the walls will come down in WI. The implications would be so huge. Do I dare hope??

It's purple states that have been the most extremely rigged.

They took all of the areas dominated by democrats in Wilmington and dispersed then into the vast eastern swamps, excluding all of the population centers along the way, all the way up to the Virginia Boarder. I vote with some people who live 150 miles away. While people 2 miles away, in my own city, vote in another district. I'll put North Carolina up against any other state where it comes to gerrymandering.

Last edited Thu Jul 9, 2015, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Most activists look to get past 50%. We have to beat Republicans here by over 60%. Gerrymandering has NEVER been done to the extremes the GOP has done it in purple states. The NCGOP are now trying to redistrict our CITIES and counties, too. None of their business, but, they are running roughshod over standard practices and creating new guidelines that will grant them that authority, too.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article26424838.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina's_congressional_districts#/media/File:United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_North_Carolina,_since_2013.tif



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina's_congressional_districts



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania's_congressional_districts

MY district is the 12th district, which starts WEST of Pittsburgh in Beaver PA then goes NORTH of Pittsburgh, avoid MOST of the Allegheny River communities then ends with Johnstown PA. It has a slight Democratic majority in population, but given more Republicans tend to vote then Democrats, it is a GOP held seat.

The State Legislate through in with Pittsburgh most of the Ohio, Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers valleys for that is the old mill towns and heavily democratic. You have a district that is 99% urban and 90% Democratic (in the last election the GOP did not even bothered to run a candidate).

Remember that is the key to gerrymandering, you put as many opponents in one district so they are less opponents in the remaining districts. The classic situation, you have an area with 12 voters to be divided into three districts (Four voters in each district). Six voters are Democrats, six voters are GOP. Instead of putting two of each party into each district you put four Democrat in the first district, leaving two democrats for the other two districts, but all 12 GOP for those same districts. Thus you have one 100% Democratic district and two marginal GOP districts (the other two district vote GOP 3 to 1).

Thus the first step is to find out where your opponents are strong and build a district from that base, throwing in as many opponents as you can. That leaves your supporters to become the majority voters in the remaining districts. Thus most pro GOP districts are 52 to 55 percent GOP, while Democratic Districts are often as high as 90% Democratic.

In many ways, the way to attack gerrymandering is to attack those overweening Democratic districts. We should adopt a rule that if a candidate gets 80% of the vote of the people of his district, it is presumed that is a product of fraud and the district must be dived up. Notice I did not say it was fraud, but it should be presumed to be fraud and the state MUST then break that district up into the surrounding districts. i.e. redistrict the entire state with a requirement that no more then 1/4 of the 80% district remain in any one district. Such a rule will FORCE redistricting that the GOP will oppose and all a Democrat has to do is run in his district and get the voters to vote for him overwhelmingly.

The problem is not the spread out districts to get maximum GOP voters, but the districts that concentrate to many Democratic Voters into one district. A 75% or 80% rule will force more equal districts, for otherwise you will be redistricting after every election.

I'm not actually trying to claim a prize, bad is bad, and this is now a common theme in America after 2010.

I was struck the other day listening to a Greek economist, who's teaching in the UK, talking about the situation in Greece. Goldman Sachs was involved. The money that put them in dept was dispersed to the wealthy through lower taxes. The media had been bought up by the wealthy and was all pro austerity. The dept lead to privatization, longer work hours, lower benefits. This whole game was developed by the University of Chicago boys in South America in the 70's and 80's. Now they've taken it world wide. Predatory lending on a global scale leading to oligarchy. There's one right wing playbook and it's time to deal with them as the international crime syndicate which they are. Taking down Goldman Sachs might be the best move we could make.

I know that's a bit off the point but it's generally about an organized conversion of the world to their ideals. A dystopian nightmare in the making for most of us.

this was/is the 7th Congressional District in PA (currently Pat Meehan (R), previously Joe Sestak's (D) district, and before him, Curt Weldon (R))

BEFORE -



AFTER -



Back in the early '90s after Harvey Gantt ran for Senate in NC, I remember following what was going on down there closely and reading all sorts of commentary about the 12th Congressional (re-districting) -



where they said the district literally ran down the highway as a border. Fortunately that was thrown out and "widened" a bit, although it still runs the same way...

