GERRY 2

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</div>SEE THREE 2 22<div>
</div><div>619 with roberts scotus<div>see redmap and main</div><div>see hofeller files revelations</div><div>
</div><div>see post-trump</div><div>
</div><div>HTML second-largest</div><div>
</div><div>redmap did systemic long term damage TP--> freedom cocks, suicide squad, unaccountable old white guys --> voter suppression, anti-abortion ... see daley below</div><div>=tool<a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Influencers" style="">https://ballotpedia.org/Influencers</a>  includes gerry==2 22no lnx These states are seeing some of the GOP’s most 'egregious' power grabs: reporterRon DeSantis speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland]Alex Henderson February 16, 2022   During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and his allies in the Republican National Committee believed that the way to grow the GOP was by appealing to a wide range of voters — including the Blue Dog “Reagan Democrats” in his coalition. And during the 1990s and 2000s, members of the Bush family, along with Republican strategist Karl Rove, argued that many Latinos were potential Republican voters and natural conservatives even if they didn’t realize it yet.Now, MAGA Republicans believe that the best way to stay in office is by making it more difficult to vote, and draconian GOP-sponsored voter suppression laws are being passed or proposed all over the United States.Journalist Ari Berman, in a listicle published by Mother Jones on February 16, offers examples of some of the “egregious” power grabs that Republicans have been attempting or carrying out in various states — including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida and Colorado.“Ahead of the midterms,” Berman warns, “Republicans have launched a full-scale assault on the election system. Fueled by the Big Lie, this attack relies upon a multi-pronged strategy of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the takeover of election positions by ideologues who allege that the 2020 election was stolen.”Most of the states that Berman discusses are ones that President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election, although former President Donald Trump carried Florida by around 3.5%. Describing Florida’s voter suppression law, Berman explains, “Mimicking Georgia, Republicans banned giving food and water to voters in line, along with making it harder to vote by mail — after more Democrats than Republicans did so for the first time in the state’s recent history. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill in May during a ‘Fox & Friends’ exclusive; all other media outlets were barred from the event.”In Texas, which Biden lost by 6% in 2020, Republicans have responded to Democratic gains in the light red state with a voter suppression bill that Gov. Greg Abbott happily signed into law. Texas Republicans, Berman notes, have banned all ballot drop boxes in Texas — and Berman adds that in Galveston, “the GOP-controlled county commission has adopted new redistricting maps that eliminated the county’s lone district where voters of color are the majority, represented by Democrat Stephen Holmes for 22 years — one of the most flagrant examples of racial gerrymandering since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013.”Meanwhile, in the swing state of Pennsylvania — which has gone Democrat in every post-1980s presidential election except 2016 — MAGA Republicans are not only pushing for voter suppression, but trying to take over election administration positions.Berman observes, “Stephen Lindemuth of Elizabethtown attended the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on January 6 that led to the insurrection. In November, he won a bid to become a local election judge — part of a growing wave of Big Lie proponents who are taking over election administration positions.”The “Stop the Steal” movement is also alive and well in Wisconsin, another state that flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020.Berman warns, “Republicans have launched an all-out assault on the integrity of the state’s election system, with former conservative State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman — who admitted he didn’t have ‘any understanding of how elections work’ — launching a sprawling Arizona-style audit of the 2020 election, while other top Republicans have called for jailing members of the state’s bipartisan elections commission and stripping them of the authority to oversee elections.”Arizona, once a deep red state known for the conservative politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and Sen. John McCain, is much more Democrat-friendly than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Biden won Arizona, which has two centrist Democratic senators (Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly) and a conservative Republican governor (Doug Ducey).Describing the MAGA power grab in Arizona, Berman observes, “Republicans stripped Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs of the power to defend state election laws and transferred that authority to the Republican attorney general — but only through the 2022 election, in case the partisan composition of the offices is reversed after that.”<div>=</div>=<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ok gerry again?!</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/scotus-voting-rights/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/scotus-voting-rights/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div>=</div><div>starbuck candace owen ~</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/madison-cawthorn-2656485066/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/madison-cawthorn-2656485066/</a></div><div>
</div><div>igor salon</div><div>
