Discussion: PA Supreme Court Unveils New Voting Maps, Republicans Likely To Sue

[mattinpa]

Sounds good! Obviously my own quibble is facetious. Cool beans for you voting in a pretty hot contest. Early and often!

[bob]

The only way Republicans can win is by Cheating, they can’t win on a level playing field so they Gerrymander, suppress the vote by finding ways to keep or make voting difficult for Democrats, and by stacking the US Supreme Court. That will only last for so long and so far, and then the roles reverse when people have had enough, and the people have had enough.

[nwoldguy]

Thank you! I’ve always wondered what the equivalence of shitload to metrics was.

[austin_dave]

I wonder how rulings like this will affect Illinois. We have creative districts that favor dems.

[ncsteve]

Whatever else we do, Democrats have to be for democracy. All the time, in all ways, scrupulously, and fairly. Not just because it’s the right thing to do in the abstract. Not just because, by pure coinkydink, it turns out to be in our electoral interest. Not even because we call ourselves “Democrats.” But because we need to send the message that democracy itself is under seige and at risk and we’re fighting for it, the way we’ve been fighting for it since we first told the segregationist kluckers to go fuck themselves into the GOP if that’s how they felt in 1964.

We’ve lost track of the reality that democracy itself as at the core of our identity. We’re constantly being rapped for “not standing for anything” because we think good policy sells itself and policy proposals are the same thing as marketing. Whenever we try to dumb things down into digestible talking points, we get held to a standard of 100% truthfulness, accuracy and completeness that Republicans never face. (“If you like your insurance, you can keep it!”)

But “Democrats for Democracy: Because Democracy Itself is On the Line” is good branding. It puts Republicans on the defensive on the merits of their ideological madness, it says what we stand for and it is the unifying theme for enough of of those detailed policy proposals in the long, tedious white papers on the website to give people something to tie them together.

Building the middle class: because it’s essential for democracy. Raising taxes on rich people: because no democracy can survive the kind of concentration of wealth and power Republican regressive tax policy has created. Civil rights, voting rights, education.

But, Democrats being Democrats, they’ll have to talk it to death and pick it to pieces . . .

[stradivarius50t3]

I’m a statistician, and I’ve looked at the problem in some depth. We can develop scoring algorithms, but in the end choices have to be made. I don’t want machines making the choices – I want people making the choices who understand that they are responsible for the choices.

I’m not happy with the compromise we are being presented here, but I’ll end up voting for it because it’s a damn sight better than what currently exists.

[stradivarius50t3]

And for the record, I’m just fine if the list contains exactly one name: Merrick Garland.

[the_loan_arranger]

Arsonist: I’m the one who burned down the house, so I’m the only one who can rebuild it.

Actually, that was the argument used by George W. Bush in his re-election campaign. Basically, he claimed that no one knew more about the mess he had made than he did, so he was the one best qualified to fix it. Didn’t work out that way.

[morrigan_2575]

Is this true?

G. Elliott Morris (gelliottmorris)

[deuce]

That one’s beyond belief.

Here’s the whole state. Pretty kinky from Pittsburg to Harrisburg too:

File:Pennsylvania Congressional Districts, 113th Congress.tif

[geofu54]

That’s a well-done thread. Would recommend people click and see the whole thing, it’s not long.

ETA:

G. Elliott Morris (gelliottmorris)

[maxaroo]

If the GOP plans to sue, they might want to try a better legal argument than Trump’s “I hate Blacks and Muslims!” approach.

[longtimeobserver]

WHAT? And make the GOP win an election the old-fashioned way?

[atldrew]

verrrrry interesting…

Tim Nicolai (tim_nicolai)

[alcaray]

If I was a voter in that contest, I would vote for it as well. I was only commenting on the issue in a general way.

And historically, I do not think that a sense of personal responsibility for the result, has served us well. In the current environment, Republicans are quite happy to claim responsibility for what they’ve done for their party. Anyhow, I don’t think that a machine would do a worse job than we have seen so far. Just don’t give it the nuclear codes and we should be fine.

[mainemomma]

That’s like insanely messed up. It’s taken so long to get this thru the courts. To quote another TPM commenter… this is crapola. Hope the new districts stick.

[sooner]

I’ve heard reasoning like this called

Best that can be said was that it was both innovative and interesting. What manner of hormone fueled drug laced gathering of GOPers led to their map anyhow

[mymy]

But they LOST big in federal court as the PA Supreme Court ruled against the earlier map as violating the PA Constitution. Why would there be a different outcome here?

[bkmn]

For anyone who is concerned about the PA GOP’s lawsuit, here’s the most likely scenario - the appeal is filed in the circuit court, the case will likely be thrown out, or if heard, be called in favor of the state Supreme Court since the federal courts tend to give State Supreme courts the say in state matters. The state also has the past maps the GOP submitted along with all testimony to use against the state GOP, which is pretty damning.

[cervantes]

Does the new Democratic Senate Majority leader tell Trump that the senate will not confirm nor hold hearings on any nominee until after the 2020 general election?

Should? Yes.

But does?