The 2020 Census data dropped on Thursday, the starting gun of the redistricting process.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1384531
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1384531
Friendly reminder that states can redistrict anytime, even if they have previously redistricted. See Texas 2003. If we can do it, so can everybody else (with more than one House rep, that is).
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Pennsylvania redistricted a few years ago. I was in a severely gerrymandered district with a wingnut loon as my rep, but afterward I got a nice Democratic rep and everyone’s happy.
I’m a worried optimist most of the time, but reading this piece reminded me of all the reading I did on various crises in history where it was clear what had to be done, but too many of the people involved were unimaginative and fearful and tried to muddle through it all without being decisive. I can’t think of too many instances where that was the perfect thing to do.
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"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." – Voltaire
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Yes, under court order. So the feds can make states redistrict. North Carolina is another recent example of the phenomenon, as I recall. It’s not simply a question of running out the clock in time for 2022.
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In Wisconsin, the Democrats filed a lawsuit right after the numbers dropped because certain districts are now “oversized” with population
They’re trying to stay ahead of the Republicans, who had previously hired lawyers for $1 million (taxpayer funded, of course) to defend the secret redistricting they were planning on doing. Judge threw that out, but I suspect they’ll be back on the payroll soon enough.
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When is our democracy not messy? Very very rarely is it not messy.
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I would prefer proportional representation to this district nonsense. Gerrymandering would no longer be a consideration, third (and fourth, and fifth) parties would become viable, and the voters would be represented fairly. We would still have 50 states as an answer to factional a-holes who will complain about being ruled by an actual majority. And the Senate. Those are bad enough.
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Right?! And why should I care that it’ll be messy for states that hurry up and redistrict so that they can more easily disenfranchise more voters? If it’s messy for them then that’s their own fault. Too bad, so sad.
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Being a messy system has its good and bad aspects
I am harboring hope that the House and Senate can save us from becoming a fascist one party state. But that hope is very fragile. And it greatly disturbs me to see the ease with which the Goobers are changing voting laws at the state level.
I want everyone’s vote to count. It’s our voice in our system. And, except for loud physical public protests (some of which I have attended back in the day) voting is our only voice. Our vote is the whole point. Lose it and we lose America.
So to do this I think we need to scuttle the filibuster first and foremost and pass laws by simple majority the way the House does.Then (ASAP cuz times a wastin’) pass voting reform at the federal level.
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“Some states will pass maps in September — some may even before September,” Michael Li, senior counsel at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, told TPM. “It depends on how fast they can get the data, but there are rumors that some states might try to move really, really fast.”
Given the other side’s remarkable propensity for not thinking things through, and then shooting themselves in the foot, this may actually be good news in a clever disguise.
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Sen Sinema, why do you hate democracy and reform so much?
Reform the filibuster, just make it require actual debate and some number of senators on the floor.
Protect our democracy while you still can or take your place on the dustbin of history.
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The districts are proportional representation, as required by the US Constitution.
Only if specifically outlawed by Congress.
Not as long as we have our first-past-the-post system of elections.
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When I was studying history, philosophy and sociobiology in Uni, that’s something that struck me about most democracies. It’s a lot of work to keep it together. Hard work! It’s a dialectical process that moves with any given nations fickle electorate. Vigilance is needed so it doesn’t veer off to ugly places like America just escaped from. Where it landed isn’t perfect but it’s on better footing to again move forward.
Just some thoughts from the North of you. 4:20 came early.
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“A Republic, if you can keep it!” - Franklin
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We in America have not yet escaped from the cancer trump seeded in his wake. It is still metastatic. Like melanoma … Popping up in various places. He may be out of office now but his minions are still spreading his idiocy.
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In proportional representation, voters in congressional elections would vote for a slate of candidates from the party of their choice. Seats would be awarded to each party based on their proportional vote. There would be no first-past-the-post congressional elections, since one does not vote for a candidate.
I don’t know of anything in the Constitution that prohibits this system.
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The DNC and the Commitees to elect haven’t previously been shy about telegraphing they will blackball folks. Why are they not pressuring Manch and Sinema?
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Sure, it’ll get messy. But what’s important is that invented “Senate traditions” will be maintained. I say protecting whole cloth inventions always trump (no pun intended) real traditional things like, say, the right to vote.
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Is there a good primer you could recommend on this area of Constitutional law (re redististricting)? It seems to me that without specific wording in the Constitution to support it, if one approaches this with a conservative view, that many federal laws don’t have a very strong foundation with regard to leaving things to the states with regard to districting, etc.