipe out both Democratic seats.”

With all legal jargon aside, Rigamer said his reading of the Callais decision is that it gives the state “a lot of latitude in redistricting.” Even ChatGPT reflected that new landscape, given the recent Callais ruling.

I asked ChatGPT the Trump question: “Would a Louisiana redistricting map that establishes six majority-white congressional districts be fair?”

“In practical terms, states now have far more freedom to draw maps without creating majority-minority districts,” ChatGPT said. “So, would my answer change (from the situation before Callais)? Legally? Yes – dramatically. Before Callais, a 6 majority-white map in Louisiana would almost certainly be illegal under Section 2. After Callais, a 6 majority-white map is much more likely to survive legal challenge. Courts may accept it if the state says it was drawn for partisan, geographic or ‘race-neutral’ reasons.”

“From a fairness/representation standpoint? No,” ChatGPT continued. “Even after Callais, the underlying facts didn’t change. Louisiana is still ~ one-third Black. Voting is still racially polarized in many parts of the state. A 6-0 map would likely result in little or no Black-preferred representation; outcomes that don’t reflect the statewide electorate. So, most political scientists, voting-rights analysts and AI simulations would still flag that map as highly unrepresentative; an extreme outlier compared to neutral districting plans.”

Rigamer is putting his money on the past-performance charts of Louisiana politicians: Lawmakers will always rally down the stretch and find a way to beat AI.

“The practical matter is, I don’t think people are looking for the most artful solution,” Rigamer said. “They’re looking for what they want. AI might give them the better solution, but it’s not what they want.”