</div><div>Top allies of former President Donald Trump pushed back after he endorsed a former administration aide over a conservative influencer who is highly popular on the far right.On Tuesday, Trump endorsed Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor, in the upcoming Republican primary in Tennessee's 5th congressional district. Incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat, has announced that he will retire, saying that Republicans had "dismembered" his longtime Nashville district for partisan gain."Morgan was fantastic in her role working with Secretary Mike Pompeo at the U.S. State Department and understands the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and others, and will be tough, not just roll over like the Democrats and RINOs," Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/TayFromCA/status/1486145526496169989" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">said in a statement</a>. "She won't bow to the Woke Mob or the Leftist LameStream Media. Morgan Ortagus will have my Complete and Total Endorsement if she decides to run!"That statement brought immediate and highly unusual pushback from some of Trump's most ardent supporters."Nope. Trump has this completely wrong," <a href="https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1486202926989258752" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted</a> conservative pundit Candace Owens, writing that the "correct pick" is Robby Starbuck, a former music video producer running as a pro-MAGA Republican in the district.Former Trump aide <a href="https://twitter.com/SebGorka/status/1486184743871959044" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Sebastian Gorka</a> and former Trump lawyer <a href="https://twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1486333568158773249" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Jenna Ellis</a> echoed that sentiment.Starbuck is running on a <a href="https://starbuck2022.com/policies-issue/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">platform</a> to crack down on ballot access, so-called Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ rights and Big Tech companies. It's unclear why Trump snubbed Starbuck in favor of Ortagus, who called him <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/02/politics/morgan-ortagus-state-department-spokesperson-trump-criticism/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">"disgusting"</a> during his 2016 campaign before joining his administration.Numerous other Trump allies joined in backing Starbuck over Trump's preferred candidate."I endorsed [Starbuck] months ago and I stand by my endorsement," <a href="https://twitter.com/CawthornforNC/status/1486191479274057728" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted</a> Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C."I endorsed Robby months ago & believe he's exactly what we need in these difficult times," <a href="https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1486201851746091008" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wrote</a> Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. "He's a God-fearing man who loves his wonderful family — he's a true 'citizen politician.'"The Republican scramble comes after the GOP-dominated state legislature carved up Cooper's Nashville-area district. Cooper, who has <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Jim_Cooper(Tennessee)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">trounced</a> every Republican challengers for decades and ran unopposed in 2020, said the Republican plan to split reliably blue Nashville into three Republican-leaning districts made it impossible for him to win."Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville," <a href="https://twitter.com/repjimcooper/status/1486058625772793864" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">he said in a statement</a>. "No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates."The Tennessee House of Representatives on Monday approved a new congressional map that would split Nashville, combining areas of the state's largest city with more conservative parts of the state. Cooper, who represented a district President Joe Biden won by 24 points, was <a href="https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1481309293165129729" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">drawn into</a> a new district that former Trump carried by nine points, according to Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman."Our Republican legislature has savaged Nashville in order to get one more vote in Congress," Cooper told <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/nashville/2022/01/26/rep-jim-cooper-to-retire-tennessee-fifth-district" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Axios</a>. "This is a cruel blow to all people of Nashville, certainly to minority groups, but to every resident of Nashville," he added.Although Republicans have not been as aggressive at carving out new districts in other states, many of the Republican-drawn maps have been perceived as intended to <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/01/12/are-dems-really-winning-redistricting--in-the-face-of-restriction-laws-and-extremists/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">dilute the power of voters of color</a>. Several Republican-drawn maps have already been struck down and Democrats have vowed to continue to litigate partisan and racial gerrymanders."The maps passed by Tennessee Republicans are blatant partisan gerrymanders," former Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, <a href="https://democraticredistricting.com/eric-holder-on-tennessee-republicans-passing-gerrymandered-congressional-and-legislative-maps/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">said in a statement</a>. "The congressional map splits Nashville into three separate districts, weakening the voting power of the region's economic powerhouse and the city's black community. This map is an obvious attempt to deliver illegitimate political power to the Republican Party for the next decade."Republicans already hold a 7-2 edge in the state's congressional delegation but the Nashville redistricting could give the GOP eight of the state's nine House seats. Cooper suggested that the aggressive gerrymander was unnecessary, since Republicans are likely to win back control of the House in November anyway. Cooper is the 29th Democratic incumbent to announce he won't seek re-election ahead of a likely power shift.While Cooper said the redistricting plan would prevent him from winning re-election, it's unclear whether progressive primary challenger Odessa Kelly plans to continue her campaign after comparing the effect of the redistricting to Jim Crow-era laws that prevented Black people from voting."I joined the congressman in fighting back against the Tennessee General Assembly's racist gerrymandering that will erase the voices of Black and brown voters in Nashville," Kelly told <a href="https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/01/25/cooper-bowing-out-of-congressional-run-after-5th-district-dismembered/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Tennessee Lookout</a>. "But I know one thing is true: People-powered movements in this state have been building power for years and no map is going to slow it down."</div><div></div>=no lnx twt
