The Resistance: Actvism, protests and more!
02-05-2017
, 07:18 AM
On Gerrymandering in North Carolina, or as I call it, Taxation Without Representation
https://jebware.com/blog/?p=379
https://jebware.com/blog/?p=379
Quote:
Now it’s important to understand how strategic redistricting works. If you want to skew the district map to your party’s advantage, you create a small number of districts with as many of your opponent’s voters as you can cram in (“packing”), and a larger number of districts with just enough of your voters to reliably win (“cracking”). If you’re unfamiliar, I’d recommend taking a minute to read Wikipedia’s primer, which has some helpful examples of why this is so effective. Also, fun fact, the first district they show as an example of egregious gerrymandering is the district I was in when I first moved to Charlotte, the NC-12th.
In any election, 49% of the votes are “wasted” — that is, they don’t contribute to the election of a candidate. This includes all of the votes for the losing candidate, and all of the votes for the winner past a simple majority. If you pack and crack effectively, you can skew the districts so that your party wastes fewer of its votes, and your opponent wastes more of their votes, and you can create a map where a 50/50 citizenry elects a supermajority of one party.
So the goal of gerrymandering is to waste as many of your opponents votes, and as few of your own votes, as possible. Let’s see if we notice any change in wasted votes after the 2010 redistricting. To keep the chart easier to read, let’s start with just one district map – the NC House of Representatives. Let’s look at the percent of votes that each party wasted.
There it is — a pretty clear jump between close margins in 2002-2010, to very lopsided vote wasting in 2012 and later. And lest you think I cherry-picked the worst map, I actually chose the least dramatic. The NC Senate and US House results are even more lopsided.
In case you’re not a chart person, here’s what that last one says — since 2012, the Congressional maps have been drawn so that over ⅔ of Democrats are wasting their votes, and less than ⅓ of Republicans.
In any election, 49% of the votes are “wasted” — that is, they don’t contribute to the election of a candidate. This includes all of the votes for the losing candidate, and all of the votes for the winner past a simple majority. If you pack and crack effectively, you can skew the districts so that your party wastes fewer of its votes, and your opponent wastes more of their votes, and you can create a map where a 50/50 citizenry elects a supermajority of one party.
So the goal of gerrymandering is to waste as many of your opponents votes, and as few of your own votes, as possible. Let’s see if we notice any change in wasted votes after the 2010 redistricting. To keep the chart easier to read, let’s start with just one district map – the NC House of Representatives. Let’s look at the percent of votes that each party wasted.
There it is — a pretty clear jump between close margins in 2002-2010, to very lopsided vote wasting in 2012 and later. And lest you think I cherry-picked the worst map, I actually chose the least dramatic. The NC Senate and US House results are even more lopsided.
In case you’re not a chart person, here’s what that last one says — since 2012, the Congressional maps have been drawn so that over ⅔ of Democrats are wasting their votes, and less than ⅓ of Republicans.
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Quote:
I read an article that had statistics and a chart that tried to show how many more votes from each party were required to elect a candidate. it was divided by state.
in some states it required 3 times as many dem votes as rep votes.
do you know what Im talking about? did you see it? I wish I could find it.
in some states it required 3 times as many dem votes as rep votes.
do you know what Im talking about? did you see it? I wish I could find it.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...election-chart
Quote:
After Republicans swept into power in state legislatures in 2010, the GOP gerrymandered key states, redrawing House district boundaries to favor Republicans. In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates received half of the votes in House contests, but Republicans will claim about three-quarters of the congressional seats. The same is true in North Carolina. More than half the voters in that state voted for Democratic representation, yet Republicans will fill about 70 percent of the seats. Democrats drew more votes in Michigan than Republicans, but they'll take only 5 out of the state's 14 congressional seats.
