The End of Gerrymandering? (1 Viewer)

[cstu]

Who get's to decide where the natural boundaries of a district are? Maybe I don't think that the city cut off by three rivers is the natural boundary. Maybe it's the city and the Hispanic district on the other side of the river?

Schools are somehow able to figure out their boundaries.

 

[MaxThreshold]

Anyone know the makeup of the these citizen groups that are pressing this issue?

 

[Christo]

Huge Gerrymandering Fail Leaves College Student As Sole Voter In Missouri DistrictBusinesses in Columbia, Missouri attempted to use their political pull to throw taxes at consumers instead of themselves, but a massive failure in their gerrymandering effort left them with one major roadblock: a 23-year-old college student who, on February 28, became the only registered voter in the district.

Representatives of the Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District attempted to remove every single eligible voter as part of an effort to ensure that local businesses had complete control over legislation — including a sales tax increase that would enable them to effectively force citizens to pay the businesses’ bills. The Columbia City Council voted in 5-2 in April to establish the district, which resembles a dinosaur drawn by a kindergartener

The Columbia Daily Tribune notes that, with pesky voters out of the way, the local businesses could effectively set their own laws:

“The Columbia City Council established the district on a 5-2 vote in April in response to a petition from a group of property owners in the CID boundaries. The “qualified voters” in a CID are capable of levying various taxes or assessments within the boundaries of the district to fund improvement projects. Under state law, decisions to impose sales taxes in a CID are to be made by registered voters living in the district boundaries. If no such registered voters are present, property owners vote.”
The district was drawn so that homes surrounding the university-owned property where Jen Henderson lives were intentionally excluded as the hand-crafted bit of corruption was drawn, but they accidentally left the 20-something as the sole eligible voter — an issue for those who hoped to establish control.

Shortly after the vote, victory in their grasp, CID property owners levied a property assessment within the newly-drawn district — one that is expected to bring in about $50,000 annually at a rate of about a half-cent per $100 of the assessed value of properties in the district. However, to pay for recent improvement projects, the city would need to raise property taxes on businesses in the district — That is, unless something else could be worked out, like a half-cent sales tax imposed on the populace.

Under Missouri law, any such action would need to be approved by residents of the district. If there are no eligible voters, the property owners –in this case the business owners — would vote. And it almost worked too, except for that one pesky student the CID’s architects left in the district. Naturally, Henderson is not pleased with this perversion of the democratic process.

Henderson, who is considering voting against the tax increase, says the entire process has been “pretty manipulative.” She says the CID’s director Carrie Gartner approached her and pleaded that she unregister her vote. Not only does Henderson feel that the sales tax increase will hurt low-income people who shop in the area, but she adds that the director — that’d be the person who attempted to convince her to renounce her right to vote in her district — will be making quite a bit of money off “this whole deal.”

Gartner argues that the CID will not be financially viable without the expected $220,000 the sales tax would fleece from the populace:

“Gartner said the CID has incurred “significant debt” the district hoped to pay down through the tax, including more than $100,000 it owes the city and for legal representation, $55,000 owed to Jack Miller of True Media and a $60,000 line of credit with Landmark Bank.

Gartner said Monday that, at the suggestion of Boone County Clerk Wendy Noren, the CID’s board of directors tried to keep the identity of the sole voter private because of ‘concerns with her privacy during this sensitive situation.’

Noren said she told the CID about Henderson’s registration in May.”
The director says she is shocked — SHOCKED — that attempts by herself and Noren to get Henderson to “unregister” was viewed in a negative light, and maintains that she did nothing illegal when she attempted to sway the sole voter, who researched Gartner’s claims and found them not to be “as good as they were saying to me at first.”

“The district plan and the district border is manipulative, too,” Henderson says. She has not quite decided which way to vote, but is 100 percent certain that no one will talk her into giving up her right to do so. In the eyes of the college student, there are a number of issues:

“Henderson said her concerns include vague project outlines, Gartner’s pay, Business Loop improvements she said will help businesses but not nearby residents and how an additional sales tax would affect low-income people purchasing groceries and other necessities.”
“Taxing their food is kind of sad, especially when [Gartner] is going to be making like $70,000 a year off of this whole deal,” Henderson said. “These people make a quarter of that. They can barely afford to go buy food, and you’re taxing their food.”

If Henderson votes “no” on the proposed sales tax, Gartner says that the property assessment will have to be the source used to pay off the district’s debts. “Obviously, it would not be the same organization and could not function in the way we envisioned,” she said.

Gerrymandering is evil, but it is downright hilarious to watch it blow up in the faces of entrenched business interests. Perhaps the corrupt local government and businesses can learn something from this: If you’re going to try to rig an election, make sure you don’t fail spectacularly when carefully carving out district lines to fit your interests. Otherwise, you fail spectacularly and reveal your not-so-hidden agenda to the world.

There's a pic

 

[Mario Kart]

Might be an old article or maps but this cannot come soon enough.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-is-actually-what-america-would-look-like-without-gerrymandering/

 

[Mario Kart]

A 55-45 split can be much easier to overcome or sway to the other side than a 70-30 split.

Plus, a 55-45 split would need some communication, compromise, feedback from the voters much more readily than a 70-30 split.

Gerrymandering has been one of the biggest problems and divisions of our country when it comes to politics and representation.

If the article is true with its numbers, near the bottom it says, "The GOP scored 33 more seats in the House this election even though Democrats earned a million more votes in House races. Professor Jeremy Mayer says gerrymandering distorts democracy." This should concern everybody.

