Sanford wins

[SteveG]

The political makeup of Congress will be unchanged; Sanford replaces Republican Tim Scott, who was promoted to the Senate to replace Jim DeMint, who recently retired to lead the Heritage Foundation and do war against the immigration reform bill. While Sanford was celebrating his victory, DeMint was unveiling a big study showing that immigration reform would cost the country trillions and trillions of dollars. Its methodology was ridiculous, and The Washington Post discovered its co-author had once argued that Hispanic immigrants would have “low I-Q children and grandchildren.” Truly, South Carolina politics is a gift that just keeps on giving.
-Gail Collins

[Spock]

Our Elections Really Are Rigged—by Gerrymandering and Districting Abuses

Partisan redistricting—not just classic gerrymandering but a variety of structural factors—assures that the vast majority of congressional districts in the vast majority of states produce predictable results. Even if the candidate of the dominant party is flawed, even if a challenger has financial advantages, FairVote executive director Rob Richie reminds us that “partisanship is the dominant factor in determining election outcomes.”

Another reform group, Common Cause explains, “For decades partisan wrangling has led to gerrymandered redistricting maps, collusion among the major political parties to create safe Congressional and state legislative districts, and the packing and splitting of concentrations of voters to weaken or strengthen their influence to gain partisan advantage.”

Common Cause notes, correctly, that the circumstance is growing worse, explaining that “advances in information and mapping technology has enabled a level of precision in district drawing that in effect, enables legislators to choose the voters they wish to represent and makes it difficult for voters to hold their elected officials accountable.”

There’s always been gerrymandering, but we are not at a place where the general process of drawing and redrawing district lines has become definitional: If a district is drawn to elect Republicans, it almost always elects Republicans. If a district is drawn to elect Democrats, it almost always elects Democrats.

Money is influential, personality is a factor.


But nothing comes close to redistricting when it comes to defining the results of elections.

Time for all electoral boundaries to be drawn by an independent commission not beholden to any politician.

[Mac-A-Matic]

Spock wrote:
Time for all electoral boundaries to be drawn by an independent commission not beholden to any politician.

Agreed.

Democrats have done dramatic gerrymandering in Maryland. Here's just one district:

[RgrF]

Amateur hour compared to Republicans in Texas.

[Mac-A-Matic]

RgrF wrote:
Amateur hour compared to Republicans in Texas.

Is this to say that it's somehow "okay" when democrats gerrymander states???

[RgrF]

If your post was about gerrymandering in general, I'd have stayed out. it was an indictment of Democrats in your home state. Thought I'd balance the scales a bit.

[Mac-A-Matic]

RgrF wrote:
If your post was about gerrymandering in general, I'd have stayed out. it was an indictment of Democrats in your home state. Thought I'd balance the scales a bit.

So what you've "proven" is that republicans gerrymander in states such as Texas.

Unlike a number of the posters here, I don't work under the belief that one party is somehow "better" than the other. There was a condemnation by people here that somehow South Carolina (with it's majority republican) was somehow "bad" - I pointed out that in states such as Maryland, where a democrat majority exists, the corruption is at least the same.

Further, the implication about South Carolina's republican base was that it was (again) somehow "worse" than democrats when, in Maryland, democrats hold a dramatically larger percentage of the state's General Assembly. So, if South Carolina is "bad" because of its republican domination then Maryland must be "worse" because of its greater domination by democrats.

Of course, all of this is very inconvenient for blind liberals who want everyone to believe that only republicans are corrupt.

[RgrF]

I'm not an inconvenient liberal, ask your new model max about that. He's pretty certain I'm (in his worst sense of the word) a Socialist. Get a brain, think for yourself.

[Mac-A-Matic]

RgrF wrote:
I'm not an inconvenient liberal, ask your new model max about that. He's pretty certain I'm (in his worst sense of the word) a Socialist. Get a brain, think for yourself.

Liberal, socialist, communist - whatever your chosen philosophy doesn't change the fact that democrats and republicans perform gerrymandering and that its a corrupt practice that should not be tolerated.

"Single party rule breeds corruption..." That's your own quote and while you're quick to condemn republicans for corrupt practices you cannot acknowledge when democrats are guilty of the same.