gerrymandering, redistricting

Thursday 28th of March 2024

2022 midterm elections The good news is, we are going to get the House back. We are going to get the House back. That is a done deal. We have everything working in our favor right now. We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country.  That alone should get us the majority back.  Ronny Jackson, once Physician to the President, now a House member from Texas, admitting Republicans will rely on gerrymandering to win in 2022 © 2021 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Estimated number of additional congressional seats Republicans won last year because of gerrymandering: 22 Harper's Index, September 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Democratic House candidates netted 1.3 million more votes than Republicans in 2012, but secured 33 fewer seats. Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone, June 29, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering Armed with census data, Republican lawmakers [in Wisconsin in 2011] drew districts to maximise their political advantage. In the 2012 elections, Republicans won 48.6% of the vote but took 60 of the state assembly's 99 seats., In 2014 and 2016, their 52% of the vote got them 63 and 64 seats. The Economist, October 7, 2017 [2012: 60/99 = 60.6% = 1.25 × 48.6%] [2014: 63/99 = 63.6% = 1.22 × 52%] [2016: 64/99 = 64.6% = 1.24 × 52%]  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering [T]he best-laid gerrymandering plans can be spoiled by voters behaving in unpredictable ways. Stephen K. Medvic, Gerrymandering  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering But just because soemthing is unjust and incompatible with democratic principles and fiendishly effective, Justice Roberts writes [in Rucha v. Common Cause], doesn't mean it's within the purview of the court to find a constitutional violation. Gerrymandering stinks, but not so badly that the Constitution can smell it. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering The gerrymander overcometh all. What demographics give, legislators can take away  in the dead of night. Tom Hofeller, Republican gerrymanderer © 2021 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering Gerrymandering has a long and unpopular history in the United States. It is the main reason that the country ranked 55th of 158 nations — last among Western democracies — in a 2017 index of voting fairness run by the Electoral Integrity Project, an academic collaboration between the University of Sydney, Australia, and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy  School of Government, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nature, Vol. 546, 8 June 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering If your job is to get and hold a majority of the legislature, and the law allows you to play as dirty as you like,  then dirty is your duty.   … If you don't want kids to shoplift, maybe don't leave so many candy bars so close to the front door. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering In many states, the partisan composition  of the US Congress is effectively determined by state legislative elections that occur once a decade, before redistricting. This arrangement means that state governments have expanded their reach  into national affairs in ways that undermine  the design of the House of Representatives to be responsive to public opinion and unsettle the balance of power between state and federal government that has been settled for many decades. Alex Keena, Michael Latner, Anthony J. McGann, Charles Anthony Smith, Gerrymandering the States   © 2021 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering In Pennsylvania five years ago, Republicans won 13 of 18 House seats with just 49% of the statewide vote. North Carolina's map gives Republicans ten seats and Democrats three, despite close statewide votes. When asked why, a Republican lawmaker who headed the redistricting process said, “Because I do not believe it's possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.” The Economist, October 7, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering In this book, we investigated redistricting in the states to understand what happened in the state legislatures after 2011 redistricting and to understand why. We have found that several dozen legislative bodies were drawn with severe bias, and that this bias overwhelmingly favors the Republican Party. The Republicans' advantage in state government is so extreme that the average state legislative plan gives Republicans about 9 percent more seats than Democrats for a similar share of the vote. In many cases, Democrats have to win by a 10 percent vote margin in order to get a majority in the legislature. Alex Keena, Michael Latner, Anthony J. McGann, Charles Anthony Smith, Gerrymandering the States   © 2021 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering In this chapter we've attempted to identify the consequences of redistricting and gerrymandering. Unfortunately, we're left with an unclear picture. There is evidence that redistricting both enhances and hinders competitive elections; that it gives the party con- trolling the process an advantage and that it doesn't; that it hurts incumbents' re-elections efforts and that it either has no effect or helps incumbents; that it depresses turnout and that it has no effect; and that it contributes to polarization and that it doesn't. Stephen K. Medvic, Gerrymandering,  ch. 5 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering Jonathan Mattingly swings his legs up onto his desk, presses a key on his laptop and changes the results of the 2012 elections in North Carolina. On the screen, flickering lines and dots outline a map of the state's 13 congres- sional districts, each of which chooses one person to the US House of Representatives. By tweaking the borders of those election districts, but not changing a single vote, Mattingly's maps show candidates from the Democratic Party winning six, seven or even eight seats in the race. In reality, they won only four – despite earning a majority of votes overall. “The mathematicians who want to save democracy,” Nature, Vol. 546, 8 June 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering [O]ur main point is that “natural” one-party districts, even more than gerrymandered districts, contribute to noncompetitivemess and party polarization. Gerrymandering should be easy to fix, by entrusting the drawing of district boundaries to independent commissions rather than partisan state legislatures — as several states have begun doing. … however, the probem of “natural” one-party districts is much knottier and harder to solve. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Amend the Constitution to prevent gerrymandering by requiring Congressional districts in each state to represent populations within a maximum of 1% of each other, to be bordered within the state by as few straight lines as possible, and to have population densities inversely proportional to their size © 2015 Kwiple.com
Political inequality The extent and nature of representational inequalities reflect the degree of democracy in a given society, and when inequalities in political influence become too large, democracy shades into oligarchy (rule by the few) or plutocracy (rule by the wealthy). Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Political inequality Wisconsin's legislative maps drawn in 2011, protected Republican supermajorities even after Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, was defeated last year. Republican candidates for the State Assembly won just 46 percent of the popular vote, but they captured 64 percent of the chamber's seats. New York Times, January 3, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Gerrymander to re-segregate © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Legislators should choose their voters, not voters their legislators © 2018 Kwiple.com
Rovearian cancer If their [black voters'] share of the turnout drops just one point in North Carolina, Mr. Obama's 2008 winning margin there is wiped out two and a half times over. Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2011, Republican Party fundraiser and strategist, on benefits to Republicans of suppressing votes by voters likely to vote Democratic, later resulting in Republican-led laws aimed at solving the presupposed problem of “widespread” voter fraud in state after state © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union The poor state of so many Americans is in part a product of plutocratic politics: a relentless and systematic devotion to the interests of the very rich. … a politics of low taxes, low social spending and high inequality is sustainable in a universal suffrage democracy only with a mixture of propaganda in favour of “trickle down” economics, splitting the less well off on cultural and racial lines, ruthless gerry- mandering and outright voter suppression. All this has indeed happened. These are the politics of “pluto-populism” or of “greed and grievance”. They have been stunningly successful in making Republicans attractive to many in the white working class. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 2018/07/17 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.  So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country. David Lewis, Republican member of the North Carolina committee that gerrymandered the state's congressional districts to so obviously disadavantage minorities and Democrats that a federal judge declared it unconstitutional © 2018 Kwiple.com