 

[jonessed]

A 55-45 split can be much easier to overcome or sway to the other side than a 70-30 split.

Plus, a 55-45 split would need some communication, compromise, feedback from the voters much more readily than a 70-30 split.

Gerrymandering has been one of the biggest problems and divisions of our country when it comes to politics and representation.

If the article is true with its numbers, near the bottom it says, "The GOP scored 33 more seats in the House this election even though Democrats earned a million more votes in House races. Professor Jeremy Mayer says gerrymandering distorts democracy." This should concern everybody.

A pure democracy would be horrible.

 

[joffer]

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/federal-judges-panel-finds-state-redistricting-plan-an-unconstitutional-gerrymander/article_c7a71b38-b98c-5b9f-aef5-908cc72ee068.html

A panel of federal judges on Monday ruled that Wisconsin's 2011 legislative redistricting plan, created by Republican leaders virtually in secret, is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
"We find that Act 43 was intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters throughout the decennial period by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats," wrote federal appeals court judge Kenneth Ripple, the senior judge on the three-judge panel. "Moreover, as demonstrated by the results of the 2012 and 2014 elections, among other evidence, we conclude that Act 43 has had its intended effect. Finally, we find that the discriminatory effect is not explained by the political geography of Wisconsin nor is it justified by a legitimate state interest. Consequently, Act 43 constitutes an unconstitutional political gerrymander."
The 116-page decision, with a lengthy dissent from U.S. District Judge William Griesbach, was issued several months after the panel heard testimony in federal court in Madison. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb is the third judge on the panel.
 
The panel did not immediately say what should happen as a result of its ruling. Instead, the court ordered both sides to file briefs on an appropriate remedy within 30 days, with response briefs to follow 15 days later. Both sides also must tell the court if they believe additional testimony is required before the court decides what happens next.
The ruling comes nearly six months after the judges heard arguments in the case, brought by a group of state Democratic voters who have called the 2011 redistricting plan "one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history."
The Democrats contend that they have found a way to measure unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders that are designed to give an extreme and durable advantage in elections to one party, a measure that the U.S. Supreme Court has said it was lacking. The measure, called the efficiency gap, shows how cracking (breaking up blocs of Democratic voters) and packing (concentrating Democrats within certain districts) results in wasted votes -- excess votes for one party in safe districts and votes for losing candidates in those safe districts.
Lawyers for the Democrats said that the 2011 plan was drawn specifically to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
Republicans have countered that as the majority party, they can draw the map any way they choose, short of creating districts that disenfranchise racial minorities.
"Today is a historic day and I am thrilled with the result not only for our plaintiffs, but for all Wisconsin voters," said Peter Earle, one of the lawyers representing the Democrats. "This decision will finally give voters in Wisconsin the power they deserve to shape their democracy. Now a fairer system will be created here in Wisconsin so all voters, not just a select few, will be able to have their voices heard."
Gerry Hebert, director of the Campaign Legal Center, which represented the Democrats in court, called the decision "truly a monumental victory for the plaintiffs in this case, but more importantly this is an historic moment for our nation and the betterment of democracy."
Hebert said the case proves that the rights of Wisconsin voters were infringed upon, and that gerrymandering hurts democracy.
"With this decision, partisan gerrymandering should come to an end in Wisconsin and is now on its way to extinction across the nation," Hebert said. "And with the implementation of the test we proposed and the court accepted, there will be, for the first time, a standard to identify this harmful practice."
State Democratic Party chairwoman Martha Laning said the ruling is "a historic victory for our democracy and all of the voters in the great state of Wisconsin."
State Attorney General Brad Schimel said in a statement that the state Department of Justice "is evaluating the court’s 159-page decision and we plan to appeal.” He added that the decision does not affect the results of any election, including the Nov. 8 election, and that legislative district boundaries remain unchanged until the court decides what the remedy will be. 
When the lawsuit was filed, the Democrats asked that a three-judge panel comprised of district and appeals judges hear the case, so that it could be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the original intent that it be heard before the 2016 elections. The Supreme Court now stands at a 4-4 deadlock between its conservative and liberal wings, and will likely remain so until president-elect Donald Trump chooses a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. 


 

 

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Crabb was appointed to the bench in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. Ripple was appointed to the U.S. Appeals Court for the Seventh Circuit in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan. Griesbach, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee, was appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
In its ruling, the two-judge majority on the panel rejected the state's contention that partisan scores determined as map-makers worked in the the law office of Michael Best & Friedrich -- where Democrats were not allowed go or participate -- were created simply to gain an historical understanding of voting behavior.
"Their measure was only useful to them," Ripple wrote, "and the exercise of calculating the composite was only worth the effort, if it helped them assess how Republican representatives in the newly created districts likely would fare in future elections."
Several alternative maps were created, Ripple wrote, and comparisons were made of old and new districts, with little regard to traditional districting factors. But while the final map complied with traditional principles, he wrote, "it nevertheless had as one of its objectives entrenching the Republicans' control of the Assembly."
The new map secured a majority for Republicans by allocating votes in such a way that in any likely election scenario, the number of GOP seats wouldn't drop below 50 percent. 

 

[Statorama]

The AZ case was also kind of nuts because the constitution explicitly stated that the re districting could only be done by the legislature. I have no idea how that was permitted.

Activist Judges