From 2000 to 2002 the 12th district is the deep blue in the lower left corner of this map of PA:



Johnstown Pa went from doing SOUTH and including the Monongahela River Valley and Greene County SOUTH OF PITTSBURGH and the Indian University of PA campus and Indiana Pa (all heavy Democratic areas) to the present one going NORTH of Pittsburgh.

Think about it a District that wrapped around SOUTH of Pittsburgh, was remade to be mostly NORTH of Pittsburgh.

PA lost another seat in 2010 so all of the districts had to both become larger AND move more to the east (Western Pa has lost population, the mountains have lost even more, but from Harrisburg to Philadelphia the population has increased). Thus they had to squeeze more Democrats into the 14th district (Pittsburgh) and saw an opportunity to make the 12th GOP by giving is most of the Northern Suburbs of Pittsburgh.

because of the lost seat, they made sure to disproportionately dilute the Philly burbs that were becoming more and more blue. I know they did similar with the state legislative districts and made sure the swing districts went GOP.

And this type of thing makes the media keep thinking that PA is a "swing state", which is nonsense given what happens during Presidential elections, where our state goes blue every time.

The GOP way. Why do the GOP get to control the redistricting, because GOP gets elected in states and then the downfall.

We only care and remember when it's "the GOP way."

New York had the 28th congressional district. It was created a long time ago, but the gerrymandering got worse over time. It was a safe (D) seat, putting together (D) voters from two different cities. Perhaps originally done to keep (D) voters from diluting the conservative vote, the purpose when I was there was to make sure a particular politician's seat was safe as voter demographics changed. Note that the 28th was reconfigured as (D) and (R) both decided to claim the moral high ground then had to stand on it. It's now more reasonably drawn, I'm linking to the old district.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_House_of_Representatives,_New_York_District_28_map.png

There are far worse examples of gerrymandering. Some put in by (D), some put in by (R). Illinois' 4th Cong. district is infamous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Illinois_US_Congressional_District_4_(since_2013).tif

Note that this serves to consolidate Hispanic voters. This is either deeply racist and illegal, if it's done to keep Latino voters out of other districts; or deeply progressive and fine under the VRA (and even encouraged or required under some case law), if it's done to ensure that Latino voters are all but assured of electing a Latino representative. Sometimes intent matters, sometimes interpretation matters. It's a bad law because it often boils down to litigation caprice--if you bring a lawsuit and it's a bad district, even if you can't show intent; don't bring a lawsuit and it stands. Of course, you have to have standing to bring a lawsuit and for that you have to claim you're negatively affected under the terms of that law.

Either way, Democrats are no more a protected class than Republicans or Irish-Americans.

this the current Maryland 3rd

and suing state election officials over gerrymandering with the ability to push it all the way to SCOTUS is a good tactic.

Yes - Dems gerrymander as well - but - if this could make it to SCOTUS and a fair and equitable way of determining Congressional Districts across the country were an outcome - at least it evens the playing field and gives the American People the ability to have the proper representation in Congress no matter where the chips may fall.

The Repugs sue for every little thing. Think about the recent SCOTUS/ACA decision where it was down to the interpretation of a few words. Fortunately SCOTUS ruled in ACA's favor - but it could have went the other way.

Again - it's about time that the Dems resort to the same tactics as the Repugs do. The best defense is a good offense and I'm all for this lawsuit to proceed.

I'll take my chances across the country in a fair and equitable system of determining Congressional Districts and therefore representation of the parties in Congress. Think about it - the Repugs have been losing ground across the country and they resorted to this out of kilter gerrymandering to save their Party.

Turn around is fair play.

Last edited Thu Jul 9, 2015, 11:50 AM - Edit history (2)

Protecting a seat here and there by an extra 5% isn't in the same ballpark as rigging purple states so extremely that Dems would have to win over 60% of the vote just to gain parity with Republicans.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/29/supreme-court-arizona-congress-maps/27400015/

Basically said, that it is legal for an independent commission to draw up legislative districts.
It doesn't have to be done by the party in power in the state.

