Posted on 09/25/2009 7:17:49 AM PDT by Military family member
[snip]
As 2010 is a census year, shortly thereafter, the Indiana General Assembly, as well as the legislatures of the other states, will begin the process of redrawing the lines for the various districts around the states.
As with most states, Indiana’s current districts make far more political sense than practical sense. The maps look as if they were draw with a paintball gun and random luck, rather than thoughtful consideration.
Todd Rokita wants to change all that.
(Excerpt) Read more at thjournal.com ...
I think that congressional districts should be drawn so as to be equal in population, and be geographically compact. Some seats will be safe for one party or the other, but they should not be drawing the district lines to gerrymander these safe seats.
That’s exactly what Todd Rokita is suggesting.
I think that congressional districts should be drawn so as to maximize Republican strength and disenfranchise Democrats. After all, that’s been the M.O. in Dem-led states against Republicans. So what’s good enough for them is good enough for us.
Rokita is stupid fool who if need be should forced to shut the hell up about this by the state party under threat of not backing him in any future race.
In only one instance should we draw seats in the way he suggested, if the Supreme Court decides it’s a 14th amendment violation not to or a constitutional amendment is passed mandating non-partisan redistricting NATIONWIDE.
Otherwise it’s extremely foolish to give up advantage. We are in a war with the rats, one fought with votes rather than bullets but it’s a war just the same. You can be damn sure the states the rats control won’t be drawing “fair” districts. If Republicans can win back the perplexingly usually narrowly rat controlled Indiana state house (probably this is due to a map drawn by rats for rats) they’re assured of complete control of the process there (I forgot how it works there exactly, I seem recall something atypical in the way they do it?). In which case as many rats as possible should be jammed into the 1st (Gary) and 7th (Indianapolis) districts and the other 7 drawn to maximize GOP advantage.
They should also draw the state legislative lines in such a way that the prospect of a rat majority existing in either chamber for the next decade is as likely as you seeing Patrick Swayze play the Riddler in the next Batman movie.
Ping to # 5.
Another thing too, Obama’s census will deliberately overestimate the number of rat voters putting us a an unfair disadvantage we need to overcome.
The current lines in IN were drawn by the Dems, although initially it wasn’t enough to alter the GOP majority in ‘02 (they did run freshman Republican Brian Kerns out of his seat). But it took until ‘06 for their “plan” to work. I think we could get an 8R-1D majority out of it by cutting up the Indianapolis 7th and combining it with parts of the hyper-GOP 5th (which was where they tried to corral as many Republicans under Dan Burton). But as you said, to give up such an advantage is insane.
In TN, some Dems were proposing such a scheme, yet they had no problem screwing us for 140 years since Reconstruction, but as soon as the GOP gets the upper hand, all hell breaks loose and they have the nerve to demand fairness. Screw their notions of fairness. Fairness is 140 years of OUR drawing the lines, our running the show. They can come back in 2153 and ask for their turn.
Of course, the current congressional districts in IN were drawn by Democrats to elect 5 Democrats and only 4 Republicans in a Republican state, and their partisan plan succeeded in 2006 and 2008. If the Democrats control the process in 2011, I’m all in favor of them using non-partisan criteria. : )
But, yes, if we control the process I would like to see an über-Democrat CD from the IL border on Lake Michigan to South Bend, a heavily Dem CD in Indianapolis (not all that different from the current 7th, actually), and 7 GOP CDs in the rest of the state. (Until recently, I espoused splitting Indianapolis into two CDs, one with black precincts and the most Republican suburbs (thus keeping a black pop between 25%-30% and avoiding a retrogression charge under the VRA, and the other taking in white parts of the city and surrounding Republican suburbs, but Obama carried Indianapolis’s Marion County so handily that I’d be afraid that we’d lose both Indianapolis seats instead of winning both.)
Yeah Marion county has been trending very bad (despite the local GOP comeback). It was one of the few places Bush did worse in 04 than 00 in and of course in 08 it took a terrible turn.
I wouldn’t risk not rat packing a second seat in state.
The trend started in the late 1990s. IIRC, Marion County was one of only three counties to have been carried by Dole in 1996 but by Gore in 2000 (with Orange County, FL and Charles County, MD being the others).
Bush did take Marion in 2000. By 49-48 with 1% for Harry Browne and 1% for Nader.
You’re right about the other 2. I think they were the only 2.
