GOP Redistricting attempts being thwarted

[eyecu2]

It's a good feeling to know that the "illegal" redistricting in red States to ensure a lop-sided advantage has been struck down. Having some guard rails on these GOP elected majority states have been found illegal. But what won't reptards do to cheat in future elections in order to secure their seats. CPAC & the RNC meetings have proven to be the Nexus of the knife sharpening and twisting of laws to help Republicans game even more in their attempt to hold power. Disgusting theives who have to cheat to win.

North Carolina's Supreme Court strikes down redistricting maps that gave GOP an edge https://www.npr.org/2022/02/05/1078481564/north-carolina-redistricting

[HDGristle]

This is a bipartisan but of bullshit. Both groups feel they have free reign to carve up the map for advantage when they have the power, and both end up being absurdly cunty about it when they're defending themselves and trying to keep their seats and power, as well as when they bitch about the other side doing it like they aren't doing the same shit

[eyecu2]

Didn't you notice HDG, that as soon as red States had lost in Nov, they immediately went to the RNC cave and decided how governors and state legislature would change either voting laws or redistricting to ensure more control of the GOP?? Do both sides do this as far as gerrymandering? Yes, but the reptards have taken this to a whole new level of changing voting laws to stifle "the terrible leftists they call socialist Democrats"?

[HDGristle]

I notice 2 groups who can't play in the same sandbox together so they try to use their time in power to ensure they hold onto power as long as possible and point at the other side as dangerous, zealous assholes instead of working together as people. And justify their behavior with the fear of the other instead of finding common ground because they don't value moderates

[chizzy]

Originally Posted by eyecu2

Didn't you notice HDG, that as soon as red States had lost in Nov, they immediately went to the RNC cave and decided how governors and state legislature would change either voting laws or redistricting to ensure more control of the GOP?? Do both sides do this as far as gerrymandering? Yes, but the reptards have taken this to a whole new level of changing voting laws to stifle "the terrible leftists they call socialist Democrats"?

I would advise you to look at how the left is carving up new districts in new york before u suggest the republicans have taken it to a new level. Do u know where the name gerrymandering comes from?

[berryberry]

Funny - I did not realize New York, Illinois, Michigan and PA were all Red States. Shocker

[eyecu2]

The second point I mentioned was how red States were passing limits on voters. I want all legal votes to be cast. Limiting how that's done is fucked. Yes I agree that both sides do this to some extent but the more recent redistricting in places like Carolinas and Texas are what I was referring to.

[berryberry]

Originally Posted by eyecu2

Yes I agree that both sides do this to some extent but the more recent redistricting in places like Carolinas and Texas are what I was referring to.

While you completely ignored the more egregious Democrat Gerrymandering that took place in blue states, especially New York

[HDGristle]

All Gerrymandering is bullshit

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by berryberry

While you completely ignored the more egregious Democrat Gerrymandering that took place in blue states, especially New York

Yep!

Here ya go, eye... read and learn! Then stop being such a two-faced hypocrite, if you can.


New York’s Democratic Jerrymander

Democrats draw a map that gives them an edge in 85% of House seats.

By The Editorial Board
Feb. 1, 2022 6:38 pm ET

Gerrymandering is an old enough practice that it was named for a Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, but henceforth in New York it should be spelled jerrymander. See nearby the district that Democrats in Albany have staked out for Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler. Your first instinct might be to grab the cartographer and do a field sobriety test.

But Democrats didn’t draw loopy lines by accident. They did it with partisan malice aforethought. New York is losing a House seat, so it will have 26 districts next year. Today Republicans hold eight. Under the lines Democrats are proposing, the GOP would have the advantage in only four seats, or 15%. New York is a blue state, but not that blue: President Trump won 38% of the vote in 2020.

New York’s jerrymander is another reminder that drawing favorable lines is a bipartisan strategy. It happens every decade, but this time Democrats have been trying to convince the public that it’s some Trumpian threat to the republic. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, urges officials to sign a “Fair Districts Pledge” and “commit to restoring fairness to our democracy.”

