Posted on 05/03/2015 6:17:43 AM PDT by iowamark
Gerrymandering -- drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party -- is a difficult process to explain. If you find the notion confusing, check out the chart above -- adapted from one posted to Reddit this weekend -- and wonder no more.
Suppose we have a very tiny state of fifty people. Thirty of them belong to the Blue Party, and 20 belong to the Red Party. And just our luck, they all live in a nice even grid with the Blues on one side of the state and the Reds on the other.
Now, let's say we need to divide this state into five districts. Each district will send one representative to the House to represent the people. Ideally, we want the representation to be proportional: if 60 percent of our residents are Blue and 40 percent are Red, those five seats should be divvied up the same way.
Fortunately, because our citizens live in a neatly ordered grid, it's easy to draw five lengthy districts -- two for the Reds , and three for the Blues. Voila! Perfectly proportional representation, just as the Founders intended. That's grid 1 above, "perfect representation."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Now add in 11 million illegals who will be voting...
Number 3 looks like light gerrymandering to me.
When the districts start looking like sausages, or spiders, that’s real gerrymandering.
Note that Example 1 and Example 2 are extremely artificial constructs in order to simplify the author's point. In real life. parties do not congregate together quite so perfects -- so straight lines would not be quite so "perfect" or "unfair".
Gerrymandering is pure manipulation and should be illegal. Note that it originated in Massachusetts (Elbridge Gerry). That's tells you all you need to know.
See congressional districts in Chicago......
Now.
BTTT!
Back in the late 80’s, I lived briefly in Tucson....where the city districts for city council was the same type of game. I’ve noticed the same game for school districts. Across the nation....it’s the preferred method.
I reject the basic premise of this article. The founders did not contemplate parties and expected common interests would align with communities, regions, and geography. In their model, districts would shrink or expand in the adjustments to population over time. Districts would evolve slowly that are geographically organized, naturally compact and equivalent sized by population.
Gerrymandering is a manipulation that favors political parties and incumbent politicians. The interests of the people are largely ignored, they are just pawns in the great political game. Politicians in this environment are not driven to loyalty to the people, they become loyal to the party apparatchiks.
There’s a limit to how much control the “system” can exercise over politics. That’s why our Constitution was structured to limit the role of politics in our system. But some of it is unavoidable.
Two quotes on point:
Boss Tweed was asked if it was true that he used his position to help his friends; “Yes, of course. Who should I help? My enemies?”
Jesse Unruh, asked about his California assembly members taking lavish gifts from lobbyists: “If they can’t take their money, drink their liquor, and f*** their women, and vote the right way when the time comes, they don’t belong up here”.
It’s notable that the national anthem of Great Britain contains the line (addressed to the Queen), “confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks”
It’s not a new problem.
I live in Ann Kirkpatrick’s severely gerrymandered district in Arizona. It is about 1 mile wide and 300 miles long from Tucson to Flagstaff and wanders conveniently through the “Safe” Marxists districts. A perfect example. Looks like a rattlesnake on steroids.
It's a distributed client that looks at census data and tries to find the optimally compact districts, with nearly equal number of voters.
There are results for each state. You can also download and run the client, and contribute to searching for more optimal districts. It's a computationally-intensive process, so it runs for a while.
However, the only way this would ever be used is if it was mandated by a Constitutional amendment. Otherwise, it would never get past the various special interest groups (or the Supreme Court!), because it is blind to race, gender, age, or political affiliation.
http://ilheadstart.org/congressional-arra-map-chicago/
District #4 represented by the ‘gentleman’ that did not notice his residence was only taxed for a vacant lot!
He forgot, or something!
The shape of district #4 was selected to mimic his brain waves.
That’s exactly what happened to me.
I used to be in Duncan Hunter’s district - now I’m stuck with Susan Davis (horrible liberal). I have NOBODY WHO REPRESENTS ME .. NOBODY .. FROM THE LOWEST POLITICAL RACE TO THE BIGGEST.
Talk about being marginalized ..!!!!!!
BUT .. I STILL VOTE - ALWAYS ..!!!!!
How did the 30 blues let the 20 reds gerrymander?
The answer is obvious:
The blues were led by McConnell and Boehner!
When you get some time, take a look at Cynthia McKinney’s district that kept her in office until she went full-blown Muslim nut job.
At one point, it was a single line down the middle of a highway until it reached buttermilk bottom.
Dont leave out McCain and Pat (spit, pew) Roberts (Rino-officially not from Ks anymore).
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