Republicans have rigged state elections all over the country to keep Republicans in power

[kpete]

Republicans have rigged state elections all over the country to keep Republicans in power

In 2012, Barack Obama was elected President by nearly 3.5 million votes. In Congressional races, Democrats drew nearly 1.4 million more votes than Republicans yet Republicans won control of the House 234 seats to 201 seats.




Source: Mother Jones.

And yeah, Maryland and Illinois are gerrymandered for the Democratic Party. This is wrong.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-gerrymandering-house-representatives-election-chart
MORE:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/03/1341253/-Perhaps-the-biggest-difference-between-Republicans-and-Democrats#

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. I am of the opinion

That independent commissions should be the ones drawing up maps. Neither party should enjoy a partisan advantage when it comes to creating state and Congressional districts.

[Fred Sanders]

2. YES. Who can complain about independent boards, let experts draw the maps? All wrong, happens when

both sides agree to fuck the voters equally.

[DetlefK]

4. Then how about leaving gerrymandering to an open-source program?

You enter how many people live where and you add the boundary-conditions that districts have to be as close as possible to a circular shape.

It would be a matter of minutes to have a computer calculate that and the result would be non-partisan.

[BlueJazz]

5. Yep, I like that idea.

[Mr.Bill]

10. I suppose that would depend on

who programmed the computer. From what I'm seeing on political websites today, both sides have plenty of complaints about computers that record and count votes. Computers don't have independent non partisan minds of their own, they only do what a human designs and programs them to do.

In principal your idea is a good one, but someone will always claim fraud even if computers are involved.

[Volaris]

13. not if the whole damn thing is open-source..

meaning the code that runs the computer is a matter of public record, and any kid in their basement can download the software, and use it to run mocks on their own machine, and sort through the code to look for errors/mistakes/intentional fraud. You find something out of sorts, your legally obligated to report it, that's the terms for being able to download and look through it.

I think the same should be done for Publicly-Owned E-Voting machines. Make the code locked and unalterable, but make it Public and Open Source so anybody can know what it's doing and how it works.

[DetlefK]

14. Try to influence THAT:

Step 1: Source-code would be open-source.

Step 2: At the given date, several PCs that have been tested and conform to a variety of security-standards will receive and run the program simultaneously. Without randomization-elements in the code and with identical starting-conditions, every calculator should arrive at the same result.

[tclambert]

17. That's why making it open-source is important. Let anyone double-check the code.

Any software involving elections should be open-source, but of course, the corporations selling the software want to keep it private, and leave us in the dark about any possible vote-flipping subroutines.

[ashling]

11. Do yo mean redistricting?

I think you mean to say re-districting rather than gerrymandering

[Bettie]

3. Realistically

It could be done by a computer program, "draw a box around X population, with variables input for exceptions, like county lines, town boundaries, etc.

[Kablooie]

6. That will never happen.

it would give the Democrats an unfair advantage.

Or maybe a fair advantage, same thing.

[Bettie]

21. Yeah, I suppose

The advantage it would give Dems would be representation proportional to the level of support their policies have in the general public.

I know that the powers that be hate the idea of that.

[Blue Owl]

7. What are the odds that every election cycle, it's always a razor thin 50/50 margin?

n/t

[EEO]

8. An independent agency drawing congressional districts is as likely as the two parties...

agreeing to allow any other political parties into the game.

[certainot]

9. motherfuckers

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. That's what I meant by this earlier comment....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5746691

Nice illustration of how unfair it all is.

Keep in mind that they ALSO went national with the techniques they learned in the South to suppress the black vote. Only now it covers young people and women and ALL minorities.

PLUS: There's the fact that the Republicans pull most of their crap in the rural areas and Dems refuse to fight or even QUESTION it when some "Red" district has 100% voter turnout with 100% of the people voting GOP. Really? You guys don't believe there's a SINGLE person in the whole district that would vote for you? Not even ONE??? Come on! There's not a single first time voter that voted just to be a rebel or to piss off their parents? Are you THAT terrified of charging the GOP with ACTUAL "vote fraud"? How about when the turnout is 110% or 300%? You won't even question it then?

[hobbit709]

22. Or that there's 1500 more votes for one candidate than there are registered voters in the county?

And it was NOT challenged by the Democratic Party?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

24. That's what happens when the Dems agree to give the Republicans the "Red" areas.

[geretogo]

15. It looks like Fascism to me .

[randys1]

16. THEY cant win IF WE all VOTE

[RedCloud]

18. Boehner. leader of the gerrymandered GOP House, worked fewer than 100 days in the full year.

How I have waited in vain for someone in prominence to utter those words. I don't even think the more "main stream" Republicans would vote GOP if they knew they were supporting a lazy person.

[jeff47]

19. Yeah, don't bother voting. Just stay home. It's all rigged anyway.

Message received!!!

[hobbit709]

23. If that's the message you got, you need to unclog your brain.

[rickford66]

20. Here's a self correcting way to decide districts.

Let the minority party draw them up.