What a pose. In reality Democrats and Republicans want the same thing. They want to win. New York’s maps were supposed to be drawn by an independent commission, a good-government reform that voters approved in 2014, with hopes of taking politics out of an inherently political process. But the commission deadlocked and offered two competing plans.

Nonetheless, the map that Democratic commissioners backed, according to one redistricting analyst, left as many as nine House seats competitive for the GOP. Nine of 26 is 35%, which is in the ballpark of Mr. Trump’s vote share. Albany could have accepted that plan.

Yet apparently Democrats only want “fair” districts when such maps work in their favor. So once the commission deadlocked, state lawmakers seized the opportunity to dump its work and redraw the map themselves to build in a bigger advantage for their party.

The rough barbell shape of Mr. Nadler’s district, connecting Jewish areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, isn’t new. But the state Legislature’s map contorts it like a snake. Why? So that the GOP 11th District, anchored in Staten Island, can sweep north to include liberal Park Slope, Brooklyn. In 2020 Mr. Trump won the 11th District by 11 points, while Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis beat an incumbent, Democrat Max Rose, 53% to 47%. Mr. Rose is running in 2022 to retake his old seat, and the new progressive Park Slope voters could be enough to flip that margin.

The Albany plan makes similar moves upstate and on Long Island to erode Republican chances and shore up the Democratic advantage. Don’t expect to hear loud complaints from Mr. Holder and company, or for that matter from all the good-government poseurs in the media.

The congressional jerrymander could cost Republicans as many as four or five House seats, which might be the difference that helps Democrats keep their majority in 2022. Redistricting was expected to cost Democrats several seats nationwide this year, but aggressive Democratic gerrymanders in California, Illinois, New Jersey and elsewhere mean they may break even nationwide or even gain a slight edge.

GOP legislators this year have tended to shore up their suburban districts in states like Texas, rather than try to carve up Democratic seats and go for a bigger advantage. The loser is political competition, not Democrats. The most aggressive GOP gerrymanders, as in Ohio and North Carolina, may be overturned by courts.

However the partisanship plays out, this year should be the end of progressive sanctimony that gerrymanders favor Republicans. If Democrats keep their House majority this year, a big reason will be how they rigged districts in Albany, Sacramento and Springfield.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yor...r-11643757160?

[lustylad]

How much does Eric Holder pay you to spew your blind, one-sided partisan nonsense, eye?

If you think dim-retards aren't worse than Republicans when it comes to redistricting, then I have a bridge to sell you - the bridge that crosses the East River in NYC connecting Jerry Nadler's 10th district in Manhattan with Park Slope!


Eric Holder’s ‘Democracy’ Con

He campaigns against gerrymandering, then says not a word about New York’s map.

By Kimberley A. Strassel

To understand the political con that is the Democrats’ “voting rights” push, look at the bait-and-switch that preceded it. Eric Holder this week cemented his party’s ruthless and partisan gerrymandering victory over Republicans—all in the name of “democracy.”

The left is at full pitch on its voting “reform” campaign —accusing Republican states of “rigging” elections with laws to suppress the minority vote. They insist Democrats’ proposed federal takeover of state elections is the only thing that will save the country, the Constitution, justice and the cosmos. They claim the stakes are so high that it is necessary to blow up the Senate filibuster and strip all 50 states of their longtime power to set election rules. They also declare anyone who isn’t on board a racist.

Where have we heard this before? In 2016 Barack Obama’s former attorney general, Mr. Holder, started a new activist group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He explained the GOP had “rigged” the redistricting system to entrench its control, resulting in “voter suppression.” Republican maps had “broken” our democracy, produced “racial gerrymandering,” and served to “manipulate” the vote, he wrote in 2017. The only cure was to strip GOP legislatures of the ability to draw districts, handing the job to “nonpartisan” commissions or courts. It’s a new cure, one conveniently invented by the Democratic Party.