A very good decision, in my opinion.

How can any fair minded person, which hopefully includes the majority of jurists, look at the two electoral maps above side by side and not say "something smells real stinky here"?

it smells like roses.

"Your friend is quite a card player, Mr. Kelly." "How does he do it?" "It's easy; he cheats!"

SCOTUS just made a decision that permits State referendums to create such boards...

I know there has to be better ways and I recall seeing some computerized simulations of ways to do it.

Gotta be taken out of the political side as the more parties have influence on it, the less democratic it becomes.

and still lost.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/05/senate-democrats-got-20-million-more-votes-than-senate-republicans-which-means-basically-nothing/

Actually these are different problems

The Senate gives two seats per state which absurdly gives Wyoming's 544,000 people the same number of Senators that New York States 20 million grants. They both get two senators. So Democrats could very easily get 20 million more votes and still lose the Senate. This is already bad enough and there is very little we can do about this but at least it is based on a states total population.

The House (as well as state legislative bodies) is where the gerrymandering kicks painfully and it has the biggest opportunities for abuse. It also explains why you can get some wildly insane right wingers that squat on safe districts forever.

Unless we want to think of the boundaries of the states themselves as being gerrymandered. (Do we? No, we don't. Really. They weren't and aren't.)

The only states that look particularly gerrymandered are W VA, MD, OK, and Florida. Maybe Idaho.

I mean, really: Just look at W VA and MD.

But I know they weren't gerrymandered but correspond to older territorial and colonial boundaries nobody bothered to adjust, and in some cases they match reasonable geographic features.

How do you think Mark Sanford got into office despite all his problems? Also MD just got a lawsuit filed on behalf of a watchdog group for.....you guessed it! Gerrymandering!

http://www.wboc.com/story/29402984/lawsuit-filed-over-maryland-congressional-redistricting

it is comically bad ...

A solidly democratic state assembly and governor have to have the guts to do an even more wildly unfair gerrymandering job on their state. So extreme that it blocks out almost any chance for any republican to win a district. Have long winding undulating districts that follow no pattern except to keep republican voters in the minority. Then let them take us to court.

But it is possible this will be the only way.

US Rep. Terri Sewell, who is an exceptional representative and 'true blue' Democrat, is another example of how to fix votes with gerrymandering. Her district is a large portion of the traditional "Black Belt" in Alabama, so named for "its fertile farming dirt" (of course).

The district's snaking tendrils extend into predominantly black cities of Birmingham and Montgomery, and allow the other six districts to maintain white male Republican representatives and those voter preferences, somehow.

It was also a great area, given soil fertility, for crops that could make use of intensive plantation-based agriculture so that's where slave-heavy plantations were found. It was taken over as a sociological term later. With the advent of other traits for soil classification the black belt stopped being seen as a coherent or even reasonable term. But for decades it was a purely geological or agronomic term.

Russia has chernozyom, Ukrainian has chornozem, both of which mean "black ground" or "black earth", and they had no black population so there's no way to read race into it. Although a very different soil type from the US black belt, both are dark and very fertile. In the US, it's usually vertisols (which I find rich, fertile, and utterly repugnant to work ... it's the kind of dirt in my yard in Houston, and, sadly, was also the dirt in my yard in Oregon). In Europe it's very rich in humus and that makes it great to farm. Thing is, since one's easy to work and the other's a pain, you want different types of crops for the two types of soils.

actions that Republicans have been carrying out over the decades. Too many Democrats don't
seem to mind taking all that crap lying down, and just letting the criminals win through corruption
and fraud !! If we don't stop them, who will? They'll just keep on, and on, and on.

is that it only applies to states which allow for referendum.
I don't think that all the important states allow for that.

The second part is the importance of state legislatures,
which often serve as a start for Federal offices.

All it would take is two of them to be paid off. I'm sure the Rethugs have already foreseen this kind of bump in the road and have already stacked the court.

It's a joke.