‘A huge setback for the GOP': Republicans suffer a blow in their fight for control of the House
 Alex Henderson January 14, 2022   Between President Joe Biden’s weak approval ratings, gerrymandering and voter suppression, many pundits have been predicting that Republicans will retake the U.S. House of Representatives in November. But that remains to be seen, and Republican gerrymandering was dealt a blow in the Midwest this week when the Ohio Supreme Court — including Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor — struck down the congressional map that Ohio Republicans had in mind for the Buckeye State.On top of that, Rep. John Katko of New York State has announced that he won’t be seeking reelection — which is more bad news for the GOP. Katko is one of the Republicans who is moderate enough to fare well among centrist Democrats and swing voters in his state. Neither of these problems is necessarily decisive for control of the House, but if 2022 ends up being close, a few seats on the margin could make all the difference.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the map violated the state’s constitution by drawing the districts to unfairly favor one party over another. Columbus Dispatch reporters Jessie Balmert and Laura A. Bischoff note that the map “could have given Republicans as much as a 12-3 advantage in a state that voted for President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump twice.”Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly, who was part of the majority opinion, argued, “When the dealer stacks the deck in advance, the house usually wins.”
READ: Here's what it would really mean to prosecute Trump]
Now, lawmakers in the Ohio State Legislature, according to Balmert and Bischoff, will have 30 days to “craft a new map.”The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, in response to the ruling, tweeted:
Meanwhile, in New York State, Katko’s decision not to seek another term takes away a GOP candidate who isn’t a polarizing figure among centrist Democrats and swing voters. Katko, who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection, is conservative but not extreme.Not surprisingly, Trump sees Katko’s decision as good news, as he considers the congressman a RINO: Republican in Name Only.
READ: 'To defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan': The scary truth about modern right-wing misinformation]
But outside of the MAGA bubble, political analysts are saying that Democrats just got some good news in New York State. Two of them are Cook's Wasserman and Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball:Here are some more reactions to Katko’s announcement:=lwv HAS PJT?=yikes omg sys ampl fdbk? lack of diversity?<div>an 10 21</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/10/14/ron-watkins-many-say-is-qanon-may-be-running-for-congress-in-arizona/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Ron Watkins, the guy most QAnon experts</a> believe is on half of the duo — with his father Jim Watkins — to be the infamous Q of QAnon (He denies it) is now running for Congress. Watkins has relocated to Arizona from Japan, where he was believed by most QAnon researchers to have written the "Q drops" — along with his father — by pretending to be a high-placed D.C. official in the Donald Trump administration. He's planning to run as a Republican against Democratic incumbent Rep. Tom O'Halleran.Watkins didn't pick Arizona's 1st district out of any real connection to the area, or even the state. The district has become a hot commodity because, after a robust bout of gerrymandering by the GOP-controlled state legislature, it's believed that that the congressional seat will likely turn over to a Republican. Subsequently, the race is a magnet for a lot of Republicans with congressional dreams and a better base of donors than the denies-he-is-Q guy.GOP political consultants are quick to downplay the possibility that Watkins could win. Arizona Republican political consultant Stan Barnes <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-celeb-tries-to-leave-q-behind-to-run-for-congress-in-arizona" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">told Will Sommer of the Daily Beast</a> that a guy "who's allegedly related to the QAnon phenomenon has no chance of winning." But as Sommer pointed out, "QAnon connections haven't proved disqualifying" for Republicans like Reps. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/10/19/says-colleagues-scared-to-be-replaced-by-somebody-like-a-marjorie-taylor-greene/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia</a> and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/09/10/lauren-boebert-allows-8-year-old-to-play-alone-next-to-possibly-loaded-firearm/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Lauren Boebert of Colorado</a>. Indeed, Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol that was manned heavily by QAnoners, and he is the current favorite to win the 2024 election. Watkins is squirrelly, will likely be outspent, and his sleazy history includes giving an interview in a brothel — so I wouldn't bet in his favor. Still, he's not crazy to think that he's got a shot.Blame gerrymandering.Across the country, Republicans — who already control the majority of state legislatures — are <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38025908/texas-redistricting-gerrymandering-black-voters/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">working