Matt Wuerker for February 26, 2013

My district in Ohio is so convoluted that the eastern and western segments meet below Columbus at the Scioto River, at a point where there is no bridge or other method to cross, and no town or village nearby.

It’s the only way the GOP can win.

I am ashamed to say that here in Maryland they did the same thing. And it was even upheld in a referendum.

Districting is another thing that needs to be taken out of the hands of the legislatures. It should be given to citizens who have no financial interest and are disinterested in the outcome.

‘I am against the gerrymander because it can be so easily misused by any side.’-Gerrymandering is normally abused by both sides. The primary purpose of how district lines are drawn is to create/maintain safe seats, Republican districts for Republican legislators and Democratic districts for Democratic legislators. -This is a big reason why there is so much animosity between the two parties at both the national and state level. An individual not only doesn’t have to compromise with the other party, but may well be punished for doing so.

Blame lack of rural gentrification. Since Democratic voters tend to be wildly overrepresented in cities they tend to win those districts by a landslide, whereas in the more rural areas the Republicans hold on by more narrow margins, except in the ENTIRELY rural (e.g. barely inhabited) areas which vote overwhelmingly Republican, not that it matters since those districts are more rare and generally cover HUGE areas.

Iff Democrats get out of their “enclaves” and spread themselves throughout the general populations then they’ll start to see increased Representation. If just a quarter of the minority population of Tarrant County spread out to the burbs around Fort Worth that’d easily be another Democratic seat in the House. Repeat that times a few metro areas all over the country and you’d have a Democratic majority in the House in ONE election cycle.

(Note the use of iff is not accidental)

Virginia has tried to take the lead on gerrymandering. Although this is traditionally done every ten years, based on the census, Senate Republicans voted to re-gerrymander Senate districts last month. Representation in the Virginia Senate is 20 members of each party, except on inauguration day, when one democratic senator was absent to attend the inauguration.

The Republicans picked that day to introduce and approve that legislation, 20-19. Clever SOBs, eh? They did that because our Lieutenant Governor (a Republican) is a man of real principles, and told them ahead of time he would not break a tie for them. So they booted HIM out of the equation, too.

Fortunately for those of us who favor sanity, the ranking Republican in the House refused to bring the legislation to a vote, deciding it was just wrong, even if it originated in his own party. I guess he’ll be targeted for defeat next election.(I am not being ugly. They did this with Preston Bryant, who was an excellent Republican legislator for many years. He accepted Governor Tim Kaine’s (Democratic, now a US Senator) invitation to join his cabinet, and was immediately labelled a turncoat, and the party worked actively against him and any of his allies.)

Interestingly, next year’s governor’s race will likely be between Mr. Cuccinelli, a Tea-Party favorite who spent untold millions taking Obamacare to the Supreme Court (but he only cost the state the $300 filing fee. Really. Why would he lie?), and a far-left former head of the DNC who has never held public office, Terry McAulliff (I am pretty sure I butchered his name). We can hope that Mr. Bolling, the above-referenced Lt. Governor, will run as an independent, since he is too moderate for the Republican party; Mr. Cuccinelli has already pretty much worked his way around Mr. Bolling.

After all the hype from the right about voter fraud it turns out they are the leaders in destroying the “one man – one vote” concept. Democracy be damned win at any cost is their new mantra. All for the good of America of course.

Yes, historically, both parties have used the process. The Republican “contribution” to distort the will of the people in recent years has been by far, in many areas, the most egregious ever. If more of those ‘modern republicans" actually WERE “Republicans”, it wouldn’t be nearly as damaging. Remember, it was Ike who integrated schools, and Nixon who passed some of the most progressive environmental legislation. The current crop want to destroy all of that progress, bowing to the buck, and their corporate lords in the castles on the hill, while the rest of the nation labors, and starves, or dies on the battlefields to protect their profits.

I thought the gerrymander was illegal, certainly it shoves up to the edge that common sense and what is morally right.The Red Mapping is something else altogether. It is the GOP’s plan to make blue state that have red local government to gerrymander in a way that Democrats canNOT Win!I’m sure they know this will cause us not to be a democracy anymore but a 1 party government like N. Korea, China and Cuba.

Gerrymander is not illegal. It’s the outcomes that may be. Alabama is trying to get out from under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, saying it is no longer relevant. Meanwhile, Texas bowed to Tom DeLay and redistricted mid-census, which had never been done before. Now they are being sued because the CURRENT redistricting sliced the Latino population into segments so that Republicans still held a majority in most districts. Where that couldn’t be done, they threw them all into heavily Latino districts where Dems would have to run against one another.