Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, quoted in "Newsom’s Gerrymander of California Has a Formidable Foe: Schwarzenegger/The actor-turned-governor helped overhaul how California draws political maps. In an interview with The New York Times, he said he would fight to preserve that legacy" (NYT).
Now, Mr. Newsom is asking voters to set the independent commission’s work aside for the next three elections in favor of a map drawn to help elect more Democrats.... Exactly how Mr. Schwarzenegger plans to wage this battle is still taking shape. It started with him asking an aide to design the T-shirt, which he wore to the gym Friday morning and then donned as he rode his electric bike to breakfast. As Mr. Schwarzenegger sat down in a private dining room filled with potted plants, a waiter brought him a dish of walnuts and raisins, and poured him a glass of watermelon juice....
If Arnold Schwarzenegger is eating walnuts and raisins and drinking watermelon juice, that's already part of the battle. It's a referendum. The people will vote. All either man can do is to advise the people how to vote. Arnold Schwarzenegger being Arnold Schwarzenegger and eating walnuts and raisins and drinking watermelon juice... that's persuasive!
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Well Gavin will see Schwarzeneggers electric bike, walnuts and raisins and watermelon juice for breakfast, and raise with a five course dinner at the French Laundry while telling the peasants to wear masks.
blue states are already gerrymandered to the hilt to ensure their corrupt power.
Whenever you want a corrupt institution to end you just need opposing sides to all use it.
The problem for Democrats is they will gain nothing by doing more Gerrymandering. Just look at the electoral maps. They are Gerrymandered to the max. Every advantage they could ring out of the system they have already taken because that is just what they are.
Now the Republicans are going to retaliate. There is no virtue in holding back against vice. In order to defeat evil you must treat them as evil.
Hopefully now that the democrats are going to lose this fight we can stop having it and get rid of Gerrymandering for good.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger is eating walnuts and raisins and drinking watermelon juice, that's already part of the battle. It's a referendum. The people will vote. All either man can do is to advise the people how to vote. Arnold Schwarzenegger being Arnold Schwarzenegger and eating walnuts and raisins and drinking watermelon juice... that's persuasive!
Sarcasm. Fine.
It is still better than just factually stating that Schwarzenggar is a giant douche who doesn't believe a single word he says.
I think it's possible, in fact I think it would be easy, to define a mathematical 'compactness' metric. Humans would still define boundaries, but if the candidate district doesn't meet the compactness metric it is rejected.
I don’t care what Arnold hates..
The Democrats are terminal but every effort is being made to keep them viable…
What can we say to keep them in the game? Let’s try everything..:
In a sane world, voting districts would be drawn in a non-partisan way and gerrymandering would be illegal. But WTF, blue states get to gerrymander like crazy, but GOD forbid a red state gerrymander their districts. Now we have the absurd situation where Texas Democrats are fleeing to FUCKING Illinois to avoid voting on the issue. Not a good look. And that FAT FUCK governor of Illinois does not stand a chance at being president of the USA.
yes Arnold proved to be a feckless tool, maybe thats a side of steroids, there was a fair amount of hope when he was elected, but he didn't understand the game being played,
of course, now the DOJ under Harmeet Dhillon a brave Californian who should have been party chair instead of whats her name, is the hold card,
"I promised them that we are going to create a commission that would be independent of the politicians."
A commission involved with politics, whose decisions are foundational to who wins elections, that's not political? Really?
Somebody hasn't thought things through, I fear.
Several decades ago California redesigned the state court system to favor the (blue) cities. They've had voting by mail for decades too, and this works "just fine" in a one-party state. When you've already run 100,000,000 gerrymandering simulations in Silicon Valley to optimize blue dominance, what else can you do?
It'd be hilarious if they stretch the districts just a bit too far and the California Hispanics start to vote like the Texas Hispanics and 10 seats unexpectedly go for Republicans. That's surely what Newsom and Co are evaluating right now.
I know that many commenters don't let facts interfere with their opinions, but here are some facts about how states do their redistricting: https://ballotpedia.org/State-by-state_redistricting_procedures
Redistricting by commissions seems to be a mostly Western U.S. thing with both blue and red states using that method, but not all commissions are non-political. The Eastern U.S. equivalent seems to be redistricting by courts, but once again, not all courts are non-political.
NY, Illinois California, all seems to be redistricting into oblivion,, mr 'screw your freedom' seems to have missed that story for more than a decade,
ot, the expendables that both stallone and schwartzenegger were apart of , along other eighties icons were not mercenaries, but more like a larger a team (they made jean claude van damme a villain in the second one)
The Texas population has grown. Redidtricting is done to minimize legislative orphans, not to progress Californication while Newsom fiddles and Bass brays a DEIst cacophony with collateral damage.
"but not all commissions are non-political."
I doubt any are "non-political".
Wasn't California a more even red/blue state before Arnold and his non-political merry band of gerrymandering took control?
Massachusetts has been so gerrymandered that Republicans, who are 44% of the Massachusetts electorate, do not have single representative in Congress. I did not know that. And there are other similar disproportions. It's simply wrong that Republicans have no Representative from Massachusetts, Perhaps they should stop voting to show their sense of the injustice being done. Just throw a piece of paper saying "Taxation without representation is tyranny" down, outside the "polling" place. There has to be a change. Similarly, the non-representation of conservatives in the US Civil Service in DC and on the faculties of the State universities is a consequence of crimes against the civil rights of conservatives committed by selection boards.
Perhaps those state taxes which pay state university faculty salaries could be waived for Republicans. Since Republicans are excluded from said faculties surely the progressives don't need Republican cash to support their exclusive club.
Hey Arnie... how you gonna get a 'commission that would be independent of the politicians, and there will be an independent citizens commission drawing the lines'??
Where would these 'independent citizens' come from? Outer space?
What is the proper way to eat a dish of walnuts and raisins?
Fork or spoon?
What kind of fork? What kind of spoon?
John Henry
"What is the proper way to eat a dish of walnuts and raisins?"
Fingers.
The problem is that you can't carve a Republican district out of Massachusetts. Very few towns are carried by Republicans. There are a few in the sparsely populated western and central parts of the state outside Worcester and Springfield, and some in the southeastern part of the state. You might be able to get a district Republicans could win in the southeastern part of the state, but it would be very iffy and you'd have to deliberately carve the district so that Republicans would have a chance. The Democrats wouldn't allow that.
I did mention Barney Frank's old district though, which sandwiched Republican towns in between Barney's progressive base in Boston, Newton and Brookline and the Democrat strongholds of Fall River and New Bedford at the bottom of the state. In some places, the district was only one town or a few miles wide. See map of the 2003-2013 district:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts%27s_4th_congressional_district#/media/File:Massachusetts's_4th_congressional_district.gif
Gerrymandering is more egregious in Illinois, Maryland, and California. AI, though, true to its sources in the old media, points the finger at Republican states instead.
"AI, though, true to its sources in the old media, points the finger at Republican states instead."
If Republicans are going to get blamed for doing it, they might as well go ahead do it.
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