The graphics in last night's opening segment on gerrymandering were so clear and illustrative I wanted to give you a second look. What these show is the total number of votes for Democratic and Republican House candidates in each state. Or, as Rachel put it, more people in Michigan voted for a Democrat than voted for a Republican. But the point of gerrymandering is that more people voting for a Democratic representative does not mean more Democratic representatives were elected to represent those voters. In fact, the opposite. And in cases where more voters chose Republicans, the apportionment of representatives for those voters is disproportionate.
H/t Mother Jones, where they got this rolling and have tons more. After the jump, the graphics for Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio...
Leave a Comment:
I saw the segment last night and I admit it scared the $hit out of me. Who new Rachel was in the horror movie business?
I can really see them using this to destabilize democracy because they know a level playing field will ensure a loss for Republicans.
I have seen the fruits of their labor here in Florida and it seems to be working.
Scared and depressed me too sick. Does this mean we have 10 more yrs of repug chaos?
Pretty much. And maybe ten more after that, too, because the lesson is that you have to achieve a supermajority to overthrow the current regime.
The only possible exception is in States that allow citizen initiatives to amend their Constitutions. In those States (like Arizona) it's possible to use that process to require nonpartisan redistricting processes. This year was the first time that Arizona voted in nonpartisan districts, and we actually elected more Democrats than Republicans to Congress and although Republicans still hold both houses of the legislature, next year they will no longer have the supermajorities that they held until this year.
There goes all my hope for a functional government...
That is what I felt.
Which made me think about the book/movie freakonomics.
The central question the freakonomics folks ask is what are the incentives. Behavior will gravitate to where the incentives are.
Currently the Republicans are screw. Demographics are not on their side and will not be for some time. And the big billionaire money did not seem to be working for them either.
For republican (or any politician), the incentive is to win control and ideally with as little competition as possible.
That means basically to create any advantage possible. Fairness, one person one vote, does not play into to it not if they can game the system.
Its not like Dems are above these tactics, it just seems like Republicans are better at it and seem to have little shame in gaming the rule to win at any cost.
"Its not like Dems are above these tactics, it just seems like Republicans are better at it and seem to have little shame in gaming the rule to win at any cost. "
You've nailed the key point here, Brian. In states where Dems have control over redistricting, they've somehow bought into the defensive Republican malarkey about the importance of drawing districts that are "balanced" and "nonpartisan," so they don't press their advantage to gain seats. However, when Republicans have control, they press their advantage to the hilt.
Democrats have to play the same games, and play them with equal ferocity, if they're going to have a chance to regain control of the House and of the state legislatures. Dems also have to pay close attention to state elections for Secretary of State and Attorney General, which exert influence over the election process.
In 2010, the terribly unhappy, disaffected, disappointed Democrats stayed away from the polls. Hope the enjoyed the results. They're pretty much stuck with them until at least 2020. Start paying attention, folks.
In states where Dems have control over redistricting, they've somehow bought into the defensive Republican malarkey about the importance of drawing districts that are "balanced" and "nonpartisan," so they don't press their advantage to gain seats.
That's not entirely true -- the House delegations of Maryland and Illinois are as disproportionately Democratic as those of Ohio and Pennsylvania are disproportionately Republican. However, in the 2010-census redistricting, Republicans controlled far more state legislatures than Democrats did, and some of the states where Democrats had control (notably California) also had non-partisan redistricting processes.
" . . . Republicans controlled far more state legislatures than Democrats did, and some of the states where Democrats had control (notably California) also had non-partisan redistricting processes."
That's my point. Those "non-partisan redistricting processes" didn't come about by accident. Democrats gave away their advantage and bought into the nonsense. Republicans seized an undeserved advantage in one of the bluest states in the nation.
I think the non-partisan redistricting commission was the result of a ballot initiative passed in an off-year election; it may not have been primarily Democrats that supported it. That said, I'd like to see non-partisan redistricting or, better yet, proportional representation, in all the states; Republican voters in Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connectecticut shouldn't be deprived of representation any more than Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan should.
If the only way they can win is to cheat, then there is something very wrong with the Republican party. I find this repugnant, but not surprising considering how much repugnant stuff the GOP has done in my lifetime.
See, Republicans can learn from Democrats.
You seem so proud of your deeply unpopular policies and ideas.
@Shooter - It's not about Dem vs. Repub. It's about the democratic principles underpinning representative government. For you, it is a game.
Of course it's a game. Democrats accuse Republicans of pushing Granny off cliffs, we learn how to stack the electoral deck. All we need to do now is figure our how you guys push Granny off the cliff.
Nobody said you were pushing Granny off a cliff. That's absurd.
