The whole concept of gerrymandering is based on the fact that our political affiliation is public knowledge. Why are we required to make that information public? Actually, we’re not — we can register as “Independent” and not state which party we prefer.
Our votes are considered private, yet our voting habits can be predicted by looking at public records showing which party we’ve registered under. It takes away the privacy of voting if other people can make good predictions about how you will probably vote based on your voter registration. No one is allowed to see your vote — why should they be able to see what party you prefer?
Solution: Make voter registration private and/or stop requiring people to state a party affiliation when they register. That would plug a huge security leak in our voting privacy rights, and make it impossible to gerrymander a district based on public voter registration records. It has always bothered me that someone could look me up and see how I prefer to vote. To alleviate that, I’ve been registered as an Independent for about 23 years now even though I vote Democratic 100% of the time. I can tell the data collectors would love to know how I vote, because I get lots of political mailings from both parties. Best to keep them guessing.
What do you think? Would this end gerrymandering? Could laws be passed to make our voter registration information private? Maybe we can get Mark Elias and his legal team on it, and make an end run around all this stupid gerrymandering crap. See how the Republicans like it when elections are really fair! “Hope you like your 30% of the vote, assholes!”