How Republicans Use Gerrymandering To Undermine Democracy & Subvert The Will Of The American People

[TexasTowelie]

NC-12, which snakes through the state looking for African-Americans, has a D+26 PVI

Last week, the whole country got a chance to look in behind the walls of the political sausage-making machine known as gerrymandering-- at least for Florida. A judge threw out the Republican Party gerrymander of congressional seats that was in direct violation of an amendment passed by 63% of Florida voters. "They were successful in their efforts to influence the redistricting process and the congressional plan under review here," he wrote. "And they might have successfully concealed their scheme and their actions from the public had it not been for the Plaintiffs' determined efforts to uncover it in this case."

So what about the rest of the country. There are several states much worse than Florida. Over the weekend Charles Babington, writing for the A.P., reported how Republicans cheat to keep an edge in blue-leaning states. Few places, for example, are as bad as North Carolina, where there is a Republican governor and where the gerrymandered state Senate has 32 Republicans and 18 Democrats and where the gerrymandered state House has 77 Republicans and just 43 Democrats. This in a state where there are 2,870,693 registered Democrats (42.3%), 2,052,250 registered Republicans (30.9%) and 1,726,245 (independents and others 26.0%). The Republicans in the state legislature managed to carve up the congressional districts in such a way that the 112th Congress' 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans is now, in the 113th Congress, 9 Republicans and just 4 Democrats. Presto!

Babington wrote that "Republicans and Democrats have engaged in gerrymandering for decades. Republicans refined the practice in 2011, a year after they won control of numerous state governments preparing to redraw congressional maps based on the 2010 census. It's one reason Republicans hold a solid House majority even though Americans cast 1.4 million more votes for Democratic House candidates than for GOP House candidates in 2012."

Republicans haven't controlled the White House or U.S. Senate for more than five years. Yet their House majority - now 234 to 199 - looks safe this fall. Redistricting episodes in Florida and North Carolina help explain why.

Republicans hold nine of North Carolina's 13 U.S. House seats, and they have solid prospects to make it 10. Their nominee is favored to win a district, which Obama lost by 19 percentage points, being vacated by centrist Democratic Rep. Mike McIntyre. [Note: A.P. routinely refers to far right-wing Democrats like McIntyre as "centrists."]

In recent statewide elections, North Carolina has been about as evenly divided as a state can be. Obama narrowly won it once, and lost it once. Voters replaced a Democratic governor with a Republican in 2012. Each party has one U.S. senator, and this fall's re-election bid by Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is likely to be extremely close.

The House delegation makeup, by contrast, seems more fitting for a reliably Republican state, like Georgia perhaps.

The arrangement lacks "elemental fairness," said state Senate Democratic leader Dan Blue, moments after attacking Republican school-spending cuts at a Raleigh news conference. The nation's founders, Blue said, could not have envisioned congressional representation falling so out of balance with a state's overall political sentiment.

...Americans' mobility patterns also helped, as millions of liberals continue to move to urban areas. This so-called "self-gerrymandering" makes it easier for Republican mapmakers to pack as many Democratic voters as possible into a handful of districts. That helps Republicans win a larger number of districts by smaller but still-safe margins.

In North Carolina, Republican officials drew three House districts that twisted and snaked to include as many black neighborhoods, and other likely Democratic areas, as possible. In the 2012 elections, these three districts recorded overwhelming Democratic majorities. Obama lost the other 10 districts by margins ranging from 13 to 23 percentage points.

Republicans won their 9-4 U.S. House edge even as North Carolinians cast more votes for Democratic House candidates overall.

Democrats are asking the state Supreme Court to rule the redistricting unconstitutional. Black voters were packed so densely into three districts, they contend, that their overall political clout was unduly diminished.

…Democratic Rep. David Price, D-N.C., who has spent 25 years in Congress, sees political chicanery in North Carolina's U.S. House map.

"It's the most extreme gerrymandering, on a purely partisan basis, I think we've ever seen," Price said.

Price is correct that the gerrymandered districts are unfair. If the districts were fairly drawn, North Carolina would have 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans in Congress. But let's look at the other states where the GOP cheating is as bad or worse: Pennsylvania has 4,266,317 registered Democrats (50.1%), 3,131,144 registered Republicans (36.8%) and 1,110,554 registered Independents and others (13.1%). Currently there is a Republican governor and Republican control in both houses of the state legislature. They've managed to severely gerrymander the congressional districts so that the Republicans have 13 seats and the Democrats have 5. In a non-partisan redistricting, the Democrats would have 10 seats and the Republicans 8.

- See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-republicans-use-gerrymandering-to.html

[JayhawkSD]

1. For what it's worth

you should see some of the Democratic districts in California. It mostly depends on who controls the state legislature, but don't think that this tool is unique to Republicans.

