Reply #123: Once again, it's NOT the machines, it's the GERRYMANDERING

[Turn CO Blue]

that is the root-cause that Dems lose in elections where the polls say we are even or better. The Repubs go in with a 4-6% advantage in almost every district across the country due to their criminal redistricting and dilution of the minority vote since the 1990's.

Here are some sources:

Carving up the Vote
<http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/gerrymandering/transcript.html>

Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. In the book, Hacker and Pierson examine the tactics of far-right Republicans -- and how they've changed the system for years to come. (I should note that this book is very scholarly, which is a nice way of saying that it is dry and filled with studies and statistics -- but their arguments are convincing, back by scientific analysis and very well laid out.)

Here is a snip of an interview of the authors from NPR, that explains the statistical advantage the Repubs have. <http://prairieweather.typepad.com/the_scribe/2005/12/12105_npr_paul_.html>

(snip)
I think you really have to focus on both sides of the story, in terms of elections. One side is the electoral battlefield, or the geographic map. And as we point out in the book, Republicans just have a big edge on the electoral battlefield, right out of the starting block. For example, in the Senate, over the last three Senate elections, Democrats have actually picked up 2.5M more votes in the last three elections in total than Republicans. But right now, they're holding 44 seats in the Senate to Republicans' 55. So there's a really dramatic bias on the Senate side in favor of generally Republican-leaning smaller states. On the House side, we've heard a lot about redistricting and gerrymandering, and that's certainly part of the story. In fact, in the most recent election of 2004, Bush won about 52% of the vote. He won in about 59% of Congressional districts. So that suggests Republicans do have an edge there.