zztop
Well-known member
Offline
I think it is time to have a dedicated topic about it.
Gerrymandering (2 Viewers)
- Thread starterzztop
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Tags
- gerrymandering
Users who are viewing this thread
UncleTrvlingJim
Well-known member
Online
No, that won’t fly here
Well, as we all live under the tyranny of a permanent GOP minority rule, at least we will have our principles intact.
UncleTrvlingJim
Well-known member
Online
I think in Virginia it won’t matter that much. Two of those Republican districts are flipping anyway.
Did you see what Jamelle Bouie suggested? Or quoted, actually?
It suggests the legislature can modify the law that the court had an issue with and then go ahead with the maps approved by the people of VA.
longtime lurker
Well-known member
Offline
Platner points to Ohio GOP defying courts in response to Virginia redistricting ruling
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, pointed to past Republican defiance of court orders on redistricting as he reacted to the Virginia Supreme Court striking down the c…
thehill.com
Platner points to Ohio GOP defying courts in response to Virginia redistricting ruling
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, pointed to past Republican defiance of court orders on redistricting as he reacted to the Virginia Supreme Court striking down the c…
thehill.com
Optimus Prime
Well-known member
Online
Optimus Prime
Well-known member
Online
Maps can guide us home. They show us where we are, where we have been and where we might go. Electoral maps can do something even more sinister, though. They often tell us what and who is allowed to matter.
They can decide, before a single ballot is cast, whether an entire voting bloc will become powerful or be buried by the design of a party that is indifferent – at best – to their needs and wants.
Memphis is the latest warning. Tennessee’s largest majority-Black city can vote, organize, turn out, remember and resist – and still be cut into pieces by politicians who fear what that city might do with power.
This week, Republicans carved up the Memphis-centered congressional district, dividing its only majority-Black district into three Republican-leaning seats while weakening voter-notice requirements in the process.
Gerrymandering, at its most brutal, does more than help one party win. It teaches a community that even overwhelming local political will can be made irrelevant by a map.
The United States may be celebrating 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, but anything resembling a multiracial democracy here is barely older than the Voting Rights Act.
The effectively erstwhile Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was enormously consequential, addressing ballot access, voter registration and the brute mechanics of disfranchisement.
It addressed racial vote dilution. It was born from the knowledge that the US, left to itself, would not protect Black political power. It was also incomplete.
Racism remains a shapeshifter, and the old, now-disempowered VRA was not built to combat all of its forms. It was certainly not built for our full modern machinery of electoral mapmaking: the data analyst, the algorithm, the partisan alibi, the lawmaker who knows how to make racial harm speak the language of party politics……..
This is the moment to be honest about what has to come next. If and when Democrats regain control of Congress, they must pass a new Voting Rights Act immediately. (Trump may not sign it, but the legislative process alone signals the urgency.)
In that new bill, whenever it arrives, there must be a federal ban on gerrymandering in congressional districts. Not racial gerrymandering alone. Partisan gerrymandering, as well – by either party, in any state, under one national standard. End it all.
That would be extremely difficult, I agree. Congress would have to bar not only the maps Republicans are now racing to redraw across the south, but also the responsive maps Democrats have drawn or tried to draw in California, Illinois, New York and Virginia – where, on Friday morning, the state supreme court struck down a voter-approved Democratic redistricting plan on procedural grounds, nullifying a measure voters had approved just two weeks earlier.
A genuine ban means giving up the gerrymander we like along with the one we hate. It means trusting our policies, our candidates and our voters – regardless of party – more than our cartographers. I am willing to make that trade. Every American voter should be.……
A new Voting Rights Act has to do what the old one could not. It must end the legal fiction that gerrymandering is merely a state-court problem.
It must restore preclearance, so states with records of discrimination cannot change election rules first and answer questions later.
It must require independent redistricting commissions – or, where that is politically impossible, a uniform federal standard for compactness, contiguity, and transparency that contains explicit requirements for racial fairness and partisan symmetry.
It must prohibit states from laundering racial vote dilution through partisan language.
Last but not least, it must bar noncompliant maps from being used in future federal elections, including maps already drawn this decade.
Any reform that leaves today’s damaged maps in place would only freeze the battlefield exactly as the mapmakers designed it.……
www.theguardian.com
They can decide, before a single ballot is cast, whether an entire voting bloc will become powerful or be buried by the design of a party that is indifferent – at best – to their needs and wants.
Memphis is the latest warning. Tennessee’s largest majority-Black city can vote, organize, turn out, remember and resist – and still be cut into pieces by politicians who fear what that city might do with power.
This week, Republicans carved up the Memphis-centered congressional district, dividing its only majority-Black district into three Republican-leaning seats while weakening voter-notice requirements in the process.
Gerrymandering, at its most brutal, does more than help one party win. It teaches a community that even overwhelming local political will can be made irrelevant by a map.
The United States may be celebrating 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, but anything resembling a multiracial democracy here is barely older than the Voting Rights Act.
The effectively erstwhile Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was enormously consequential, addressing ballot access, voter registration and the brute mechanics of disfranchisement.
It addressed racial vote dilution. It was born from the knowledge that the US, left to itself, would not protect Black political power. It was also incomplete.
Racism remains a shapeshifter, and the old, now-disempowered VRA was not built to combat all of its forms. It was certainly not built for our full modern machinery of electoral mapmaking: the data analyst, the algorithm, the partisan alibi, the lawmaker who knows how to make racial harm speak the language of party politics……..
This is the moment to be honest about what has to come next. If and when Democrats regain control of Congress, they must pass a new Voting Rights Act immediately. (Trump may not sign it, but the legislative process alone signals the urgency.)
In that new bill, whenever it arrives, there must be a federal ban on gerrymandering in congressional districts. Not racial gerrymandering alone. Partisan gerrymandering, as well – by either party, in any state, under one national standard. End it all.
That would be extremely difficult, I agree. Congress would have to bar not only the maps Republicans are now racing to redraw across the south, but also the responsive maps Democrats have drawn or tried to draw in California, Illinois, New York and Virginia – where, on Friday morning, the state supreme court struck down a voter-approved Democratic redistricting plan on procedural grounds, nullifying a measure voters had approved just two weeks earlier.
A genuine ban means giving up the gerrymander we like along with the one we hate. It means trusting our policies, our candidates and our voters – regardless of party – more than our cartographers. I am willing to make that trade. Every American voter should be.……
A new Voting Rights Act has to do what the old one could not. It must end the legal fiction that gerrymandering is merely a state-court problem.
It must restore preclearance, so states with records of discrimination cannot change election rules first and answer questions later.
It must require independent redistricting commissions – or, where that is politically impossible, a uniform federal standard for compactness, contiguity, and transparency that contains explicit requirements for racial fairness and partisan symmetry.
It must prohibit states from laundering racial vote dilution through partisan language.
Last but not least, it must bar noncompliant maps from being used in future federal elections, including maps already drawn this decade.
Any reform that leaves today’s damaged maps in place would only freeze the battlefield exactly as the mapmakers designed it.……
The next Voting Rights Act must outlaw gerrymandering | Jamil Smith
The supreme court has gutted one of the strongest federal tools we had against the most effective weapon in US politics
J-DONK
Well-known member
Offline
I don't it's going to matter much this year period. You won't have a wave elections ever 2 years though.
Create an account or login to comment
You must be a member in order to leave a comment
Create account
Create an account on our community. It's easy!
Log in
Already have an account? Log in here.