Strike Down GOP Gerrymandering

I don't think that there is anything wrong with your math system either. If a state wants to use the math system to make their borders then go for it. I do not think we need a uniform system for every state. Let the States choose. The collective is all for diversity except when it comes to thought.

 

Do people think that a community doesn't change or have new residence move in or out during a 10 year time frame? The lines drawn wont represent that district with in 10 years and that why it gets redrawn. Most red states are huge and can't really gerrymander all that much. places like NYC and ATL are always blue, and "gerrymandering" aren't very effective to make them red regardless.

 

Well you're not going to get all 50 state legislatures to agree on the same thing to make it UNIVERSAL anymore than a Constitutional Amendment. So it's a moot point.

BTW did you see the Maine GOP just file a lawsuit over the ranked vote "instant runoff". Be interesting to see what the court does this time and how quickly they make a decision.

 

Republican state houses gerrymandered enough congressional district in 2010 to give them a considerable advantage, but Trump crapped on their scheme:

 

"We" being the party in power or with the most voter support. Back to gerrymandering. And there are some geographical considerations. Not saying impossible or not worthy but has it's own issues.

So are you for revoking previous court civil rights decisions which created majority black districts to help insure a black candidate wins?

For instance I used to have to drive right by a polling place, a fire station, just 100 yards down from the entrance to my neighborhood and several miles to our civic center to vote because the federal government had mandated and redrew our city districts to help insure a predominately black district. That excuse about having to drive a longer distance is voter suppression be damned. That was changed when they eliminated that voting place and both districts now vote and the civic center but just one example.

The city next door many many years ago had their three member open seat city council/weak mayor system declared unconstitutional because it "diluted" the black vote and the federal government forced a 7 district system ensuring there were 3 predominately black districts AND get this, that any substantial measure, like the budget or major law changes, had to get at least 2 of the votes of the members from the black districts else it failed. THAT is still in effect.

 

Proving that the line which are drawn don't mean **** from one election to another. Worst cases of "gerrymandering" comes from democrats states.

 

Sometimes the treatment is worse then the Disease

 

I dont think there is a single totalitarian solution. It is up to each state to decide. Making all states use 1 system is just another way of gerrymandering. The motivation to take this power away from the States is troubling...

 

Well how are "we" each and every citizen going to get together and make the decision? How many citizen even have the expertise to examine and make a judgement on an complicated algorithm?

People on a coastal area have different concerns from people in farmland area. Urban areas versus rural areas.

Yep it should be population and geographical. Take race and political registration out of it.

 

One significant aspect of Trump's befouling GOP gerrymandering was in level of education.

"... in the midterm elections, 26 of the 36 GOP districts that Democrats have flipped so far had larger college-educated populations than the national average."

 

So they received more liberal brainwashing than most? I can see why they flipped. Wonder if the other 10 districts had people who were educated in something other than liberal arts.

 

The Gerrymander Excuse Implodes
Democrats’ total vote share roughly matches their House majority.

Elections have a way of blowing up partisan conceits—see what happened to the Democratic Party’s Electoral College “lock” in 2016. This year Democrats busted one of their own cherished myths by proving that Republican gerrymanders weren’t preventing them from retaking the House of Representatives. There’s a lesson here for voters and judges....


For many commentators the post-2010 redistricting created a crisis of democracy by supposedly locking Democrats out of power. Days before the 2018 election the New York Times’ David Leonhardt cited Republican gerrymandering as evidence that the U.S. could “slide toward Hungarian autocracy.”


Well, so much for that. Democrats last week made their largest gain in House seats since 1974 and appear to be closing in on a 233-seat House majority with several races still not called. This means Democrats will hold about 53.6% of seats—a 7.1% edge. And, what do you know, Democratic House candidates nationwide have 52.8% of votes—7.3% more than Republicans, according to the latest Cook Political Report tally.....

Liberals are still complaining that redistricting may have limited Democratic gains this year in states like North Carolina and Ohio because Democrats’ statewide vote share is greater than their share of representatives. But in states like New Jersey (which will have one GOP Congressman out of 12) and California, Republicans are wildly underrepresented by that same standard. The biggest Democratic problem in the House is geography because far more of their voters are concentrated in cities. But that was less of a liability this year as the suburbs turned more Democratic.

None of this should be surprising. Even a cleverly partisan gerrymander contains the seeds of its own undoing as political coalitions change. A district’s partisanship shifts by election based on public mood, changing demographics and the issues debated...

The other gerrymandering story from last Tuesday is the success of campaigns in Colorado, Michigan and Missouri (one in Utah is too close to call) to take redistricting power away from the political branches with the aim of creating a less partisan process.

Voters have every right to do this, but “independent” line-drawing may be no less polarizing or unfair. These states may simply be turning political choices over to less accountable authorities with their own partisan biases. The New Jersey congressional and state legislative maps are no less favorable to Democrats because they were designed by a supposedly independent commission.

All of this reinforces the argument that judges should keep out of fights over partisan gerrymanders. They would inevitably favor one party over another and cause more Americans to question judicial independence.

That’s what happened this year in Pennsylvania, where the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court rewrote the state GOP majority’s 2011 congressional map and helped Democrats flip four seats statewide. The U.S. Supreme Court can use the evidence of 2018 as reason to end its flirtation with ruling on partisan maps—and let the parties fight it out in elections as usual...

Full article here....https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gerrymander-excuse-implodes-1542412885

 

Gerrymandering is a bug with our system that the founders didn't anticipate. We definitely need to eliminate it to keep political parties in power from trying to say in power by cheating. Right now Republicans use it, but in 2020 and beyond, democrats will likely have power because GOP voters are older and dying off, and millenials and minorities are becoming the majority. Democrats will use gerrymandering to block Republicans from every gaining power again.