Posted on 11/03/2010 7:28:15 AM PDT by Renfield
I live in CA-23 aka the Ribbon of Shame. The good news is that citizen commissoned redistricting should put this beast down.
Wait for the upcoming redistricting and the addition of 3 or 4 more districts. It’ll be chopped up much worse I’d guess.
How any one single congress person can represent TWO major markets and one medium market all at once is beyond me. Jax, Orlando and Gainesville all have very distinct issues.
This district was drawn for John Murtha. I predict it will be gone once our new legislature starts redistricting. The RAT establishment just poured a lot of money into (barely) saving their boy Mark Critz for one term.
Jefferson proposed that congressional districts be created simply by selecting appropriate lines of latitude and longitude so as to evenly divide the population of a given state. In “Double Star”, Heinlein suggested that “districts” be defined by gathering X-thousand people that agree with you, on whatever basis, and select a representative. All of the people get to be represented by someone they know will defend their point of view. I suppose you could also do it in such a manner that a representative’s voting “weight” is proportional to the number of votes cast for them.
Please note that I haven’t spent hours and hours searching out the flaws in any of these methods - just pointing out several ways to avoid inappropriate influence in defining voting districts.
There would still be program bias, but there would be a big improvement over the present system. See the results for Iowa, which actually uses such a system:
Caveat: You would still have to draw certain districts to ensure certain racial representation or there would be hell to pay.
This affirmative action districting actually works to the GOP advantage by concentrating RAT voters in safe districts.
Why do you hope that? That district concentrates rats in one district making others Republican-friendly.
According to Alan Grayson, his district is the most gerrymandered. He had such a humble concession speech. /s
MA 4
Because it’s wrong.
The purpose of gerrymandering is not JUST to make “safe” seats for incumbents; but also to dilute the power of the other party - both motivations entirely against the spirit of a Representative Republic.
Well, another piece of good news is that the ‘Pubbies picked up the governorship and legislatures of several states. They turn around and gerrymander some districts in their favor!
And worth noting that without that curlicue to the north of 95, we’d be welcoming Rep. Beilat to Congress. Brookline and Newton alone accounted for all but 400 of Barney’s margin of victory.
As long as its not like pieces of pizza again there are four or five counties around my neck of the woods that have a lot in common it makes sense to put them in the same district; so when the congress critters do their deal it wont make any sense.
gerrymandered bump
Why? Just because it looks funny does not make it 'wrong.' That NC district was designed specifically to ensure a black could be elected and it makes the neighboring districts much more competitive for the Republicans.
You can look up the district here. http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/GIS/RandR07/District_Plans/Congress/Congress_ZeroDeviation/2003/Reports/IndivDistrictByPrecinct/RegPR_PDF/rptVTDRegPR12.pdf
It's 45% Black and 58% Democrat only 26% Republican. Back about 10 years ago, The Supreme Court upheld the district by pretending it's lines were drawn for political rather than racial reasons. It's legal.
That district was drawn by Republicans not "for John Murtha" at all but for the purposes of:
1. Putting 2 Rat incumbents (John Murtha and Frank Mascara) into one district while eliminating the old 20th district entirely, and
2. Jamming enough Rat voters into that new 12th district to shore up Republicans in the adjacent 4th and 18th districts (we also added more Rats to the 14th district, which also helped the 4th & 18th).
Republicans will control the process again this decade, and it looks like we need to get even MORE help into the 4th district to exterminate Weasel Altmire (and more into the 12th to screw Critz), while not endangering the 18th. It can be done, but the result might look even more like an out-of-control jigsaw puzzle piece.
In the 2001 redistricting (well before Grayson was elected) FL-08 went from being 53.4% Republican according to the 2000 presidential vote, to 54.7%. Hardly a major change.
And it's not like his district borders changed AT ALL between 2008 and 2010, so I don't know what that Nazi psychopath Grayson is yelling about, but then I usually don't. Time to get back to the rubber room, Alan.
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