Gerrymandering Is Eating Democracy

[DonRedwood]

(Enjoy a good read D.U.)

Gerrymandering Is Eating Democracy by Hamilton Nolan

It's strange that national political races grow ever more expensive, and our national political discussion grows ever more atomized and partisan, at the same time that Congressional elections are less competitive than ever, by design. Why are we all yelling at each other when we should be yelling at gerrymandering?

In the United States of America, this shining beacon of democracy for all the free world to model itself upon, here is how we elect members to our Congress: we eschew public campaign financing, and ensure that the candidate with better funding almost always wins, thereby allowing elections to more or less be directly purchased by powerful interests; then— and this is the most ingenious part— we allow these politicians, once elected, to draw their own districts, thereby virtually ensuring their own reelections. The result is bizarrely shaped districts, highly stratified by political party, that clearly exist only to prolong the careers of politicians, and which bear no resemblance to actual contiguous communities. This practice of gerrymandering, politely known as "redistricting," is among the most outrageous features of our entire political system. And it is only getting worse. The Wall Street Journal reports today:

Of 435 districts in the Republican-controlled House, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates only 90 as competitive, meaning those seats have a partisan rating that falls within five points of the national average. The rating measures how each district votes relative to how the country as a whole voted in the most recent presidential election.

The number of competitive districts [is] at its lowest since Cook first started the partisanship rating in the 1998 election cycle.
This is what happens when you hand careerist politicians the keys to their own future— the same thing that happens when you hand a pill addict the keys to the pharmacy. There is absolutely no chance that Congressional leaders will ever push for a system that might actually resemble a true representative democracy. Why would they? As it is, they can virtually guarantee their own solid career path.

More at: http://gawker.com/gerrymandering-is-eating-democracy-948842710

[Fuddnik]

1. It's already been digested.

Nothing left of our elections, but a turd.

[GreenStormCloud]

2. It isn't new, and both sides do it.

This is from 1812, where the term "gerrymander" came into use. The oddly shaped district resembled a salamander, and the politician it benefitted was named, "Gerry" so it was dubbed a gerrymander, and the name has stuck to the practice for 200 years.



Over the past 200 years all parties, when in power, have done it.

[jeff47]

3. The unfortunate part is only the Democrats have been willing to do something about it.

The trend in Democratic states is to have non-partisan committees draw up congressional districts.

That's unfortunate because they are not reaping the "upside", while Republicans are.

[Igel]

7. It's new.

Where I lived before there was a notorious district that went from the city I lived in over to a city 60 miles away.

It was roughly like a barbell, except that the "bar" part ran along a beach for dozens of miles. That part of the district only had people in it when they were on the beach. No houses were included.

It was there, explicitly, to protect an official of a specific party and race.

So this is a new thing, and an anti-hypocrisy thing. Both sides did it for 200 years. Then, suddenly, the republicans hacked up a few states and Democrats pitched a fit. When they were back in charge, it was hard for them to do the same thing again so they conveniently found religion.

BTW, "non-partisan" does not mean "without partisanship."

[starroute]

6. But computers make it way more effective

Also, the Supreme Court's one-man-one-vote decision outlawed certain redistricting abuses, and that gave a major boost to gerrymandering.

The problem isn't even so much that it makes races non-competitive as that it overrides the will of the people. In North Carolina, for example, the Republicans hold 9 out of 13 Congressional seats, even though they got a minority of the votes for those seats last fall.

[cprise]

4. K&R

[Jamaal510]

5. It makes our elected leaders lazy

and complacent. As we can see from the GOP in Congress, they're not going to work as hard to solve problems and cater to the needs of their constituents when they know they figuratively have re-election on lockdown. It is why they continue to vote billions of times to repeal Obamacare when they know it is futile. It's all about making the far-Right obese on red meat.