[DetlefK]

2. Solution: Open-source redistricting software that doesn't care about political affiliation.

It could take a look at the population distribution and cut the state into pieces of equal population-numbers. Add a restriction that districts should preferably look like hexagons and you are done.

Why hexagons? A 2D-surface can be covered in identical hexagons without gaps. And the hexagon is the most complicated(->flexible) shape that can do that.

[YarnAddict]

5. Without gerrymandering

some minority groups would have no representation. be careful what you wish for.

[former9thward]

11. You are correct.

The Voting Rights Acts requires majority minority districts where possible. In many cases the only way to create them is through gerrymandering.

[kentuck]

3. That's why they are called "Republicans"...

They are anti-democratic.

[Lee-Lee]

4. Sadly NC-12 was created in that fashion by Dems, not the rethugs

I lived there in the 90's when it was a fairly new district, and at that time Democrats had control of the process here.

You can't go by the number of people registered in each party to determine how many reps each party should have here in NC. The electorate here is very odd, there are some very conservative people, I'm talking vile racists, registered as Democrats here in NC because 20-30 years ago everybody registered as a Democrat. You have to remember this is the same state that never allowed the GOP to control the State House and Senate in the 70's, 80's and 90's but kept Jesse Helms in office at the same time....

I like the idea of districts done by software, but breaking it down to shapes like hexagons isn't practical. Districts have to follow normal geographic boundaries like bodies of water on roads or you end up having to do surveys to figure out who is where when the line crosses through a parcel of land or even an apartment building. Plus if you don't follow lines like that you can end isolating people from a polling place with a river or mountain between there. There are lots of places here where you can be just a mile away on paper but getting there requires 30+ minutes of driving.

A better solution is we get control of state legislatures back to our side and draw them like we want. Turnabout is fair play.

[JayhawkSD]

7. Oh really?

The solution to crimimal behavior by Republicans is to switch control of that criminal behavior to the Democrats?

And we wonder why democracy is failing in this nation.

[Lee-Lee]

8. Jerrymandering isn't illegal

Lets at least keep the debate in the realm of reality.

You can debate the ethics, but drawing political boundaries in a way that favors your interests isn't illegal in most cases.

[JayhawkSD]

12. I didn'y say it was illegal.

I said it was criminal.

crim•i•nal (ˈkrɪm ə nl)
adj.
Dictionary #1, definition #4: Shameful; disgraceful (most applicable)
Dictionary #2, definition #4: Senseless; foolish
Dictionary #2, definition #5: exorbitant; outrageous:
Dictionary #3, definition #5: senseless or deplorable

[MineralMan]

6. Gerrymandering has been used by both parties.

The key point is that there will be no redistricting until 2021, after the 2020 census. Right now, the issue is getting Democrats elected to legislative offices in both Congress and state legislatures, building a solid majority before the next census. We blew it in 2010. The next year, districts were redrawn, based on who was in control of state legislatures after the 2010 election. When will we learn?

GOTV 2014 and Beyond!

[Jim Lane]

9. Redistricting before 2021 is unlikely but not impossible

In Texas, Tom DeLay engineered a between-census redistricting and got away with it.

If some state features both a state government (legislature plus governor) that could go either way, and a gerrymandering that's egregious enough to get large numbers of people ticked, it would be conceivable for Democrats to raise that as one campaign issue. Some people who aren't riled up about ALEC and the like might get riled up about what can be painted as cheating.

Offhand I don't know whether any state meets those criteria this year.

[MineralMan]

10. I don't either. It's very unusual for that to happen, unless it

is ordered by the courts. Democrats have so much campaign fodder from the Republicans to use. I hope they use it all to flip seats in state legislatures and Congress. It can be done, even where Democrats usually have trouble winning elections. A powerful GOTV effort can do the trick in many districts, if campaigns are run correctly and point out how the incumbent has harmed the local area.

[Are_grits_groceries]

13. Gerrymandering has been done forever.

Here an article about the last 60 years of it:

What 60 years of political gerrymandering looks like


Last week I wrote about the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the United States, as measured by how geometrically compact they are. I found that districts in some states are a bit of a hot mess, particularly in North Carolina and Maryland. The natural follow-up question: have they always been that way?

To answer that, I grabbed historic district "shapefiles" and did the same geometric analysis for a handful of states, going back to the 83rd Congress, which convened in 1953. In nearly every state, the average gerrymander index value -- that is, the average of the gerrymander scores for all districts in a given state -- has risen substantially since then.

Here's a look at a handful of key states:
<snip>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/21/what-60-years-of-political-gerrymandering-looks-like/

It is being used by the GOP to hold onto the House. That's why local elections matter a lot.

However, I know that Dem Rep Jim Clyburn has a seat because his SC district was created to give him a group of voters that would likely elect him. It's a double-edged sword.