Comments on: The Redistricting Game

By: DS

DS — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:34:40 +0000

KIA, the gerrymandering in California, New York, and Illinois is of the bipartisan protect-the-incumbent variety, not of the partisan variety. A Democratic partisan gerrymander of New York would easily eliminate (via “cracking”) the two downstate congressional districts still in Republican hands, while if the Democrats really got to work on turning Illinois partisan, their lead in districts would be much larger than the current 10-9.

Massachusetts is an oddity: the Democrats hold all ten congressional seats (plus everything else in the state above the level of district attorney). What is going on there is less an example of Democratic gerrymandering (otherwise you’d be seeing “packed” Republican seats), but rather extreme Republican weakness in the state. You’d have to engage in a pretty dramatic gerrymander to actually give the Republicans a single congressional seat in Massachusetts.

The only truly nasty partisan Democratic gerrymander at the moment is Maryland. That, however, pales into insignificance with the monstrosities that are the pro-Republican boundary maps of Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Florida (Florida’s maps really have to be seen to be believed), and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, however, backfired on the Republicans in 2006: Operation Ratfuck (yes, the Republicans really did call it that) saw the GOP get too greedy and spread itself too thinly. The Democrats ended up gaining four seats in the state because of it.

By: Selma Bouvier

Selma Bouvier — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 06:40:17 +0000

KIA nothing could be more blatant that what happened in texas,most states only do it once every 10 years, after the census when the total number of districts can change.
Texas under the cheats did it again in 2002.
Delay who was behind it all , lost his job, and the Democrats won his seat !!
By the way give an example of blatant gerrymandering in illinois texas or NY. You have the maps

By: kiwi in america

kiwi in america — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:18:54 +0000

Selma
You missed the blatant Democrat redistricting in California, Illinois, New York and Massachusetts.

David is right – the partisan redistricting is the result of a strictly federal system. Personally I prefer the NZ Boundaries Commission approach but there are many advantages of the wider American political system over the NZ system that more than compensate for the boundary drawing problems.

By: andrei

andrei — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:37:35 +0000

in NZ only 35% would be truly non competitive.

What difference does it make if they are competive and/or not if the incumbant or the incumbants main opposition have high spots on the party list.

Diddly

By: Selma Bouvier

Selma Bouvier — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:09:42 +0000

Interesting post David but you are not strictly correct in saying this …You can not pass a Federal Law appointing a panel of Judges to do it…

When districts dont comply with the voting rights Act a federal judge can order a redrawing of boundaries.

A site with maps of all districts

http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/congress.html#list

A particuarly blatant eaxample is Texas 15th District which is shown here
http://nationalatlas.gov/asp/cd_popups.asp?imgFile=../printable/images/preview/congdist/TX15_109.gif&imgw=750&imgh=452
Note the scale at the bottom!!
Most states do it but Texas is amoung the most extreme , done by the Republicans of course who redrew the boundaries a second time after a census

By: tim barclay

tim barclay — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:15:10 +0000

I would have a whole series of rurual seats of 5,000 people each and one seat in south Auckland of 150,000.

By: David Farrar

David Farrar — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:56:08 +0000

Yeah. It’s a nice intellectual challenge to actually find a way to do the gerrymander

By: Graeme Edgeler

Graeme Edgeler — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:54:06 +0000

Agree on the addictive – I saw the link last night – and then ended up going to bed two hours later than I intended and not getting enough sleep before an early start this morning…