Supreme Court to hear potentially landmark case on partisan gerrymandering

You mean win?

 

Properly according to what?

 

Personally, my preference is for an independent commission to draw the district lines. But I am still OK with the legislature doing it still so long as they take in the additional criteria of partisan gerrymandering.

 

According to the US Constitution.

 

Measure against what?

 

Who appoints the commission and who is on it and what is the criteria they use to draw them up?

 

Where does the Constitution address it? The Constitution talks of Congressional apportionment, but where does it tell the states how to draw up districts? Originally Representatives were all at large and Senators selected by the state legislatures. The only criteria I know of where the courts have ruled is they must as equal as possible as far as how many in each district in shear numbers of people. Nothing about party affiliation.

 

I am all for ending the sleazy practice of Gerrymandering anywhere and everywhere.

 

I'm not going to dictate the specifics of the commission.

 

Liberals. Let the liberals do it because while they're busy telling Republicans that we don't know what we're talking about, the liberals have all the answers. It's only worked this way for over 200 years, but today's liberals know everything. That being said, they get to choose and determine what lines go where.

Nah, just kidding... They're really not smart or keen on what's going on, but like every tweener, they think they know all the answers. And like all mature adults, we sit back and pat their heads and say "Ok, little buddy, whatever you say."

 

Well then you don't have anything, that would be a KEY consideration. Who is on the committee and who appoints them. What does this commission do different than the committees in the state legislatures that draw up the lines?

 

Hey, on this we totally agree.

 

OK how are you going to do it then?

 

Create rules against partisan rigging of the districts. Look at the loopholes that are currently used by political parties to increase their advantage and shut them down.

 

Like what? The Constitution leaves it up to the states to draw their Congressional districts if at all, House members were elected at large previously. The citizens of the state elect their representatives with one of their duties being drawing district lines. There is no constitutional provision that says they must be drawn up equally between political parties, political parties are not even acknowledged in the Constitution.

 

Rules could be written to give a hearing to those who feel they are being cheated by obvious political hacks who are in power from either party at any given time to redraw congressional districts in a blatantly unfair manner in order to stay in power. These sleazy tactics which have been used by both political parties for over a century are a threat to our republic. Some sort of redress could and should be instated and enforced.

 

You can go to court now and sue if you believe something was untoward and there have been instances of long snake like districts trying to grab voters have been sent back to the state legislature. But those are rare the Constitution giving great deference to the elected officials of the state, the people's voice. Perhaps you could come up with a computer algorithm that would simply look at the population survey and create concise as uniform as possible districts based on population size alone. No inputs as to race, or income, or voting records, or gender. Just the number of citizens trying to equalize the just the numbers in each district. But then shouldn't some regional aspect come into play. People in a commonly defined region with regional interest. To split up a city into five other districts of suburbanites.

It's always the party wins gets the upper hand in districting so that entices parties to deal with the interest of the citizens to get their votes.

 

Or they may finally overturn the Warren era Baker vs Carr

 

I think district should be drawn according the people who live in them not to try to get the dominant party in the state to win. Because of this I condemn the democrat's use of gerrymandering. We have computer algorithms that can draw districts according to this criteria, or we can find a non-partisan panel to draw the lines like in many states and other countries.

 

Sounds like a nice idea. Now, run for office, and pass the law. Until then, **** and let the people from a state you don't live in do it the way THEY want to. You Liberals are amazingly dense. About a dozen of you keep putting forth this notion that there is a better way. It doesn't matter. This isn't Vietnam, Smoky. This bowling. There are rules. But Liberals never want to use the rules we all agreed on; they want to get what they want via the courts. It's win at all costs, by hook or by crook.

 

So what your saying is that politicians should choose the voters, and not voters choosing the politician.

You keep assuming that their is no way way to randomize districts, which on its face is ridiculous. It also shows that you really don't understand what gerrymandering is, and how it is achieved. Gerrymandered districts are drawn based on voter registration, which give unfair advantage to those who draw the district. So once one party gets a majority, they gerrymander to keep that majority. How again is that democratic ? District are drawn in such a way to create one large district for one party, and 2 smaller districts for the other party. Although they may have the same geographical size, one side gets 2 representatives, while the other gets 1......

The country is fairly evenly divided as democrat and republican, yet republicans hold the majority of state houses, and governorships. Thats not by accident. In 2006 the Koch brothers started very concentrated effort at the state level to win seats. They did this knowing that once they won a simple majority, gerrymandering would allow them to keep their "majority" at the federal level via gerrymandering.

This is all achieved based on one simple concept, in America the popular vote means nothing. The most votes doesn't really mean anything when you can pick and choose who gets to vote for whom.

 

I get it more than you, based on your comments. One man's gerrymander is another man's perfectly fair district. It's factually impossible to make everyone happy. Districts being pleasing to the eye says nothing of where the people who feel a certain way randomly choose to live.

And again, for about the 200th time in this thread, I am making no case for these lines in question, or to the general method that should be used.

I'm just saying this should be handled via legislation, not activist judges writing law from the bench.

Your fact about the country being divided equally, yet Republicans hold more state houses is missing a pretty key detail. MOST states are rural, and most rural areas have virtually no Democrats. There are probably more Democrats at an average Raider's game, then there are in the entire state of Kansas, to use our local example. (in this random Raiders game, they lose to the Chiefs)

Lastly, to your point about gerrymandering being some insurmountable force, rather than a slight edge, consider how the GOP got control of these state legislatures. They got them, while gerrymandered against them, in a huge wave of anti-Democrat elections (thanks Obama). Since they were gerrymandered against the GOP, yet the GOP won (~1,000 seats), I find it hard to imagine the DNC cannot do the same. I also think it's always been this way.

But, all that aside, my issue is with the people of a state having their right to choose their own districts, via the leaders they choose, being taken away from them by an un-elected body hundreds of miles away.

 

Not being able to do anything about it doesn't change the fact that I am right.

I am not a liberal.

And I am expressing the opinion that the rules should be changed and that we should support politicians who want this.

Conservatives don't either. They blatantly ignore the fact that the Patriot Act violates multiple parts of the constitution.

 

I'm all for changing the rules too, if that is what the people want. I'm against them having their rules changed against their will. If you support the opposite of that, you are factually a liberal. If you want laws changed via anything other than the legislators, you are certainly not a Conservative or a Libertarian.

The Patriot Act is hated by BOTH sides, at least as far as voters are concerned. Get off that nonsense.

 

It doesn't matter if a rule change is against the people's will, we are a republic not a democracy. We vote for politicians we hope to do things we believe in and have every right to have opinions on what should happen. It is common knowledge that the vast majority of us oppose gerrymandering and only crooked politicians support it so we should demand that they strike this corrupt practice down and vote out those who refuse.

Is this a response to my post or somebody else, because I wasn't talking about changing laws outside of normal processes.

Not true, this law has people split down the middle, with democrats divided and republicans mostly supporting. Get your facts straight.
http://www.pewresearch.org/2011/02/15/public-remains-divided-over-the-patriot-act/