Gerrymandering is older than dirt. Both parties regularly exercise this raw power, which until recently was viewed as the straightforward prize of winning state elections. Democrats saw it that way for decades. In the 1980s and ’90s they controlled nearly twice as many state legislatures as Republicans—and gerrymandered like bandits.

Mr. Obama’s unpopular governance changed that, losing Democrats some 1,000 down-ballot seats over his tenure and handing the GOP a distinct advantage in the 2010 redistricting cycle. It was a bitter pill, and Mr. Holder was tasked with developing an antidote. He mounted an effort to recapture state legislatures, but his bigger contribution was in litigation and in reframing the debate. He cloaked his party’s brass-knuckle effort as a fight for truth, racial justice and the American way. GOP redistricting: racist, undemocratic, rigged. Democratic redistricting: goodness, light, frolicking puppies.

In theory, Republicans should also be crushing the 2020 redistricting process. Voters over the past decade fled blue states, and Democrats failed to break the GOP’s state dominance. Instead, with this week’s completion of New York’s redistricting map, Mr. Holder’s long “justice” con proved a stunning success. Despite all the GOP’s structural advantages, Democrats may be headed into this year’s midterms on even footing, or even with a slight leg up.

How? Mr. Holder’s success rests in his “sue to blue” strategy—his vigorous litigation of the last round of GOP maps—coupled with an aggressive public smear campaign. He’s spent years squeezing GOP candidates who failed to sign his “fair districts” pledge and accusing Republicans of minority voter suppression—both publicly and in court documents. Any number of state and federal judges intervened and redrew maps to favor Democrats.

The result is that some state Republican parties are pulling their punches. Tired of getting dragged into drawn-out litigation, sick of being branded Jim Crow, and wary courts might choose to impose their own maps, many GOP state lawmakers this round chose to focus on shoring up their own districts, rather than pushing into Democratic territory. That didn’t stop Democrats from litigating those maps anyway, as well as more aggressive GOP products—pulling courts into fights in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and even Alabama.

This has cleared the field for blue states to gerrymander the bejeesus out of their maps. New York’s map (which even the senior counsel at the left-leaning Brennan Center’s Democracy Project called a “master class” in gerrymandering) will likely allow Democrats to seize four to five of the GOP’s current eight seats. Illinois snatched another two. Oregon Democrats created a new district and promptly handed it to themselves. Add partisan advantages in California, Maryland and New Jersey. And the courts in these blue states are so relentlessly partisan, Democrats face no risk of a judge striking down their efforts.

Not that Mr. Holder is involved in any such litigation. For all his sanctimony about his mission to “rebuild a democracy,” Mr. Holder’s group has never challenged a Democratic gerrymander. And he uttered not a peep this week about the New York map.

There’s a lesson here for Republicans, now getting hammered for their state voting reforms. Just as with Mr. Holder’s redistricting march, the left’s federal voting takeover is about juking the rules in a way that will advantage them in future elections. Their goal isn’t justice or fairness; the goal is to win. Democrats are swindling voters with their “democracy” claims. Republicans shouldn’t let them get away with it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-ho...n-11643929188?

[chizzy]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgntp

[berryberry]

Hey Eyecu2 - when you take your blue colored glasses off, you may want to read this from Jonathon Turley

'Dismantling Democracy' to save it: How Democrats rediscovered the joys of rigging elections

"Voters should choose their representatives — not the other way around." With those words late Friday night, President Biden celebrated a decision by North Carolina’s supreme court rejecting new state legislative districts that favored Republicans. The ruling was used to support Biden's past portrayals of Republicans as the enemies of democracy, including their use of gerrymandering.

Biden is not alone. Former President Obama condemned Republican gerrymandering efforts as threatening democracy. The liberal Brennan Center has declared that "gerrymandering is deeply undemocratic." Liberal commentators insist the choice is simple: "It’s restricting gerrymandering or being complicit in the dismantling of democracy.”

