Mike Luckovich for October 15, 2021

I like it! And it’s even true (cartoon-wise).

I will just point out, in passing, that when the Dems are in control, they too tend to gerrymander. It’s such an EASY slope to slide down. The solution would be to give redistricting to mathematicians or computer programmers. Have them churn out a half dozen or so different maps and let a handful of retired judges from that state pick one.

It is called “gerrymander” is because because someone whose last name was “Gerry” drew up some districts to get the votes he need and one of them looked like a salamander. Combine them into a portmanteau and you get “gerry-mander”.

The Republican Party of Trump HATES democracy.

They are doing everything they can to destroy it in America.

Would that be the Russian border?

Don’t worry about fit; just glue the pieces together!

It’s the only way Republicans can win. A platform based on hate doesn’t get you far.

It’s all too accurate.

Aided and abetted by a Supreme Court that is out to destroy democracy in America.

I’m only familiar with Maryland’s voting districts, but they are, um, imaginative, to say the least. Zones 3 and 8 aren’t even contiguous.

Gerrymandering is just the “new and improved” and “separate but equal” segregation as practiced by the GOP. While “separate” is true, it is not, nor will ever be, “new,” “improved,” nor “equal.”

The republican lying thief in the night makes his minority dictate over the majority.

Socialism is fine until the rich people run out of money.

Robert’s Supreme Court on vote diluting discriminatory gerrymandering: Against Blacks—BAD!! Against Browns—BAD!! Against Blues (or Reds)—GOOD POLITICS!

Republicans, Democrats, they all pull this crap every ten years. No difference between the two, really.

gerrymandered districts are not really representative,

one way to fix would be to have reps chosen by proportional representation within the states

People can (and, at least sometimes do) vote in ways that can surprise the people who gerrymander their district. So, yes, gerrymandering is bad, but the true risk to democracy is the onslaught of voter suppression laws—many passed to “correct” the non-existent cases of “voter fraud” of the 2020 election. No intelligent person is fooled, of course—but not all judges are intelligent, and some are crooks. (We have two crooks on the Supreme Court.) So the very obviously dishonest laws might not necessarily be overturned.

When it comes to democracy the GQP is against it. It’s called Mitchmandering.

Republicans in NC still can’t get voter ID because the courts have tied it to their gerrymandering – which they also refuse to change…

Democrats will get right on fixing that as soon as it no longer becomes necessary to beg republicans to help them pass things.

In short order, the former president’s office said this: “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 and ’24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.”

I see the Zuhlmonster is blathering again. Please, let’s not have anyone make the pathetic claim that gerrymandering is a one sided problem. For EITHER party. Any attempt to claim one party is worse that the other in this regard is either ignorant or a blatant partisan lie.

https://www.ranker.com/list/most-gerrymandered-districts-in-america/eric-vega

You may not completely agree with the list above but it is a very decent example of how BOTH parties abuse their power at the State level. It really does need to stop, but, I am not willing to accept the “solutions” offered by either party over the decades.

I will follow this with MY solution. It would require a Constitutional Amendment, so, you can kiss it good bye.

2 part post. 1st part here.

Rules for creating Congressional districts.

One of the most repugnant developments in our nation is the gerrymandering of Federal House districts to serve the partisan goals of political parties, ethnic groups or other special interests. The advent of computerized mapping programs makes it possible to create square or rectangular districts state wide without regard to demographic considerations like race, income or other factors.

We need a Constitutional Amendment requiring census data be loaded into a mapping program that will draw 4-sided districts using only 90 degree angles. The program will start in the NE corner of each state and draw from that point creating the required number of districts, with equal numbers of people, in rectangles as close to square as possible. The only exceptions will be for natural state boundaries like rivers or existing state line boundaries that are not straight.

The Rules:

Mapping starts in the NE “corner” of the state and work towards the SW.

Excepting irregular state borders, boundaries shall be straight lines running parallel to or perpendicular to the equator.

Districts shall have ONLY 90 degree corners and shall have NOT more than 4 corners, excepting irregular state borders.

Districts height to width ratio shall not exceed 3 to 1 except where irregular state borders prevent same.

2 part post. 2nd part here.

Variance in population density between districts shall not exceed 1% at the time of mapping.

A shape exception shall be allowed for the final district in the SW “corner” of the state, provided the district conforms to the equalized distribution of citizens.

Allocation shall be determined based on citizens, legal permanent residents & immediate minor children, not to include illegal aliens or temporary visa holders.

Some minor variance tolerances shall be allowed to avoid slicing a house, apartment building or other residential property in half. The programming shall include the bias towards running down the middle of streets instead of through the middle of blocks, etc. The bare bones need some tweaking to avoid irreconcilable problems, but only those caused by geography.

The purpose is to create districts based solely on population density while vastly reducing the ability of either party to carve up a state to their own advantage. This system would remove nearly all politics from the remap process. Any nudging of lines to create a favorable district shall be a felony punishable by a substantial fine and prison time.

Remember the Georgia district that followed a highway for ten miles just to grab another group of voters?

My suggestion: Districts can only be drawn with no more than eight straight vertical and horizontal lines. This is enough to make U or C shape and that’s it

Democrats do the same in states they control.

Some say Gerrymander was named after the snallygaster a bird-reptile chimera originating in the superstitions of early German immigrants later combined with sensationalistic newspaper reports of the monster. Early sightings associate the snallygaster with Frederick County, Maryland, especially the areas of South Mountain and the Middletown Valley.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_Gerry

https://uglygerry.com/

The instructions usually given to non-partisan districting commissions usually include that the districts are to be coherent communities. This has often resulted in strange shapes, like NC 12 after the 1990 census, the basis of the SCOTUS case Shaw vs. Reno ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaw_v._Reno ). I’m not sure if this was the case, or another, but I remember that there was one district that took two small Black communities, both of which had been parts of much larger mostly-White districts and had never had a Black Representative, and created a new majority-Black district of those two communities and the highway that connected them.

Whether or not my memory is correct, the fact remains that single-member legislative districts are inherently arbitrary, and unfair (in the strict sense of representing voters). As @codak points out above, really the only fair representation of a diverse population (and diverse in characteristics beyond politics along) is to have districts with multiple representatives, elected through some form of proportional representation. Since PR means that every vote counts, this would effectively make gerrymandering difficult to impossible, and would ensure that all groups within the district could make their voices heard.

(My own favourite form of PR is the Single Transferable Vote: https://www.bit.ly/CherniackElectoralReform )

GOP? Don’t be a hypocrite. They just recently did this in Illinois which has a Democratic super-majority even after the governor promised in his campaign speech that he wouldn’t!

Thanks to Manchin and Sinema the dems have already lost the House to gerrymandering. Without HR1 2022 will be a bloodbath, and 2024 will end democracy in America. The greed and corruption of our corporate democrats enable authoritarian republican’s sadistic agenda.