A New York court ordered Thursday that the state’s congressional maps be redrawn, setting up a big potential win for Democrats who could ultimately redraw themselves into a handful of seats currently controlled by Republicans.
“Just say it was rigged, and leave the rest to SCOTUS.”
Gerrymandering is one area where I don’t mind being as bad as Republicans. Until we have a way of stopping gerrymandering on a national level, not gerrymandering is tantamount to asking for Republican rule.
We need an independent (as much as possible) committee to redraw all the voting districts in all the states, based on common sense and location, they could take a page from mail delivery.
Not how McCarthy saw this going down. Buh bye, Kevin.
It’s really a shame, to say the least, that the political makeup of a court so much influences its legal decisions, although I do think the liberal courts try to follow the existing and decided law more closely than the others that make up a reason to justify their decisions.
Eh, the original Court of Appeals judgment wasn’t wrong, and neither is this one. Democrats did gerrymander the map ridiculously. I understand the argument of ‘they do it, so we have to’, and even agree to some extent… but you don’t have to go so far that you make it obvious that that’s what you’re doing. Not in New York.
The Dems are going to need those extra seats in NY. The NC legislature is probably going to redraw the districts, with the blessing of the now GOP majority in the NCSC which will probably result in the loss of several seats in 2024.
gerrymandering is like having a gun in the house - stats say it will be used against you or stolen
So let’s just win on our merits.
But they are shooting at us. With Gatling guns.
So the solution is to give them more guns?
If Democrats do ultimately win back the right to craft the congressional maps…
Political parties should not be defining districts any more than gang members should.
We need to take their guns away (they know we want to!), but we probably need to have our own guns to do that (where guns == gerrymandering, of course).
So we can assert the moral imperative of our solution by being hypocrites? That works about as well as trying to fight fire with fire once the fire’s already started.
I’d give up the house any day of the week to feel morally superior!
At least I’d know I had done the right thing!
Check out how forest fires are controlled.
If I were queen of the forest I would go with a process that would maintain competitive districts. Liberals wouldn’t always win but it would be better for our democracy in the long run. That is assuming that nobody would get the chance to get in and re-jigger it in their favor…
This is just like Sotomayor’s ethics issues in the SC. Republicans can call Democrats hypocrites for supporting a judge who does almost (though not quite) the same thing that Republicans do, but there IS a fundamental difference when Democrats support ethics reform in the SC and Republicans do all they can to block it. To gerrymander while supporting independent redistricting commissions is NOT the same as gerrymandering while opposing them.
It’s not about feeling morally superior, it’s about making your case to the voters. The more you use the weapons of your enemy to try to beat them, the more you get the ‘they’re all the same, there’s no difference’ deadheads nattering on about things.
If you’re going to take a principled stand, you have to, you know, have principles, and ‘victory at any cost’ is a lousy one when you want to try to convince people to not support the guys who’ve done that longer, better.
Firebreaks are primarily employed before the fire starts as a preventative measure, as are controlled burns. Once the wildfire is raging, they’re a stopgap, delaying tactic, while measures that are actually effective at stopping the fire are brought into play.