No, you are WAY too cruel for that. You'd rather starve her to death and steal her benefits.
And stacking the deck is by definition cheating, because the majority doesn't like your ideas OR your "ideals".
The good news for the Dems is that, as the real majority party, there will ultimately be retribution. It's going to start in 2014, and Republicans are going to be very unhappy when it happens. Too bad for them. Maybe they'll learn to respect Democracy.
Until then, yes, Republicans get to enjoy their victories. They'd better. There are going to be many fewer of them in the coming years.
Dave, Democrats accusing Republicans of throwing Granny off the cliff is a time honored meme. Here's the latest iteration... http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/08/12/liberal-group-throws-granny-off-cliff-again/
As for thwarting the will of the majority, where do you think we learned from? It's only a matter of time until Republicans flee a state to avoid a vote. Conservatives are too busy trying to make money to think up this kind of thing. http://www.npr.org/2011/02/17/133847336/wis-democratic-lawmakers-flee-to-prevent-vote
I found this article from 2010 from an opposing view. I think some work needs to be done on the whole issue. Reform so that this tactic no longer favors either side? http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/26/lines-drawn-favor-democrats/
Agree, this is some of the scariest reporting I have seen in a while, along with the GOP ideas to apportion presidential electoral votes by these gerrymandered districts. Conspiracy theories abound, but with this I have cold dread creeping into my gut. Sen. Harkin may not be scared of democracy, but someone sure is.
TG for the Maddow Show for bringing these issues to light.
I am not sure why we all follow the names that the right call the issues, they usually call them something that is convenient to them... Like the "right to work" states.. really? i live in one such state-- and it really is not a right to work -but, "A RIGHT TO FIRE" State. - A right for companies to FIRE employees without just cause - a right to fire them because the employee is getting old, is getting close to retirement/pension plan age, employee is too expensive.. Employee has gotten sick and now insurance premiums are higher... - I know I have lived it, - In our house one of us was "let go" because he was reaching the time in his contract when he would have been vested and would be paid healthcare and pension for life. One of us was let go because they could find another employee willing to work for less money since had been with company for a long time, and had to even train the new employees (and what could you do?) I know in same company after employee went on disability due to cancer, the following year that employee was "let go". without insurance and now with a pre-existing condition. We all should call it what it is: RIGHT TO FIRE WITHOUT ANY CAUSE" States. As that is what it is.
For those of us not working in a union job (which is the majority of workers), this has always been the case. I understand the history of unions, but I'm just saying, a lot of us have jobs without pensions and job security.
And you 'Surely' accept this? Why, if you don't have to?
To seriously undermine Gerrymandering, see www.VotingInSanity.org--a simple website that shows how Score Voting [aka range voting] will accomplish this + level the political playing field + disenfranchise the 2-party stranglehold (each party trying to undermine the other) that G Washington warned us about in 1796. Comments welcome!
Score voting (or Instant Run-off) is not going to fix this particular problem. Gerrymandering is the art of cracking and packing the electorate so that all your wins are small and all the opposing parties wins are huge. You spread out your electorate into as many districts as you can but still retain a small-but-comfortable majority then make sure the opposing electorate is all placed into one or two districts. The real win-win is you can then point to the 95% wins by D's as "reverse racists".
No, the ONLY fix to gerrymandering is to have state reps assigned proportionately based on party vote. This has the benefit of also helping 3rd party candidates.
[New to this website, I accidentally posted twice. But the above post will open your eyes to the #1 priority to promote world harmony.]
Votingin Sanity I like the idea from what I see. Isn't this what they do in Britain now or am I misreading the connection? I also find the the touch screen voting process proposal intriguing as well. What I know for sure is the system is broken and the people should be interested in fixing it.
Proportional representation statewide. In nations with proportional representation people believe the system is more fair and more people vote.
I crunched the numbers. Pennsylvania is absolutely shocking. Democrats got almost 51% of the votes, and won less than 28% of the seats.
The Koch Bros and a few the billionaire financiers of the GOP are the heads of the Hydra that has become the GOP.
Decapitation may be the only way to stop this... remove the heads and the beast will die
The Koch Brothers are both in their 70s. One is close to 80. Many of the other major Republican contributors are of similar ages. Drastic action isn't required. Nature will take care of it.
Gerrymandering their way to federal and state wins is'nt enough for the republicans. Now they want to rid their states of electoral votes. These people are not only a danger to their states democracy but to the democracy of all of America. It's bad enough that some wealthy people are trying to buy elections, now its republican governors and legislatures working with them. They know their policies wo'nt get them elected so they have to "fix" it, by basically cancelling out the votes from the biggest cities in their states. This is a third world Hugo Chavez move and should outrage all moderate republicans, independents and democrats. Excepting people like Shooter.
