Not ever thus, but not far from it.
The map that popularized the word ‘gerrymander’
The practice wasn’t new in 1812. But a map in a newspaper gave it a name that stuck.
IT WAS AN abomination to democracy, critics said. The popular vote was nearly evenly split between the two parties, yet one party won 29 of the 40 seats at stake. The reason was a creative redrawing of electoral districts—what we now know as gerrymandering.
Who is Gerry & why did he do this to us!!??
Elbridge Gerry, the governor who signed the bill creating the
misshapen Massachusetts district, was a Founding Father: signer of the Declaration of Independence, reluctant framer of the Constitution, congressman, diplomat, and the fifth vice-president. Well-known in his day, Gerry was a wild-eyed eccentric and an awkward speaker, a trusted confidant of John Adams and a deep (if peculiar) thinker. He could also be a dyspeptic hothead—a trait that got the better of him when he signed the infamous redistricting bill...
... Colleagues respected Gerry’s intelligence, gentlemanliness, attention to detail, and hard work, but his maverick political views and personality sometimes hurt his judgment. According to Adams, he had an “obstinacy that will risk great things to secure small ones.” www.smithsonianmag.com/…
NC leads the USA in Extreme Gerrymandering.
Cuz someone has to.
N.C. has the worst gerrymander in US history.
What else is new?
Feb 1 , 2018 - In mid-January, yet again, a three-judge federal court ruled the redistricting work of the North Carolina General Assembly to be a knowing, intentional and hugely impactful violation of the U.S. Constitution. This time the court struck down the apportionment of our federal congressional districts as an impermissible, extreme, partisan political gerrymander – designed, admittedly and successfully, to entrench Republicans in power and handicap their adversaries. The state yawned. We’re used to it…
The U.S. Supreme Court has been unable to agree on a workable standard to evaluate political gerrymanders, though it has held that “partisan gerrymanders are incompatible with democratic principle.” As Justice Stevens has put it, such bias constitutes “an abuse of power that evinces fundamental mistrust of the voters, serving the self-interest of political parties at the expense of the public good.”
…The North Carolina congressional map, the federal judges ruled, was “planned and executed to entrench Republican control.” The state never even presented a legitimate democratic, constitutional or public interest to try to justify the manifest discrimination. Finally, the court cited expert testimony concluding the “extreme partisanship bias (was) of historic magnitude, not just relative to North Carolina history, but (that of) the United States.” Such “severe” distortion of the electoral process could not be squared with democratic government. It is an odd routine to which we’ve become accustomed in North Carolina. We learn that, in our name, our leaders have given us the largest, most blatant and indefensible political gerrymander in American history. We’re unsurprised. They’re unashamed. They more likely jet off to an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting to brag about it… It may be hard to think of older, white, male Republicans as radical extremists. But they are what they are.
www.newsobserver.com/… [Bolding mine.]
Bad when R’s do it in WI & NC. Bad when Dems do this in MD. Just BAD altogether.
Just How Bad Is Partisan Gerrymandering? Ask the Mapmakers
Jan 29, 2018 - …In the current stew over partisan gerrymandering, few mapmakers are eager to talk about the back-room sausage-making that occurs when state and congressional political boundaries are redrawn. Much of what they do say, like Mr. Hawkin’s concise reflection on politics, comes from court depositions. And understandably so: To their many detractors, redistricting consultants surface every 10 years, cicada-like, to ravage the landscape of minority parties in state legislatures and Congress. A 2012 magazine article named them “The League of Dangerous Mapmakers.”
But the reality is at least somewhat different. If most mapmakers are unabashedly partisan, their work goes well beyond back-room politics. A good map meets constitutional requirements, such as allotting an equal number of people to every district and respecting racial and ethnic populations. It keeps communities intact rather than splitting them into different jurisdictions; pays attention to rivers and other geographic features that shape jurisdictions. It doesn’t needlessly oust incumbents…
In states where political power is divided, district maps may be politically neutral — or drawn to shield incumbents in both parties. In other states under one-party control, the political marching orders may be more brazen: North Carolina Republicans ordered that no more than three of the state’s 13 House seats be given to Democrats.
Mr. Gaddie, who analyzed the partisan impact of proposed Wisconsin State Assembly maps for the chamber’s Republicans, says partisan gerrymandering has become a threat to the political system because politics has devolved into all-out ideological war,
not because of redistricting software or dark-hearted mapmakers. He said he abandoned a sideline as a redistricting adviser and expert witness in redistricting lawsuits after finishing work in Wisconsin. “I liked working for them in ’02,” he said, “because I’d sit down with a lawyer and they’d say, ‘I like competitive maps. When a map is competitive, we can win on the merits.’ By the time I get around to 2011, they’ve changed. I can’t defend this crap.” www.nytimes.com/… [Bolding mine.]
Well, then just fix it, you say.
Easier said than done.
Gerrymandering Is Easy. Fixing It Is Harder.
