What better revenge for Holder. He can be a thorn in the GOP’S side for years doing this.
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That’s why voter suppression is hardly our only problem. But the fact that it takes for instance three 3+ Democratic voters per one Republican voter to overcome the disparity in say N. Carolina, those voter suppression tactics play a useful role for Republican shitheads that continue to flaunt the law and the courts on their decisions overturning bogus voter fraud complaints.
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I love this plan and I’m so glad Obama and Holder are doing this. It desperately needs to be done.
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The Republicans are interested in redistricting reform, too. Their reform consists of making all districts red, regardless of the vote.
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“The Tea Party wave of elections in 2010 gave Republicans outsized influence over redistricting after the last census, which tilted the electoral map significantly in their favor.”
Well, I’ll be darned.
Trump is right.
Our elections are rigged!
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Never let fairness get in the way of nearly fact free rant.
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I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I’m on record saying gerrymandering is the biggest con purported on the American voter. To have these two highly competent men on it, makes me very happy and grants me great calm.
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Makes me feel worlds’ better, too.
I’m really so glad they decided to do this because it’s a threshold issue if we want democracy to be saved.
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I agree with other commenters that this is long overdue, but I’m glad to see it and especially to see Holder and Obama at the helm. I’m sure there will be lots of criticism from the right, but I don’t believe their fairy tales any more than I believe in Santa Claus. I will predict that the history books will treat President Obama much more kindly than contemporary appraisals of his accomplishments and that his predecessor will indeed be termed “The Worst President Ever.”
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He’s about 8 years too late on this one. If he’d kept Howard Dean or Dean’s 50 state initiative to rebuild state parties, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Some large swing states’ parties have never really recovered. Plus, appointing Red or swing state governors to his cabinet like Sibelius was not a good idea. It will take a long time to repair the damage.
Dang. From the headline I thought maybe it would be a project to address the issue of Gerrymandering as something to get rid of. It is the part of our democracy that I’m most ashamed of. Might take an amendment to fix it, though.
It needs topological rules, and mathematicians to apply them. Not politicians.
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The real problem they are focusing on is gerrymandering that makes GOTV efforts largely irrelevant. They carve out any Democrat demography into several disparate districts that are overshadowed by the GOP groups. Turns maybe a 4-2 GOP/DEM congressional representation into a 5-1 or 6-0 depending on how much they’re allowed to contort the maps.
We need to manufacture a gerrymandering case to bring to the Sup Ct and hope it gets declared unconstitutional under Equal Protection.
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Back in the 00’s Howard Dean “got” what Obama and Kaine and DWS did not get - that Republicans aren’t going to work with Democrats no matter what, and that we needed a relentless 50 state strategy to build the Democratic Party.
Unfortunately, Obama took a reconciliation approach with Republicans after his election instead of a scorched earth approach. I hope that Hillary is wiser.
I am very hopeful about this move on Obama’s part.
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This is wrong. Gerrymandering, i.e. redrawing district lines to favor certain demographics, is handled by the state legislatures so if you want gerrymandering removed or tilted towards Democratic voters, you need to vote in Democratic politicians at the state level, which means get out the vote now (and again in 2018 and 2020).
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Bullshit.
And it stinks on ice.
You are also hugely lying about Obama.
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Why wait? If the Congress turns over, just pass the darn thing before the inauguration.
Just one less thing for Hillary to do.
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Best. News. Ever. After I heard David Daley interviewed on majority.fm about “Ratfucked” I was sure Democrats would never do the necessary work to redraw voting districts so the House could be competitive. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting
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Thanks - that is exactly right.
This is absolutely correct. The Kochs and their cabal of 16+ Billionaires bought downstate elections in the census year of 2010 in a long-planned process to control redistricting. They will not give up this advantage easily. I suspect $125 million will only reflect the tip of the iceberg.
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