"They shredded the district of Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a rare anti-Trump Republican, forcing him to decide between an early retirement or challenging fellow GOP. Darin LaHood in a primary. (He chose retirement.)
They created a new deep blue seat by uniting parts of [GOP Reps.] Bost’s and Davis’s district into a snake that runs from East St. Louis north and east through Springfield, Decatur and Champaign, and created two other artfully drawn red-leaning seats downstate.... 'If [first-term GOP Rep. Mary Miller] chooses to run against Bost, he's going to beat her. If she chooses to run against Davis, Davis is going to beat her....'"
When is it okay to brag about gerrymandering? The question answers itself.
How snake-y does that snake look? You can see the new Illinois map
here, at the very useful FiveThirtyEight site "What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State/An updating tracker of proposed congressional maps — and whether they might benefit Democrats or Republicans in the 2022 midterms and beyond."
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23 comments:
Anybody who pays attention knows Democratic complaints about Republican gerrymandering are partisan bullshit. They both do it, but because the Democrats control most media outlets, they get to do it AND complain about the Republicans doing it. They pretend to be principled, but it’s really just cynical opportunism.
As a famous Democrat once said:
Elections have consequences; that's Why redistricting is so important
When is it okay to brag about gerrymandering? The question answers itself.
Told you. When Democrats gerrymander it’s just politics as usual. When Republicans do it, it’s a crime against the people.
Yeah, that definitely looks sketchy, it happens. Growing up on the Ohio River for a few years our district in Ohio followed up the river from Ironton (big Republican), to Youngstown (big Union Democrat) and for years a D was elected. That ended maybe 10 years ago when the GOP took back the State, which will probably stay that way. Current district voted for Trump 75%.
Would Harvard Law School give course credit to a law student who tried to oppose this anti-Republican redistricting in Illinois?
The question answers itself.
That's the game innit? Does it make Democrat control of the house permanent? Nope...
Pikers by comparison with Maryland’s gerrymandering, where they are trying to eliminate The GOP’s only house seat by adding Annapolis to the Eastern Shore.
“ When is it okay to brag about gerrymandering?”
Which party is doing it?
I keep getting emails from the DNC crying about how Republicans are gerrymandering their congressional districts. It's all a fundraising issue. Send us money so we can fight the evil Republicans! They do it too, but they'll never tell you that.
That Illinois map is a typical example of gerrymandering. Districts should be compact as possible and not split political entities. Leaving redistricting in a single party's hands is how you get these snaky districts.
Washington state has a balanced redistricting commission. There are two Republicans and two Democrats on the commission with a non-voting chair, appointed by the other four commissioners. If they don't finish on time, the work goes to the state supreme court.
Out commission finished a day late with a balanced map. The districts are compact and mostly follow county boundaries or city boundaries in the case of King County. The state supreme court approved the commission's final map as they didn't want get caught in any redistricting flame wars.
The 538 site that AA links to has this gem describing how the TX lege has done to the Dems what the IL has done to the GOP:
Although 95 percent of Texas’s net population growth between 2010 and 2020 was driven by people of color, the map does not add any new districts designed to give nonwhite voters the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.
Saying the quiet part out loud- no way that a "nonwhite" voter could ever choose to vote for a Republican. Meanwhile, TX has a few plurality if not majority "Hispanic" districts that are solidly GOP. I guess they ain't really Hispanic.
As to Illinois, it is typical that the clown posse that runs this state would devote their energies and limited intelligence to eliminating that last vestiges of a two party system.
They ought to be figuring out how to put the state's financial house in order and how to save Chicago from becoming the next Detroit.
Illinois and Chicago are what you get when the Democrats run everything. The people who might change things are voting with their feet. There will be no change.
The bogus concept of electoral efficiency really pisses me off. Elections are not a spoils system where democrats and republicans get to divvy up our votes. The sense of entitlement is galling.
Gerrymandering is a seemingly insoluble problem that simply requires constant messy political wrangling. Thus far Republicans have been unwilling to push the envelop as far a Democrats, but should do so in order to maintain some balance.
The modern corrupt left are snakes.
In the 1970s, North Carolina (then a Blue state) tried to create a majority black congressional district by connecting two cities with a thin 40 miles strip of Interstate 95. We studied that in high school as an example of Gerrymandering. But in this case, we were told it was OK since increasing the number of black congressman was important
I think we can all agree gerrymandering is an outrageous evil when they do it and praiseworthy/chuckleworthy when we do it.
Good example of the principle I articulate above in the post about Harvard. Some truths are self-evident.
The problem with just looking at the map is unless you know the state it can be hard to tell how bizarre the borders are. Sometimes there are mountains or rivers or deserts that make oddly shaped borders make sense, population density can be a mystery, and historical ties between areas are not something you can just know. So with those caveats in place, let's see what... oh my goodness. Well, yes, those districts look ridiculous. It is especially galling compared to the old map which looks reasonable, though no doubt gerrymandered itself.
Well, it certainly is creative.
Look on the bright side.. that map didn't show the districts in little fragmented pieces all over the map. At least each district was all in one continuous area.
Now I'm conservative and I know the Texas legislature does the same thing... that's politics. Each party tries to get an edge and which party controls the government controls that edge.
"I think we can all agree gerrymandering is an outrageous evil when they do it and praiseworthy/chuckleworthy when we do it."
No, we can't.
God forbid someone running for office should have to convince voters of the value of voting for them, rather than for a party affiliation. I thought conservatives were individualists, willing to look at an opponent as a person rather than a Party member, and defeat the opposition candidate on the merits.
If the GOP would fight, it might convince some new people that the Dems really are as bad as so many of us know they are.
Gerrymandering is what you get with a winner takes all system, and those who get to draw the lines will to their advantage, and human nature takes all.
People in office love to gerrymander and keep themselves in office. In both parties, they do this. I have long thought the Supreme Court should use the "republican form of government" clause to outlaw the gerrymander. It would definitely piss off the people in office. But they have to know that shit is sketchy. You're basically subverting the right to vote when you arrange districts to keep everybody re-elected.
I think Brennan's opinion in Baker v. Carr is mashed potatoes, like pretty much everything Brennan did. The idea that every district has to be the same size as every other district is obviously ridiculous. The United States Senate offends the United States Constitution by its very existence!
Brennan was such a horrible judge.
Tennessee created its districts based on county lines to avoid the problem of a gerrymander. That's obviously a great way to handle the issue!
Saying that a voting district has to be set up like the House, and cannot be set up like the Senate (the Constitution requires it!) is just dishonest. Obviously there are people on the left who hate the Senate, how it's set up, and would like to rewrite the Constitution and abolish the Senate. But that's not actually the job of a Supreme Court Justice to act that way.
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