McGrady's bill went nowhere in both 2013 and 2015, both despite lots of cosponsors.
Any help for us here would be indirect since we don't have an initiative process. We'll have to hope that success in states like AZ and CA leads our Leg. to act.
According to McGrady, the Republicans supported redistricting reform for years but the Dems in power blocked it. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.
Vrede too wrote:
According to McGrady, the Republicans supported redistricting reform for years but the Dems in power blocked it. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.
I don't doubt it. Look what the Republicans did when they did get "reform." But any objective look at the districts before and after Republican "reform" shows that there was less extremely obvious gerrymandering before. I don't think there was anything that approached the ridiculousness of the Asheville divide and the snake slithering into Gastonia.
I wouldn't know, but according to McGrady it was at least bad enough for folks to be working for a nonpartisan solution, and the fact that change did not happen directly contributed to our current predicament. Thanks Dems.
rstrong Nov 14, 2012 wrote:In North Carolina more than half of the electorate voted for Democratic representation, yet Republicans will fill about 70 percent of the state's House seats. It's not just North Carolina:
Most Americans voted for Democratic representation in the House. The votes are still being counted, but as of now it looks as if Democrats have a slight edge in the popular vote for House seats, 49 percent-48.2 percent, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.
[...]
So how did Republicans keep their House majority despite more Americans voting for the other party—something that has only happened three times in the last hundred years, according to political analyst Richard Winger? Because they drew the lines.
Ewww! the 12th, 1st and 3rd especially. But other than those, the areas are pretty contiguous. I wonder if the 12th was designed to be a "black" district.
(edit) Yeppers, "It was one of two minority-majority Congressional districts created in the state in the 1990s. Since the 2000 census, it has had a small plurality of whites, though blacks make up a majority of its voting population."
You have to consider also that it's not just gerrymandering. While voting availability was enlarged during the time the Dems had a majority, the Republicans are curtailing it and attempting to suppress votes.
True, campaign finance reform and ensuring access to voting are as important to democracy as ending gerrymandering. However, the case can be made that gerrymandering is the biggest contributor to polarization and gridlock. According to the article I linked, in 400 of the 435 House seats there is zero incentive to represent the middle. Rather, it's all about winning the votes of often extremist primary voters.
Extant federal law, I think, would still require a nonpartisan commission to ensure that racial minorities receive theoretical representation in accordance with their numbers, but I doubt doing so entirely explains the 1992 map.
I'd agree gerrymandering is the greater offense. Personally, I'd vote for letting a computer do it and let the chips/votes fall where they may. Over time, it would work out to be far more fair and representative than what we've got now.
Actually, the money concerns me more. I just meant to ID gerrymandering's unique contribution. No matter, it's like choosing between methods of suicide.
