Annnnnd....it's not just a republican problem. So again, why is this thread called "Republican" gerrymandering?
Beeeecause... I live in Texas, and its a current and significant problem here in Texas. You are free to start a Democrat gerrymandering thread and or a Montana gerrymandering thread if you like.
Shoot, I posted this in the wrong topic... sorry! Texas appears to be paying a secretive Republican political operative $120,000 annually to work behind the scenes on redistricting Adam Foltz, now on the Texas payroll, played a key role in Wisconsin's redistricting last decade. A federal court threw out some of the maps and called the effort Foltz was involved in "an all but shameful attempt to hide the redistricting process from public scrutiny." https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/29/texas-redistricting-adam-foltz/
There are only polticians from one party that express a will to end it. Democrats do gerrymander but it is no where near has pervasive. And yes, many of the democrats who want to end it, want to end it purely because it benefits them politically and not because it's just the right thing to do. So the fact that no Republicans want to end it makes it explicitly clear that it is a Republican problem as the other party has a large caucus of members who want to legislate a federal bill to end it.
This is why BIDEN and the DEMOS. .. have to Cram some gerrymandering reform on a federal level through Seriously. The Democrats are a bunch of P*$$ies that too weak and stupid to see the long term plan and they short sightedness is what got us here It has been a one sided fight for ever and they been eroding the sh*t since RAygun Rocket River
On a national level, you are correct. Planet Money had a cool episode interviewing one of the Project Redmap leaders who helped implement the plan during the Obama administration. He was basically sayind don't hate the player, hate the game. And some from the 538 staff did a deep dive into the issue 4 years ago with a 6 part podcast. https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/the-gerrymandering-project/ So if the federal government won't step in, and Congress probably won't, what you'll see if things go extreme is fairer states play the same game. Take California, they are a solidly 65-35 type blue state. Thanks to bipartisan gerrymandering reform led by guys like Schwarzenegger, they were able to draw pretty fair and competitive districts. But if the Dems wanted to change their Constitution and state laws, they could go 90-10 in representation. Places like New York and Oregon and starting to pull a Texas and Wisconsin. From a legal standpoint, the only thing stopping this is a new VRA, a different interpretation of the VRA by the courts. Politically, while I respect what project Redmap did in out foxing the Dems, it's really bad for democracy if both sides play it out to the maximum extremes. You end up with no competitive districts, all super blue or super red states, and only extremely liberal or extremely conservative agendas (see Texas Legislation session 2021). If both parties are super competent at maximizing through gerrymandering, then that's the theoretical US that you'll get.
They gerrymandered my Dem state rep out of his seat... “Republicans have gerrymandered me out of my district,” Talarico tweeted. “If they think they can keep me off the House floor, they better think again.”
thats ridiculous and should be illegal...just like what the trumpublicans have done in texas. i live in austin and i read that we are the largest city in the country that does not have an entire congressional district within the city limits. they chopped us up so much that even though we are 60% democrat only 1 of our 5 reps is democrat.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/1...Bw_RyvjHUxf3Y_dejQLVHCY3Z10vih0v_druoQYG5uYQ0 With surgical precision, Republicans draw two congressional districts that dilute power of Hispanic and Asian voters The GOP is losing its hold on suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth as they grow more diverse. Two proposed districts show how far the party is reaching to entrench rural, white electoral power.
The problem with the VRA is that it's vague and complicated. You can't undo a minority majority district, and it originally created them through legal gerrymandering because white people didn't vote for black people, regardless of party. Both parties were cool with trying to change that at a national level because ever since the end of Reconstruction, for a 100 years, many states had 0 black representation in national and statewide government. But the law doesn't have numbers and percentages. It's just illegal to "dilute," but that definition varies depending upon area, year, and court, lol. It's a really complicated issue that doesn't have easy solutions. A black person in LA doesn't need a minority majority district to have a legit chance of being elected to office, but that's different for a black person in Podunkville, Podunkstate. Now how to you codify that? It's just hard. And do we even need to codify it anymore? Should we? What really sucks is that a few states try to be "fair" with non-partisan or bi-partisan voting commissions. Then those states get screwed by other states that keep it 100% partisan. Sure, both Dems and Repubs gerrymander, but the Republicans did it better - they just did. Now, some Dem states are catching up at that: Oregon, New York, Illinois. For the sake of Democracy, median representation, and all things politically good imo, I hope there's a national standard where all states must have non-partisan commissions. Gerrymandering, while technicially constitutional, is just killing the middle and serves either the extreme right or left. And it just creates a cycle that's hard to stop when each side is trying to counteract the other. But nationally, Congress just sucks. If the state level Dems start executing their gerrymandering as well as the Repubs did over the last 10 years, then maybe, just maybe enough moderate Republicans can join the national reform platform and improve this situation.
Like I wrote, Republicans executed this better in 2010. Lacking a national law about minimizing lines (that's fair to me) or one of the many ideas to improve the system, non bi-partisan commission states will gerrymander more and more. I don't want extremely red and extremely blue states and I find this to be extremely important, but it's such an unsexy issue that I don't see it getting helped anytime soon. Let me revise that opinion. I don't want an extremely red state unless it's truly 90-10 red; same for the blue states. But states turning minor advantages to major wins via gerrymander is just great strategy, but wrong for democracy.
So we all agree that gerrymandering should be federally banned? Right @Commodore @TheresTheDagger ? Glad we finally are in agreement on something.