Biden was careful to keep his focus on North Carolina in stating that "for too long, partisan gerrymandering has allowed politicians to rig the political process and draw districts in their favor." Indeed, it required an impressive act of myopia to avoid noting that Democrats have engaged in raw gerrymandering in various states, too. But the North Carolina decision could seriously undermine Democratic plans in other states to rig elections and gain seats in Congress.

For example, in New York Democrats want to add four new seats through gerrymandering, to try to retain control of the U.S. House. One district is designed to guarantee the reelection of Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has held hearings on the evil of — you guessed it — gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is to politics what doping is to sports. It is universally viewed as a cheat, an effort to manipulate districts to guarantee electoral victories. Drafting coherent districts evenly and logically to divide populations is not particularly difficult. School districts usually are designed to evenly distribute populations with schools as center points; those school districts often serve as voting locations. Once you depart from such logical divisions, however, political pressures produce a grotesque progeny of malformed districts.

The Nadler district would make Elbridge Gerry blush. In 1812, Gerry — a Founding Father, vice president and governor of Massachusetts — signed off on a district designed to guarantee a seat for the precursor of today's Democratic Party. The district resembled a salamander, so the Boston Gazette deemed it the “Gerry-mander.”

Notably, the original gerrymandered district looks a lot like what is now being dubbed the "Jerrymander."

To cite Biden, Rep. Nadler did not simply "choose his voters.” His contorted district virtually selects them individually, weaving through neighborhoods in search of support.

Nadler's district is not the only monstrous creature dwelling on the map. Republicans currently hold eight of New York’s 27 seats in Congress. Despite being a state in which roughly 38 percent of voters went for Trump in 2020, Republicans would have an advantage only in four districts under the redrawn map, allowing Democrats to pick up the other four. For example, Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis previously beat an incumbent, Democrat Max Rose, in the 11th District. To guarantee that Rose will now win, Democrats stretched the district to include the liberal area of Park Slope in Brooklyn.

This was not supposed to happen

In 2014, New Yorkers took the extraordinary step of amending Sections 4 and 5 of Article III of their state’s constitution. They created the New York Independent Redistricting Commission to prohibit drawing maps “for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.” (N.Y. Const. art. III, § 4(c)(5)).

However, the fix was in. After proclaiming a new day of fair and honest elections, the commission was set at ten members divided evenly. Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, admitted that the commission was designed to fail: "Of course it was. When you have an equal amount of people from either side, you are inevitably going to get a deadlock or a tie. And that’s exactly what happened here.” In other words, all the democracy stuff was a lie. When the commission inevitably deadlocked, the Democratic-controlled legislature went on a gerrymandering frenzy.

Nevertheless, President Biden and Democrats like Nadler are seeking to take control over state election laws in the name of democracy. It does not matter if they are using the same anti-democratic measures as they accuse Republicans of wielding, because their motivations are purportedly pure even if their means manifestly are not.

There will be challenges this year to gerrymandered districts by both parties. While the Supreme Court said in 2019 that political gerrymandering is constitutional in Rucho v. Common Cause, such changes can be struck down when they result in the dilution or suppression of minority voters. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on one such race-based challenge to new districts in Alabama. A similar challenge in Illinois failed despite districts that rival Nadler's in fantastical, illogical shapes to gain Democratic seats.

The North Carolina opinion could complicate things for Democrats, however, if it is applied to other states with anti-gerrymandering laws. The law was notably a gerrymandering case based on partisan rather than racial impacts. The North Carolina court acknowledged the holding in Rucho but voted 4-3 that it could strike down “excessive partisan gerrymandering” on state constitutional grounds. It found that Republican lawmakers drew maps that deprived voters of their “substantially equal voting power on the basis of partisan affiliation.”

The New York districts also are the subject of a lawsuit under the state constitution.

The intent of the voters could not be more clear: While the commission was rigged to fail, voters clearly wanted to end the practice.

Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering this year — but the blinkered outrage of President Biden to Republican gerrymandering only highlights the hypocrisy of our times. We are left, yet again, with a gang of arsonists espousing fire safety in our political system. Despite voters calling for an end to gerrymandering, their leaders continue to lie to them and frustrate efforts to end this insidious practice.

While the National Democratic Redistricting Committee called for a “Fair Districts Pledge” to “commit to restoring fairness to our democracy,” these politicians have instead followed Oscar Wilde's rule that “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign...ed-the-joys-of

[eyecu2]

Ok fellas...I think if you re-read my post, it acknowledged that both sides do gerrymander, but that I felt the Red States have made a ton of restriction to voter access, and they have gone to efforts to redraw voting districts on top. The link I provided was about judicial decisions on redistricting, not Jonathan Turley or non-judicial conclusions. I agree with much of Turleys assessment is, but think that a vast amount of changes done by legal wrangling and party politics, have been manufactured much moreso by the GOP led states or districts. While some states have shown ability to reign-in the power hungry RNC / GOP attempt of hostile political actions, some have literally turned a RED eye to let the GOP do as they pleased. As the point of the post was not about commentary but rather court rulings, I've listed a few here.

Besides the North Carolina ruling we have more :

Ohio https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/u...mandering.html

In Georgia

https://www.lawyerscommittee.org/geo...ople-of-color/

Wisconsin' state SC, defies logic and allows horrible representation of party. Let's GOP cheat

https://about.bgov.com/news/democrat...ting-decision/

Essentially the same in Texas too.


What's clear is that the GOP shouldnt be known as the party of Lincoln, or the party of Reagan, but the party that divides. Those mouthpieces of the party like Ronna McDaniels who sow division in this country should be reminded of Lincoln's "House divided" speech.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand"

And we collectively need to try ways to find how to be fair and not divided. I'd say that as a general comment, the last administration was the most divisive of any that nI can recall, and where a constant drumming and gaslighting was considered acceptable. Pitting ppl against each other by party, when the vast majority just want things to be fair, and better. I pointed out a few states above but to be sure, many states have now become political theater and how many corrupt policies or decisions have been because it was party motivated over the past 5 years is truly disgusting; & On both sides

[eyecu2]

Originally Posted by HDGristle

All Gerrymandering is bullshit

There have been many people who wanted to end this. The freedom to vote act and even the John Lewis bill were designed to limit gerrymandering. But one side decided it was not gonna look at it. Why? Cause it would mess up this short-term plot of power increase, and the right would NEVER cede any a short termed advantage nor did they want the federal government to be able to limit any egregious advantage they had just won by the past 2 years of legal battles. The GOP had secured their desire to leverage areas towards a more favorable outcome. There are lots of protection against Gerry-mandering which limited abuses and forced a remedy when found to exceed certain percentages. The right suggests that the fed government shouldn't have a say on how states do their business. And I do mean business. Dark money and PAC money that is hiding out of sight is just too yummy for the right to turn away from leveraging elections.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-wo...eedom-vote-act

What didn't the right also like, was immediate registration and mail in ballots which has NEVER been proven as corrupt yet has been the scape goat of many here on this board and yet another conspiracy target. Trump said it best, "Republicans won’t win an election again if it’s easier for Americans to vote". The fear of the right is that if everyone voted instead of the normal turnout of 60%, they would lose. Last election had almost 67% and that proved that Trump knows how suppression of voters is a GOP tactic. How to implement it, is to assert that the votes are fraudulent or by illegals. But yet no proof of that has ever been found to be a result. Even those who say mailing votes by illegals are a part of this don't realize that all of these votes have barcodes or other methods of confirming legal status. And if a duplicate code is sent, by a duplicate ballot, then no ballots with that code will be counted. But that lie is just the ruse needed to cover asses on the right. Otherwise why not allow for legal votes or limits on dark money or Gerry-mandering?