I was so depressed I had to stop watching politics for the night. Still disturbed.
This is just sick. They want to squeeze out the Democratic vote, and ensure that we have no real say in our own laws... They know they can't squeeze us out entirely, so they shove as many of us as possible, into as small a number of "districts" as legally possible, to vastly limit our votes impact!
Those last two states are prime examples, of Democratic voices, being forcibly shoved into the dark, and told to shut up!
A better way, is to have people vote overall in the state, as well as voting for reps as they do. THEN, based on the ratio of votes statewide, put the people in office based on their percentage of votes won, shared according to the statewide numbers. This would make it so that everyone is fairly represented, and make gerrymandering worthless! (Essentially, people with higher win percentages, are put in first, but even "losers" of a district could be put through, if it meant evening the balance, with the closest contests being used first)
In Penn, and Ohio, both would have gained 4 reps EACH, for the Democratic party.
While the districts are gerrymandered, the governor's office is not. Vote for Democrats for governor and other state offices. If the legislature is not able to override vetoes there is a chance to keep legislation more fair. We are also reasonably able to elect more Democrat senators if we can find decent candidates and keep the population interested in all elections.
I think if anyone bothered to ask the 99% they would tell you that they want a popular vote, instead of this district crap. Stand up and be counted. That is the only true way to get an accurate number.Why would we have it any other way?
same sort of thing happened in KY. they took what ever heavy populated conservative parts ou louisville and added then to the KY4 to ensure that stays red. puke. www.kybluestate.com
this is the antithesis of democracy
It's not a democracy. It's a republic, if you can keep it (Benjamin Franklin).
Which districts have been gerrymandered? And when did it occur?
Did it occur to you that these states where so many Democrat voted for representatives also voted FOR a Republican governor? Your numbers can easily be explained by other reasons as well. Examples, tighter races in Democrat elected districts thus lower Republican turnout where the election was a foregone conclusion. Or, the fact that high population districts in cities typically vote Democratic while rural vote Republican. The only way to correct this would be to gerrymander districts, carving out small high populated districts in cities and pairing it with large sparse populated rural areas.
So, where are these districts that have been gerrymandered and when were they created?
I've also seen other reasons why this may occur, one very valid possibility is the President's re-election strategy. His campaign went into high Democrat districts in Ohio, Virgina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, etc, to get more Democrats to vote. Very plausible.
Additionally, the Mother Jones article linked above pointed out the Dem/Rep Votes/Represenatives ratio happened in reverse in a couple of states as well. So the Democrats were doing the gerrymandering in Maryland and Illinois if you keep with the theory.
Your numbers can easily be explained by other reasons as well. Examples, tighter races in Democrat elected districts thus lower Republican turnout where the election was a foregone conclusion.
That hypothesis is easily tested; it predicts that in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, we should see closer races and larger numbers of total votes cast in the Democratic districts, and larger margins but smaller totals in the Republican ones, whereas if the differences result from gerrymandering, we should see the opposite: huge margins of victory for Democrats (because Republican legislatures packed as many Democratic voters into as few districts as possible), and narrower margins for the Republicans, with either lower turnout in the less competitive Democratic districts, or similar turnout in both Republican and Democratic districts. What we actually see in those states is the latter. For example, the five Democratic House members from Pennsylvania won their races with an average of 76% of the vote in their districts, out of an average of 296,116 votes cast, while the thirteen Republican members won with an average of 58%, out of an average of 299,529 votes cast. See the HuffPo House Election Results page for details.
Also, since districts are required to have roughly equal population (the rule is "one person, one vote," not "one acre, one vote"), we always have a mix of small, densely populated urban districts and large, sparsely populated rural districts with roughly the same population spread over a much larger area. That's the main reason we conduct a national census every ten years: to determine how populations have shifted and draw new congressional districts to re-equalize the population size of each district. That difference alone is not evidence of gerrymandering.
You are correct that Democrats play the gerrymandering game as well where they control both a governorship and the state legislature; Illinois and Maryland are the prime examples. However, because the current districts were drawn by the state legislatures and governors elected in 2010, far more states have been gerrymandered by Republicans than by Democrats, resulting in Republican control of the House despite the fact that when all the votes in House elections nationwide are added up, slightly more were cast for Democrats than for Republicans (at last count, the margin was roughly 50%-49%, with 1% being cast for minor party candidates or independants). Also, the largest Democratic-controlled state, California, has its districts drawn by a non-partisan commission that seeks to ensure something approaching proportional representation.
So, where are these districts that have been gerrymandered and when were they created?
They're in all the states where one party won a massively disproportionate number of House seats relative to the percentage of votes cast for that party in House elections, and they were created in 2011, following the census and elections of 2010.