swiftly to redraw election maps to marginalize Democratic voters and create as many non-competitive Republican seats as possible</a>. Most of the political coverage of this, for understandable reasons, is focused on how this will further enshrine the Republican power, giving them what could very well be permanent control of the federal government, despite the fact that most voters actually cast their ballots for Democrats.But another, less intended consequence of gerrymandering is that it will speed up the Republican race to the bottom.GOP gerrymandering empowers an ever-larger cast of idiots, conspiracy theorists, con artists, and open white nationalists to win national office. The situation is bad now, with Congress home to characters like Taylor Green, Boebert and Florida's Rep. Matt Gaetz, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/06/24/matt-gaetz-deletes-tweet-about-defunding-fbi-amid-ongoing-agency-sex-trafficking-probe/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">currently under federal investigation for sex trafficking of minors</a>. But it's about to get much worse. Very soon the clown car will unload its passengers into primary campaigns for all of these newly safe Republican seats created by gerrymandering.Here's how it happens: In districts with safe seats for one party or another, the election that counts is not the general, but the dominant party's primary election. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/11/30/gop-congressman-demands-competitive-districts-i-guarantee-you-things-would-change-here_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">This lack of general election competition creates all sorts of problems</a>, but it's less of an issue in Democratic districts, where the diversity of the coalition at least creates real ideological debate in primaries. For Republican candidates, however, the incentives are completely skewed.The kinds of people who vote in Republican primaries are ... well, not America's best. Without having to worry about running candidates who have to compete against Democrats for moderate voters, GOP primary voters can just go with whatever candidate excites them the most. And what speaks to Republican primary voters is sadism, racism, and a deep commitment to wild conspiracy theories. Gerrymandering makes it so that America's worst voters also happen to be the only voters who count at all in an increasing number of districts.This is how we got Gaetz, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Florida%27s_1st_Congressional_District" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">who won with nearly 65% of the vote in his staunchly Republican district</a>, Taylor Green, who drew <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Georgia%27s_14th_Congressional_District" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">nearly 75% of the vote</a>, and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/03/13/rep-paul-gosars-siblings-say-hes-a-white-supremacist--but-his-gop-colleagues-stay-silent/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Rep. Paul Gosar</a>, who flaunts <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona%27s_4th_Congressional_District" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">his white nationalist yearnings</a> and got nearly 70% of the vote in his deeply conservative Arizona district. Having a heavily Republican district is an open invitation for the worst people to run, secure in the knowledge that as long as they can win over the Newsmax-addled, Facebook-meme-sharing hard right nuts that vote in GOP primaries. After that, it's a red carpet straight to national office.Gerrymandering is not just a problem on the district level, either.We can see from statewide offices what happens when Republicans don't feel they need to compete with Democrats in general elections. In both Florida and Texas, the incumbent Republican governors — Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot, respectively – are running on what can be fairly described as a pro-COVID-19 platform. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/10/12/republicans-on-vaccines-pushes-strategy-to-prolong-the/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Both have waged all-out war</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/10/12/how-ron-desantis-bans-could-get-harry-styles-tripped-up/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">on any effort to stymie the virus's ability</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/08/18/ron-desantis-and-regeneron-is-a-gop-donor-the-reason-why-floridas-governor-wont-promote-vaccines/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">to spread to as many bodies as possible</a>, with a doggedness that is indistinguishable from what they'd do if they were trying to get their own constituents killed.They aren't doing this to win any popularity contests in their states. On the contrary, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/10/19/governors-see-approval-ratings-plummet-after-fight-against-vaccine-requirements_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">polling shows repeatedly </a>that the majority of Americans want leaders to fight the virus, not help it spread. In fact, their actions are causing Abbott and DeSantis to see big dips in their approval numbers. But neither of them cares because both states passed draconian voter suppression laws that shield Republican politicians from having to answer to the majority of their state residents. Having secured what they likely see as an easy GOP win through voter suppression, both Abbott and DeSantis are focused instead on pleasing Republican primary voters. Doing that means maximizing the sadism and the plain old nuttiness. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/greg-abbott-texas-covid-fox/620402/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">As Adam Serwer wrote in the Atlantic</a>, Abbott is "too afraid of his own base to act responsibly."Such fear-based governance will only become more and more the norm as Republicans shut Democrats out of the ability to compete in general elections, meaning that Republican primaries loom ever larger as the only elections that count. The only way to win in many Republican primaries is to show you can out-crazy the other candidate.So it's no wonder the guy who is alleged to be Q is running for office in Arizona. When all the political incentives favor a race to the bottom, the people who are already living in the sewer have a strong advantage.</div><div>=</div>=dead of night<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/texas-gerrymandering/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/texas-gerrymandering/</a>=