You’re right, Marion County did vote for Bush in 2000 (albeit berely). But I think there was a third county that voted for Dole and then for Gore. DJ, if you have your 2002 or 2004 Barone handy, check out what he wrote about Charles County, MD (in Hoyer’s page) and about Orange County, FL (in Keller’s page), since I think that’s were I learned that only three counties switched that way.
BTW, the more I think about it, the more it seems that if the GOP controls redistricting in IN that they should attach Bloomington to Indianapolis through a narrow passage in Morgan County and place the GOP-leaning Marion suburbs currently in the IN-07 in one of the surrounding suburban districts.
Barone didn’t really address either in their entries (in the ‘04 edition, at least). Nothing about Charles Co., MD., and what he mentioned about Orange Co., FL was its movement towards the Dems during the ‘90s because of the influx of Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans working in the hospitality industry. My guess about Charles MD was due to an increase of DC gov’t workers moving into the county and probably Blacks spilling over from PG County.
It’s astonishing (horrifying, more like) all the fed gov’t workers turning all these formerly GOP areas heavily Democrat. I’m more reaching the opinion every day that if you work for the fed gov’t in any capacity, you shouldn’t be able to vote, seriously. I think that was the presumption when DC was created that whatever gov’t people would reside there couldn’t participate in elections, otherwise DC would’ve been given the vote from the get-go. It is an appalling conflict of interest.
It was mostly blacks from PG County that led to Charles County going from heavily GOP to heavily RAT in the past 15 years. Blacks were 26% of the county’s pop in the 2000 Census; they were 39% in the 2008 census estimate.
If Barone didn’t write in the Charles or Orange pages about Charles and Orange being the only Dole/Gore counties, I have to believe that Barone wrote about a third county that was carried by Dole and Gore, and it was in that page that he mentioned that Charles and Orange were the only others to do so. The problem is, I can’t find the third county.
It should be noted that Bush did still get a slightly higher % of the vote than Dole in both counties 1.2 in Orange and .1 in Charles. Both far under the gains he made over Dole in other counties, without Perot Dole would have got over 50% in both.
I wonder if he actually got a lower % than Dole in any county.
I can’t find any others that flipped.
http://www.uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=printpage;topic=7333.0
Those guys couldn’t either. Where did you hear there were 3?
I can’t find the third myself, either. I thought perhaps it was some small county somewhere, and I did a quick state-by-state looking at the counties with a Dem swing from ‘96 to 2000, but I could only find the aforementioned Charles & Orange.
My recollection was that it wasn’t a small county—I thought it was something closer to Orange than to Charles in population. But I couldn’t find it, either, after scanning through the counties with the highest blue-to-red swing (using the colors appropriately) from 1996 to 2000 on Dave Leip’s Presidential Election Atlas. I guess I dreamt it.
But if Barone didn’t write about it how did I know about Charles and Orange being Dole/Gore counties? I have never paid attention as to who carried what county in 1996, since more important is whether Clinton got more votes than the sum of Dole and Perot (allocating Dole and Perot votes to Bush and Clinton and Nader votes to Gore or Nader allows one to predict with accuracy the 2000 results in like 47states, with the only bad outliers being AR, LA and WV).
“It should be noted that Bush did still get a slightly higher % of the vote than Dole in both counties 1.2 in Orange and .1 in Charles. Both far under the gains he made over Dole in other counties, without Perot Dole would have got over 50% in both.
I wonder if he actually got a lower % than Dole in any county.”
Clayton County, GA (rapidly growing black suburban population): 37.34% Dole 1996; 32.52% Bush 2000
DeKalb County, GA (rapidly growing black suburban population): 29.08% Dole 1996; 26.73% Bush 2000
Arlington County, VA (DC suburbs): 34.63% Dole 1996; 34.17% Bush 2000
Prince George’s County, MD (rapidly growing black suburban population in the DC suburbs): 21.93% Dole 1996; 18.38% Bush 2000
Montgomery County, MD (DC suburbs): 35.15% Dole 1996; 33.52% Bush 2000
Russell County, KS (Dole’s original home county): 78.98% Dole 1996; 69.90% Bush 2000
Sioux County, ND (overwhelmingly Native American population): 30.00% Dole 1996; 25.84% Bush 2000
I got this by looking for counties that swung towards the Democrats between 1996 and 2000.
The real knockout blow would be a flood of legalized illegal dual-citizen voters.
The good news is that ACORN is in disarray, but yeah, I hope a GOP 2010 congress can revamp these phony census schemes.
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