I love how gerrymandering is a dirty word on everyone’s tongue until it affects them. H.R.1claims it will solve this problem, but it’s just another pig with lipstick on it. New York and Illinois are, even now, looking to gerrymander their states to leverage the Democrat majority as hopes wane on passing the For the People Act of 2021. As Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman tells Axios:
“The Democrats’ ‘only chance of keeping the House’ next year is if they redraw congressional lines to their advantage in New York and Illinois”
While New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, a top Democrat on redistricting, spins it a bit differently:
“Just by correcting the horrors of what the Republicans have done will be an advantage”
This is all part and parcel of why Texas State Democrats have saddled up their ponies and trotted off to D.C. to lasso their partners in Congress to end the filibuster, missing the irony completely. If they can wrangle Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema into killing the filibuster and pass H.R.1, then the fact that the Texas State Senate pressed forward with passing the GOP voting bill will be meaningless and they can ride back home jangling their cowboy spurs.
State Rep. Chris Turner, admits as much with this press conference:
In an earlier press conference as they landed at Dulles airport in Washington, he said:
“We left Texas, not because we want to, it breaks our heart to do it. We are in a fight to save our democracy… [claiming the GOP legislature is] ignoring the voices of the diversity of Texans who are pleading with the legislature. Do not to make it harder to vote in Texas which is the hardest state to vote in already”
Oh boo hoo. I’m sure it breaks his achy breaky heart to hop on a private plane and clink highballs with the big boys in Washington! Never mind THOSE gas emissions! I wonder who’s gonna pay that carbon emission tax??
And seriously? He want’s to claim that Texas is the hardest state to vote in?? Ummm… has he seen the rules in Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware? Just no.
Look, every decade, the census determines the distribution of U.S. House seats across states. And every decade there are howls of protests by the losing political party about gerrymandering. It’s been an ongoing topic of debate long before it arrived on our shores. It just really took off in 1812, when the Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved rearranging district lines for his political advantage. Yet the idea of turning the process over to the federal government should scare the bejeezus out of people every political stripe! It’s bad enough at the state level, can you imagine a decade of decision making at the top-line?
I love how this twitter user completely overlooks the obvious as she talks about voter suppression and gerrymandering in one breath and looking into voter fraud by the GOP in another!
https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1415111421763854340
My guess? She’s been listening to too much PBS. Their spin over the last several months is appallingly (but not surprisingly) left-centered. Their calm, soothing droning is literally hypnotic. I can just hear it now, “Close your eyes and count backwards from ten… Now repeat after me, For the People Act is our only hope.”
The reality is that whether it is state-driven gerrymandering or a federal commission-sponsored gerrymandering process, someone is going to cry foul. Right now, the votes are in the Republicans favor. They are going to use that to their advantage while they can. In response, those Democrat states that have the power to rig the system in their favor, such as New York and Illinois, will do their best to do so. It’s a song that has played in politics for hundreds of years. Both parties in todays tune will spin this however they can to gain the advantage. I’d much rather keep the damage at the local level than cede authority to the grifters in Washington, no matter which 10-gallon hat they wear.
Featured Image: “Gerrymandering” by EpicTop10.com via Creative Commons, CC BY 2.0, cropped and modified
Bruce Hayden says: I think that the Democrats aren’t thinking through redistributing. What “independent” commissions do is give the minority more of a voice. So, they gain a little in Texas and Florida, while losing in NY, CA, and NJ. And how do their maintain Minority Majority districts, which are essential to the strength of their Congressional Black Caucus, when they can’t trade support for these districts for trade for more Republican districts? That’s one of the dark dirty secrets about reapportionment, that Dems would have more districts, more House seats, if minority districts weren’t overpacked with Dems. And that means that Republicans benefit. This horse trading is much harder to effect with bipartisan redistributing commissions, etc.
Something else. We have a half century or more of court decisions on redistributing. Plenty of rules in place to reduce the damage. The Dems can’t put all of the Republicans in a small number of districts, then give themselves districts with 50%+1 majorities. Districts are, for example, supposed to be reasonably compact. Truly gerrymandered districts aren’t.
DrSamHerman says: Texas is hardly the most difficult state to cast a ballot, and many of limitations in place were put there back when LJB was sifting cemetery votes and harvesting ballots like cotton. The legislatures back then were Democrat-controlled, and they responded to the abuses with procedures intended to satisfy the Civil Rights division of the fed DOJ. Some of those laws have existed since before any of the current, indoctrinated and brainless young propagandists, er, journalists, even were born. Some more recent laws strengthened the voter ID and chain of custody regulations because of abuse by non-citizens and unregistered attempting to vote.
You can’t cash a check, get a loan, sign up for welfare benefits/Medicaid or Medicare without identification. So why is it so “difficult” for proper ID to be had? It’s not—and Texas has even gone far out of its normal ways to make sure people can get proper identification or vote a provisional ballot with proof of residency like a library card or utility bill.
This is leftist Amish exhaust that it’s “hard to vote in Texas”. Just obey the laws and rules like you have to with every other government program.
[…] all profess to hate the idea of gerrymandering. I wrote about it this past July when the Texas State democrats decided to abdicate their responsibility and […]
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