Judge Scraps GOP-Drawn Florida Map Calling it a ‘Mockery’
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The Republicans have been rearranging congressional districts all over the country, a process known as gerrymandering, and it has been quite successful. They’ve managed to redraw boundaries of voting districts to turn them from blue to red. As a result they’ve been winning elections while the Democrats have apparently been sitting on their hands. Thanks to an attentive district judge in Florida, however, things may be changing.
From Newser:
Republicans “made a mockery” of recent Florida constitutional amendments requiring lawmakers to draw fair political districts, a state judge ruled yesterday, ordering that two particularly egregious districts be redrawn—and with them, probably all districts that touch them. “Republican political consultants or operatives did, in fact, conspire to manipulate and influence the redistricting process,” Judge Terry P. Lewis wrote in a scathing 41-page ruling. He noted that lawmakers had destroyed a suspicious number of documents related to the redistricting process, and even quoted George Washington’s admonition to beware “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men,” the New York Times reports.
Florida voted in 2010 in favor of two amendments requiring districts to be drawn in an impartial, non-partisan fashion. The judge ruled that the GOP-controlled legislature failed to do that. Republicans currently hold 17 of Florida’s House seats to the Democrats’ 10, even though Democrats have an edge in overall voter registration. The judge didn’t specify if the districts have to be redrawn by this year’s midterms, Politico points out, and the state is likely to appeal. “Everyone in Florida is holding their breath,” one redistricting consultant said, predicting that the changes would ultimately wait until 2016.
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We get that sort of shite in Britain too. Change the ‘boundaries’ so we can get more of ‘ours’ elected.
It’s another world isn’t it?
Shocked? This is the last home of the wild west. Everything nasty and crooked about American politics never gets old — it just retires and moves to Florida. Republican thugs beating up people trying to count votes, tens of thousands illegally deprived of their voting rights, voting machines that don’t work, Absentee ballots that go home with the election commissioner to be “counted” in private, fake instructions for voters telling them to show up at the wrong date or the wrong place and outright threats by police made to minority voters. They never let up, they’re at it day and night. We have a Senator who spends his summers in the Hamptons with the sugar cartel and fights tirelessly to exempt them from almost any regulation anyone else is subject to.
Gerrymandering sometimes backfires. My super-ultra right wing county got a rare Democratic representative last time around because the new district included a piece of another one that contained enough Democrats. We were spared a war criminal who campaigned on deporting liberals. Without that redistricting, he would have won hands down.
I am shocked, SHOCKED even, that the TEApublican GoOpers would stoop to this level like they were demonrats or something something.
I always get a laugh out of our concept of Democracy, which is really a republic, but when we try to take into other countries they usually have a true democratic election. We, meaning us, America, make a mockery out of the concept of fair elections in this country. If we were trying to institute a government on ourselves, as if we had just conquered our country, we would not stand for what we do in politics.
How can they even pretend?
The sad thing is, it will probably be appealed and, despite the fact that it was a surprisingly, for Florida, reasonable decision, it has a strong chance of being overturned. Sigh.
gerrymandering is not new and is not newly ugly. like a lot other not newly ugly political stunts the tea party has put this one on steroids. they have a way of taking what’s already ugly and making it VERY ugly. one thing you have to say for them is that they are not subtle, their inspiration and methodology for the demise of our democracy are quite transparent, you only have to be awake to pick up on it.