Posted on 09/27/2005 1:22:28 PM PDT by .cnI redruM
IT IS NOTHING less than a scandal that 90% of the seats in Congress and the California Legislature are not competitive. It is also why Democrats, who have long championed a level playing field in elections as an important progressive goal, should be leading the call for an end to the "incumbent protection racket."
Democrats strongly supported the concept of "one person, one vote" established in 1962 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Baker vs. Carr, a ruling that also required equal representation in all legislative bodies in order to reflect the interests and wishes of the people in a fair and balanced manner.
The reality has been just the reverse. The court-ordered mandate to reflect the popular will has been subverted by the openly self-serving agreement between Democrats and Republicans to create safe election districts that would protect every incumbent from a serious competitive race. As Ed Kilgore, vice president for policy of the Democratic Leadership Council, has put it, "politicians are choosing voters, rather than voters choosing politicians."
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
go ahead libs all over the country make us conservatives' day by reinstituting geographic election districts.
When you see a map where 80% of the country is "Red", that has to imply the libs would be hammered if the current Gerrymanders were undone.
"When you see a map where 80% of the country is "Red", that has to imply the libs would be hammered if the current Gerrymanders were undone."
Unless of course there were differences in population densities and/or vote margins, which there are.
LOL! Thats a real knee slapper! They almost had me going, as they encourage illegal aliens and felons to vote, vote multiple times, and commit massive vote fraud in general.
Another good election reform. Valid picture ID as proof of US citizenship at every polling place!
districts should be based on population clusters...this could be determined by statistical clustering.
If you've got a state of so many people, and you get only so many districts, then the computer can tell you how that state breaks down into natural, geographic groups of that size.
Geographical and population compactness should determine the cluster more than anything else.
I would rant, but you both do it so much more eloquently. :-)
Polygonal districts would shake up Congress once, but at the end of the day most of those new districts would be as uncompetitive as the ink blots they replaced.
Representative government is unfeasible when the unit of representation covers hundreds of thousands of people. Each California Assembly member represents around 450,000 people. Each US House member represents around 700,000. Outside of a very few cities there are no remotely homogenous communities of that size. Circle, polygon or gerrymander, most will end up sharing a representative with other communities they have nothing in common with and you can't both be represented.
No surprise that the LA Slimes fails to mention the thrust of the legislation: legal gerrymandering,
Baker v Carr has dramatically changed both local and state politics. It is and will be the undoing of California. Any solution that Prop 77 proposes can easily be challenged under this misguided attempt to overrepresent minorities as compensation for past injustices,
So far, today... I'm too spent to rant... I have rant fatigue... Don't explain and don't complain! Nobody will believe it and nobody wants to hear it anyways!!! Ha Ha Ha!!!
Well dead people are people too :)
And just where was my ping?
The approach I've suggested elsewhere would be to define a "Gerrymander Quotient" for a map as something like the square of the perimeters of all regions. At the scheduled time for redistricting, any interested person could submit proposed redistricting plans. The plan with the lowest Gerrymander Quotient would then be used until the next redistricting.
Ooops. Sorry. :-) Rant away! lol.
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