The new map that the Utah republicans passed 21-7 (every Democrat opposed along with one republican)... splits up counties, dividing communities of interest and cracks Salt Lake County so that there will not be a single Democrat district.
There's been centuries of counter programming to not allow "the rabble" or lower classes to vote. Even when women won the suffrage movement, their husbands usually took those votes in regions like the south. It has always been messaged to "voters" or Real Americans, even now with the usual media punditry. It's just now with social upheaval and a fracturing of voices, Republicans are desperate in seizing control and the narrative. They have been that way since the dying days of Bush fearful of the demographic shifts. OTOH, Dems don't fully understand the groups they're recruiting either. They want to lure their traditional votes with economic incentives (but not jobs or traditional pro-labor policies) while appealing to idealists with showy social change rhetoric. I don't think they fully get it while assuming those groups are theirs. That's probably why polling is becoming more and more a miss in predicting large elections.
From a long-term Republican strategy perspective, they shouldn't get too greedy. California is a non partisan commission state that is 60% to 65% blue, but proportional due to bipartisan gerrymandering reform. If the world changes too much and pushes them into the map rigging game, then it'll be tough. That said Republicans can rule the world for the next 10 years because Dems were too dumb and weak to fight dirty and tried to like govern or some dumb crap with fragile majorities.
Republicans essentially destroying democracy piece by piece. Less competition, more extremists, more crazy Nunes, Jordans, MTG, Getz in congress. Democracy is on life support, being cannibalized on the inside.
Maryland Democrats Hate Gerrymandering So Much, They're Trying To Eliminate the State's Lone Republican District When it comes to drawing congressional districts, concerns about the legitimacy of democracy seemingly go out the window. https://reason.com/2021/12/06/maryl...liminate-the-states-lone-republican-district/
Both sides play the game and Republicans do it better. It's easy to argue Dems are trying to keep up with the rigging that Republicans did since Redman in 2010. Then again, Dems were doing it in the 80s with less tech. Set morality aside. It's still just bad for democracy. But proportionality is not a constitutional right. We are different from most countries in representation that way. Honestly, I'm kind of over the federalism system. This isn't 1776 when everyone knew their local rep and nobody knew their national government. Technology has flipped the script. Just unify it all already so we can take on China and Russia with a stronger government instead of one composed of 50 bickering subunits.
Not this time... Redistricting: Ohio Supreme Court strikes down state House and Senate maps https://www.dispatch.com/story/news...jects-state-house-and-senate-maps/6447740001/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yo...map-gerrymander-11643757160?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 New York’s Democratic Jerrymander Democrats draw a map that gives them an edge in 85% of House seats. By The Editorial Board Feb. 1, 2022 6:38 pm ET Gerrymandering is an old enough practice that it was named for a Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, but henceforth in New York it should be spelled jerrymander. See nearby the district that Democrats in Albany have staked out for Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler. Your first instinct might be to grab the cartographer and do a field sobriety test. The proposed District 10 PHOTO: NEWYORK.REDISTRICTINGANDYOU.ORG But Democrats didn’t draw loopy lines by accident. They did it with partisan malice aforethought. New York is losing a House seat, so it will have 26 districts next year. Today Republicans hold eight. Under the lines Democrats are proposing, the GOP would have the advantage in only four seats, or 15%. New York is a blue state, but not that blue: President Trump won 38% of the vote in 2020. New York’s jerrymander is another reminder that drawing favorable lines is a bipartisan strategy. It happens every decade, but this time Democrats have been trying to convince the public that it’s some Trumpian threat to the republic. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, urges officials to sign a “Fair Districts Pledge” and “commit to restoring fairness to our democracy.” What a pose. In reality Democrats and Republicans want the same thing. They want to win. New York’s maps were supposed to be drawn by an independent commission, a good-government reform that voters approved in 2014, with hopes of taking politics out of an inherently political process. But the commission deadlocked and offered two competing plans. Nonetheless, the map that Democratic commissioners backed, according to one redistricting analyst, left as many as nine House seats competitive for the GOP. Nine of 26 is 35%, which is in the ballpark of Mr. Trump’s vote share. Albany could have accepted that plan. Yet apparently Democrats only want “fair” districts when such maps work in their favor. So once the commission deadlocked, state lawmakers seized the opportunity to dump its work and redraw the map themselves to build in a bigger advantage for their party. The rough barbell shape of Mr. Nadler’s district, connecting Jewish areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, isn’t new. But the state Legislature’s map contorts it like a snake. Why? So that the GOP 11th District, anchored in Staten Island, can sweep north to include liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn. In 2020 Mr. Trump won the 11th District by 11 points, while Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis beat an incumbent, Democrat Max Rose, 53% to 47%. Mr. Rose is running in 2022 to retake his old seat, and the new progressive Park Slope voters could be enough to flip that margin. The Albany plan makes similar moves upstate and on Long Island to erode Republican chances and shore up the Democratic advantage. Don’t expect to hear loud complaints from Mr. Holder and company, or for that matter from all the good-government poseurs in the media. The congressional jerrymander could cost Republicans as many as four or five House seats, which might be the difference that helps Democrats keep their majority in 2022. Redistricting was expected to cost Democrats several seats nationwide this year, but aggressive Democratic gerrymanders in California, Illinois, New Jersey and elsewhere mean they may break even nationwide or even gain a slight edge. GOP legislators this year have tended to shore up their suburban districts in states like Texas, rather than try to carve up Democratic seats and go for a bigger advantage. The loser is political competition, not Democrats. The most aggressive GOP gerrymanders, as in Ohio and North Carolina, may be overturned by courts. However the partisanship plays out, this year should be the end of progressive sanctimony that gerrymanders favor Republicans. If Democrats keep their House majority this year, a big reason will be how they rigged districts in Albany, Sacramento and Springfield. Appeared in the February 2, 2022, print edition.
This logic makes no sense when only one wing of one party wants to end gerrymandering regardless of who does it. So ya end the gerrymandering in NY. End it in Texas also. Who disagrees with that here? There should be a bipartisan effort to end it if it negatively effects both party voters. But why isn't it the case? Why is ending gerrymandering a partisan issue than? Can you sincerely ask yourself that question? The only logical answer I have to this is that the side that benefits from it more is the side that is going to push against ending it. Is there a reason that I'm not thinking of? Sincerely asking.