Jan 25, 2018 — A politics in the U.S. has polarized along geographic and racial lines, drawing political maps has become a partisan arms race. Even the smallest decisions about where to draw district boundaries can alter the power dynamic in Congress — without a single voter switching parties or moving. It’s easy for opponents of gerrymandering — the drawing of political boundaries for the benefit of one party or group over another — to argue what districts shouldn’t look like. All they have to do is ridicule the absurdity of the most bizarre patchworks ever woven to elect members of Congress. For example, “The Rabbit on a Skateboard,” “The Upside-Down Chinese Dragon” or the “Mask of Zorro.”
But it’s much more difficult to say what districts should look like,
because reformers can disagree on what priorities should govern our political cartography. Should districts be drawn to be more compact? More conducive to competitive elections? More inclusive of underrepresented racial groups? Should they yield a mix of Democratic and Republican representatives that better matches the political makeup of a state? Could they even be drawn at random? These concepts can be difficult to define and often stand in tension with one another.
To explore how subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes to district lines can affect the makeup of the U.S. House, we embarked on a project to redraw each state’s boundaries based on different priorities. We used a web-based application created by programmer Dave Bradlee and drew new maps six different ways:
- To maximize the number of usually Democratic districts
- To maximize the number of usually Republican districts
- To make the partisan breakdown of states’ House seats proportional to the electorate
- To promote highly competitive elections
- To maximize the number of districts in which one minority group makes up the majority of the voting-age population in the district (what we’ll refer to as a majority-minority district)
- To be compact while splitting as few counties as possible
fivethirtyeight.com/…
What do we do now?
Getting to non-partisan redistricting is the goal for me. I want to see districts drawn for the US House and state legislatures that reflect the will of that state’s voters as a whole.
I don’t know if this can be done effectively state by state. Maybe yes, maybe no.
It might be best to have a federal law or US Supreme Court decision that could affect this change across the country in one fell swoop.
I want voters picking their political leaders, not politicians picking their voters. Let’s look at some ideas for change—
---Option 1---
The Fair Representation Act (HR 3057) gives voters of all backgrounds and all political stripes the power to elect House Members who reflect their views and will work constructively with others in Congress. Under the Fair Representation Act, there will be more choices and several winners elected in each district. Congress will remain the same size, but districts will be larger, each electing 3, 4, or 5 winners. Voters will be free to rank their choices without fear of "spoilers." No district will be “red” or “blue.” Every district will fairly reflect the spectrum of voters. www.fairvote.org/…
How Does this help?
The Best Way to Fix Gerrymandering Is to Make It Useless
The only way to make most districts truly competitive in today’s regionally polarized politics is to expand them. For example, a single-member district in Manhattan is a cakewalk for a Democratic incumbent. But a five-member district in Manhattan — which would combine that borough and parts of others — could yield a New York City Republican, and maybe a Michael Bloomberg-style independent, because such candidates could win a seat with 20 percent of the vote instead of 50. This would bring much-needed ideologically diversity to Washington, instead of having two parties whose representatives primarily come from places where they are most likely to be surrounded by like-minded partisans who tug them toward ever more extreme, no-compromise positions. It also doesn’t penalize the party of cities. www.nytimes.com/...
---Option 2---
There’s another way to solve gerrymandering.
It’s as simple as cake.
Even children eventually learn that there is an easy and fair method for dividing a good between two people. To share a cake, one child can divide the cake into two pieces he views as equally desirable, and then the second child can choose her preferred slice. This classic “I cut, you choose” protocol guarantees the fairness of the outcome: The first child is indifferent between the two pieces, so he is happy with his share. And the second child is obviously content because she receives her preferred piece.
Now think of a state that is being redistricted as the cake, and of
our two great political parties as, sadly, the children. This analogy inspired a redistricting protocol, “I cut, you freeze,” which we developed in a recent paper with our co-author Dingli Yu. To understand how it works, suppose the goal is to divide Wisconsin into its eight congressional districts. The first party divides the state into eight districts (in a way that satisfies all legal requirements) and hands the map to the second party. The second party freezes one of the eight districts drawn by the first party and then divides the unfrozen part of the state into seven new districts. The second party then returns the map to the first party, which then freezes one of the seven new districts, draws six more and hands it back to the second party. This process continues until, after seven rounds, all eight districts have been frozen. www.washingtonpost.com/...
---Option 3---
The only people who can fix gerrymandering now are voters
There is some hope. This fall, as many as seven states will vote on ballot initiatives to create independent redistricting commissions. Arizona and California already use independent bodies for line-drawing to take the process out of the legislature — their maps, based on nonpartisan standards like compactness and keeping related communities together, are more just and more competitive. Maine, meanwhile, has enacted ranked choice voting to make its elections more representative and fair.
These ballot initiatives are being driven by citizen groups who recognize the game has been rigged for too long. Interest in state elections has grown as people realize the best way to change policy is to change our representatives — and the best way to achieve fair districts is to change who gets to draw the lines.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Because its Hump Day
Because we deserve a break
Because we are all kinda weird in our own special way
