Posted on 11/06/2014 8:18:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Another underreported fact from Tuesday's election is the extraordinary night Republicans had in winning state legislative seats.
The GOP now controls two thirds of state legislative houses – 66 of 99 (Nebraska's legislature is unicameral). They upped the number of states where they control both house and senate to 24 – one more than they had before the election. And according to this article in Vox, they cut the number of Democratic-held legislatures from 14 to 7.
Republicans made historic gains in state legislatures in 2010. They held on in many states in 2012, or made up for losses in one state with gains in another — even though Democrats won the national election. And they won even more in 2014. This isn't an accident — it's the result of strategic fundraising from national Republicans, beginning in 2010, aimed at engineering statehouse takeovers. Out-of-state contributions were shuffled to states where they would make a difference, particularly as congressional partisanship and gridlock made policymaking in Washington increasingly unlikely.
And at a time of national gridlock, state legislatures have done an immense amount of, well, legislating. Since 2010, 30 states, most controlled by Republicans, have passed a total of 205 new abortion restrictions. That's more restrictions than were passed in the entire first decade of the 2000s, according to the Guttmacher Institute:
wenty-two states, 18 with Republican majorities, have passed laws making it more difficult for people to vote.
After the Newtown shootings, most new state laws surrounding guns actually eased restrictions on owning and carrying firearms. Seventy new laws loosening gun control were passed, 49 in states with Republican legislative majorities and Republican governors, compared to three in Democratically controlled states.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
On Tuesday, a potential Clinton presidency was denied any hope of having control of the US House, even if she serves a full 8 years.
GOP will be in the drivers seat for redistricting in 2020
Time to repeal the 17th Amendment.
Now is the time to take back our country! No more excuses!!
We caught that on Fox last night on their early evening summary.
Thanks for posting the results.
That is significant!
Hmmmm, seems like this is getting pretty close to the numbers needed to pass Amendments to the Constitution.
Just sayin...
The state doesn't have enough money to buy a second camera? I can donate my used cell phone if they need it...
I think I heard last night that now 35 states will have GOP governors...
Making it more difficult for voter fraud should be the terminology. We have strict voter ID here in Kansas and I had no difficulty voting.
Article V.
A very interesting read.
Roger that. The next two years will likely be our last and best chance.
I think we should consider this our last opportunity to try and steer this country on course. We blew it last time with W and his lack of putting the veto pen to spending bills passed by his republican house and senate. This has got to STOP!!!
Even the democrat voters that can still add and subtract know this.
To me, these state legislatures are where we really need to be focused. This is great news - the grass roots is where it’s at. Will be critical if there is going to be a constitutional convention convened. I agree we need to strike while we have the momentum.
99.... Dammit Nebraska!
I just figured out manually how many houses switched one one party to divided. I also posted it this morning on another post from last night.
I haven’t had time to double verify my comparisons.
In the first column, I will put if they were dem before Tuesday, middle column if they are mixed and the third column if they were formerly repub controlled. (Forgive me if any are incorrect; I am just eyeballing this.)
For instance, MT would be /MT/MT, meaning formerly they were republican controlled and now they are divided.
And MD/MD would be they changed from dem controlled to now divided. ( I couldn’t think of an easier way for me to tally.)
Here are the sources, I compared.
http://www.statescape.com/resources/partysplits/partysplits.aspx
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/11/05/republican-sweep-extends-to-state-level/
Dem Then/ Divided Now / Previous Repub
WA/WA
/MT/MT
CO/CO
NM/NM
AK/AK
MN/MN (Solson mentioned already, but good to note it again)
IA (still divided)
MO/MO
IL/IL
KY (still divided)
WV/WV
/VA/VA
/PA/PA
MD/MD
/NJ/NJ (Sorry about that Christie)
MA/MA
NY (still divided)
ME/ME
So here is my tally. It looks like that we went from republican controlled to mixed in four states out of 18 that are now divided. And there was a change of divided states to red state legislatures to nine, and they were ME,MA,MD, WV,IL, MO, Mn,NM,CO and WA.
This is very heartening.
If anyone has a link with all these changes verified, please post it for us.
34 states total have resolved for the Balanced Budget amendment to the constitution. About a dozen of those states have rescinded their resolutions, and about 4 have re-resolved. However, constitutionally, states may *only* be allowed to make a resolution, *not* rescind one that has been made.
So, a Republican congress can, as soon as it is in office, decide on its own to organize an Article V convention. And there is nothing Obama could do to stop it.
Oddly enough, even the Supreme Court cannot stop it, either.
Once 34 states have passed resolutions, that is it. Congress *must* convene. So it is only a formality at this point for congress to resolve to organize a constitutional convention and to send a message to all state legislatures that they *must* provide delegates to that convention.
Importantly, some of the states have also restrained their potential delegates, that they *cannot* agree to any change to the constitution not authorized by their state, under criminal penalty. This alone is enough to prevent any radicalization of the process, at least enough to block the 38 states from changing the constitution unless they really agree with the change.
66/99 = 67% that’s override country.
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