Alex, you are correct that you could test any of these theories. My point is that there was no evidence of that, only the conclusion: gerrymandering occured and was repsonsible for this.
I don't necessarily argee with all your post but I do the concept of testing. You seem to be only looking at one scenario though. Larger voter turnout in Democrat majority districts could produce the results, too (although this district would have a lopsided victory which you did touch on).
Looking at voting returns there were Democratic Representatives that won by 76%, 85%, and even 89% of the vote. While most of the Republicans were elected by totals in the 50s. If voter turnout is also higher in the Democrat districts, then that could account for the differences without gerrymandering. And for news reports it seems that was the case.
Bottomline, a deeper look at the the numbers or evidence of the gerrymandering districts would give so evidence to the claim, but none of that has been offered.
I just offered it, and you chose to play dumb and pretend I didn't. Did you miss the part where the average total turnout in Democratic-won districts in Pennsylvania was 296,116 votes, and the average total turnout in Republican-won districts in the same state was 299,529? For your alternate hypothesis to be true, the average total number of votes cast in Democratic districts would have to be much, much higher than in Republican districts; instead, it's slightly lower (the difference is probably not statistically significant).
Looking at voting returns there were Democratic Representatives that won by 76%, 85%, and even 89% of the vote. While most of the Republicans were elected by totals in the 50s.
Yes, that's what happens when you draw districts so as to pack as many Democratic voters into as few districts as you can manage, while dividing the rest of the Democrats more-or-less evenly between a larger number of districts -- a redistricting strategy known as "pack-and-crack," or, more traditionally, gerrymandering. Some of the district maps in use today would probably have Elbridge Gerry himself gawping in disbelief.
Alex, I agree your presentation supports the gerrymandering possibility. But there are still other information needed to confirm. The make up of the districts, the voter turnout perecentage by party from the districts, etc.
I agree the total votes cast are statistically tied but that is not the same as voter turnout, turnout compares total votes to the number of possible voters. That's missing from your information.
Still, so there's no confussion. Your numbers are accurate and move the argument closer to gerrymandering.
How do we remove politics from redistricting?!? I don’t think it’s possible. Republicans AND Democrats love gerrymandering as long as their party controls the process. It’s a spoil of war to them and neither side is willing to give it up. It’s like trying to get the Senate to eliminate the filibuster. It’s just not going to happen.
You remove districts.
Non-partisan redistricting commissions established by ballot initiative have been reasonably successful at creating proportional representation in the states where they exist; California and Arizona are notable examples. I'm most familiar with the latter, since I live there: we have four reliably Republican districts, two reliably Democratic (and majority-Latino) districts, and three highly competitive districts. This year, all three of the competitive districts were won by Democrats, due to the AZ Democratic party's excellent GOTV operation and relatively poor Republican candidates, but we can probably expect to lose at least one of them, and very likely two or all three, in the 2014 midterm election.
Late to this dance, but I did want to reply on this, in case it's not elsewhere. Arizona has it, but the Republicans in the legislature almost rigged it anyway by trying to influence the process (for example, by attacking the head of the committee). Gov. Brewer tried to kick the woman off but the courts didn't let her, if I recall correctly.
I have to question the choices for advertising on this page. I clicked on one about electricity and got a diatribe against Obama's electrical conspiracy and the liberals. C'mon Rachel, who's paying for this stuff? You might want to look at your advertisers.
I do support you but your choice of advertisers makes me wonder.
Please pardon me for repeating myself:
Being an engineer, I tend to think of politics as a control system for governance. And my biggest gripe with gerrymandering is that it introduces hysteresis into the control system -- and that makes for instability and lack of fine-grained feedback on the process. Net effect: poor governance.
About redistricting, here in California we changed the way districts are drawn. It's now done by a bipartisan panel, not the politicians themselves. There were several changes in the last election, especially the one I lived in at the time. We got rid of Sonny Bono's widow, the only reason she ever got elected was because of that. She was a nightmare. We elected a Democrat in a district that hadn't been represented by one in over 20 years.
That's great, now you guys need to work on Darrel Issa. That jerk really needs to go. what a despicable creature.
I am glad I am not alone in how much dread I felt after the show last night. It brought to mind all that I learned in my history courses in college soo many years ago. Food for thought: remember how regimes rose to power in China, Russia, and Germany. they took the people's freedoms away, kept them poor and struggling so they would not realize what was going on or fight it. They "educated" the young;ie; brainwashed. They "reeducated" the professionals; ie;made farmers of them, banished to work camps or killed them. It brings to mind the adage--- those who do not study history and its lessons are doomed to repeat them.