Democrats would maintain that it’s never Gerrymandering because nobody named Gerry is involved in making the district lines and it doesn’t look like a salamander.
Here’s a path forward:
Legislatures get to draw district lines with a huge amount of discretion, being the majority elected by the people.
Courts need to take every measure to enforce that elections are FAIR and not fraud prone, or to allow states to pass election integrity laws (voter I.D., citizenship proof, shorter early voting, etc.) without meddling.
The former will benefit Democrats in a state, and the latter will benefit Republicans, hopefully a net wash.
Edmund Burke has been a Chicago Alderman for 50 years. Burke’s brother ran for state rep and lost. His wife is a judge. His ward ,14th, was originally known as “Back of The Yards” Once the home of the famous Chicago Stock Yards where most food processors along with employee demographics have since relocated. It was a compact area almost square composed mostly of single and 2 story frame and brick family dwellings mixed with scattered brick apartment units.
His ward now consists of areas carved from the 12th and 23rd wards miles from the original 14th boundaries.
When redistricted along with several other wards. Chicago had neighborhoods divided to create “Hispanic”residential sections going to Hispanic aldermanic and congressional (Gutierez) candidates and blacks going to black candidates.
That has had the effect of breaking up a contiguous geographic continuity and community identity. Because the wards affected which are really like small towns have had sections broken up into areas where if a problem arises in a given section of street which has one way traffic only may be two way a block down because it’s in a different ward. It has also played hell on zoning and because of the disruption of jurisdictions with the administration of city services such as streets and sanitation which the alderman (salary $120.000 plus allocations on local projects) do oversee and have input over.
Add to that here was part of the cause and result of those ward re-mappings. I Was living there when this occurred. The federal government Under policies created by the dems and continued on warily by Bush, discarded the 20% down payment requirement of home loans. Directed banks guaranteed by Fanny Mae and and Freddy Mac to grant no money down home ownership loans..This led to a massive change in demographics and in many cases loan defaults that created areas of abandoned single dwelling units.
Here’s how you get a scumball Puerto Rican elected to Congress in Chicago. A corkscrew is straighter than the district lines here.
I know how rbg will vote:
*ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz BEEEEEEEEEEPPP~*
What SCOTUS is considering is interesting, but I’m more intrigued by the crawl on Newsmax tonight - “Ginsburg missing SCOTUS arguments for the first time” - could RBG finally be reaching the end of her illustrious judicial career?......
Are the plaintiffs pretending there are “non-partisan commissions” out there? To say there are non-partisan people out there is a lie.
Here’s a simple geometric rule:
No district boundary may cross a line of government jurisdiction or neighborhood subdivision, though a jurisdiction or subdivision may be entirely contained within a district.
Or 10X the number of representatives, and the Constituents:Representatives ratio is down to 70,000:1. Problem solved. The number stopped by a majority vote at 435 in about 1930. Ask yourself why. It can be changed just as easily if our critters had any decency about them. Oh, never mind.
Before addressing gerrymandering, I'd like to see a debate on raising the size limit of the House. More districts will force states to change the size and shape of existing districts.
The current limit of 435 Representatives was set by The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 based on the census of 1910 when the population was 92,228,496. The result of the 2010 census was 308,745,538, a 235% increase in the last 100 years. Maybe it's time to increase the size of the House? This would rebalance the party split in Congress, as well as increase the Electoral College to influence presidential elections.
What if, on average, each state received two more Congressional districts? What about four more? How would they determine those districts? This opens up the gerrymandering debate currently heading to SCOTUS. Do states have enough wiggle room to hide these new districts in snake-like geographies that boggle the mind, or would this force some calls for "fairness" in the setting of Congressional districts going forward?
If we increase the size of the House to reflect the current population, the Electoral College will grow proportionally and we won't see such dramatic splits between the popular vote and EC vote, because these "unrepresented" popular votes will now be accounted for in the Electoral College.
Or 10X the number of representatives, and the Constituents:Representatives ratio is down to 70,000:1. Problem solved. The number stopped by a majority vote at 435 in about 1930. Ask yourself why. It can be changed just as easily if our critters had any decency about them. Oh, never mind.
Wouldn't 100+ more Representatives be a threat to the current incumbent power structure? How would current leadership wield power over 50 or more "country bumpkins" from flyover country who suddenly showed up with the mandate from their districts? Can their be a critical mass beyond which the current leadership can no longer threaten their caucus into acquiescence? Naturally, a new order would emerge; would this be multi-party or would it be a rise of the "normals?" At some tipping point, the "elite" class would be overwhelmed by numbers by the rest of us.
-PJ