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridge_Gerry</a><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1365&context=facpub" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1365&context=facpub</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>1997</div><div>Ulysses at the Mast: Democr Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sir alism, and the Sirens' Song ens' Song</div><div>of the Seventeenth Amendment</div><div>Jay S. Bybee</div><div>University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law </div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Richard Spaight of North Carolina proposed that the second branch be chosen by state legislatures, and his proposal was moved again by John Dickinson.60 While the convention ultimately approved this proposal, the delegates offered very different reasons for supporting it. Several delegates argued that a senate elected by state legislatures, instead of selected by the people, would be more likely to produce "fit men."'61 </div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Elbridge Gerry, taking a page from the experience of the colonial councils, argued that "commercial & monied interest [would] be more secure in the hands of the State Legislatures, than of the people at large." 62 The former, he argued, "have more sense of character, and will be restrained by that from injustice. 63 Since most states had two branches, "one of which is somewhat aristocratic," there would be a "better chance of refinement in the choice" of senators. 64 He repeated that "the great mercantile interest and of stockholders" would be better represented "if the state legislatures choose the second branch. '65 Madison added that the "Senate ought to come from, & represent, the Wealth of the nation. 66</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>=<h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(31, 31, 31); cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/gerrymandering-2653573558/" aria-label="Extreme partisan gerrymandering once again saved Michigan Republicans — despite Biden's statewide win" data-type="text" style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" outline="outline" px="px" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height">Extreme partisan gerrymandering once again saved Michigan Republicans — despite Biden's statewide win</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; color: rgb(31, 31, 31); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/jeff-singer" data-type="text" style="color: rgb(31, 31, 31); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: Cabin, sans-serif;">Jeff Singer</a> <a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/daily-kos" data-type="text" style="color: rgb(31, 31, 31); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: Cabin, sans-serif;">Daily Kos</a></div> June 28, 2021<div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2653573558" style="margin-top: 10px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; font-size: 17px; font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); text-overflow: ellipsis; overflow: hidden; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">Daily Kos Elections has calculated the 2020 presidential results for every <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VpUM9F_KRwLH1U-pTrUJ-j1jp5OWOP5shCblNSuYw0E/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word;">state Senate</a> and <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BaQ_5ryrXVu3pmT8MMrzb_H8S2Ul6rBLdWUHd0ocSmI/edit?usp=sharing" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word;">state House</a> district in Michigan, where the GOP's gerrymandered maps will be replaced next year...</div></div>=boasts<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/john-cornyn/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/john-cornyn/</a>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/gerrymandering/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/gerrymandering/</a>==<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jim-jordan">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jim-jordan</a>ah  poster boy on gerryAmong Democrats, liberals, progressives, centrists and Never Trump conservatives, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio is one of the most notorious Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. And because of gerrymandering — and because his district is so reliably Republican — the 57-year-old Jordan keeps getting reelected year after year. In an <a href="https://thebulwark.com/lame-duck-the-end-of-the-most-gerrymandered-district-in-ohio/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">article published by the conservative website The Bulwark</a> on May 24, Cleveland-based journalist Keith Osmun examines the effect that the 2020 U.S. Census may have on Jordan in 2022.Jordan, a founding member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, presently represents Ohio's 4th Congressional District — where he was first elected in 2006 after having served in the Ohio State Senate and the Ohio House of Representatives.Osmun explains, "Since the 1930s, Ohio's 4th Congressional District has been under Republican control…. It is arguably the safest Republican district in the country. The current occupant of its seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is everyone's favorite Trump sycophant: Jim Jordan."Ohio has 16 congressional U.S. House districts; 12 of them are presently occupied by Republicans, while four are occupied by Democrats.Democrat Janet Garrett, who ran against Jordan in 2014, 2016 and 2018, told Osmun, "I knew the odds. I ran because I felt that it was imperative that somebody put up a fight. If he ran unopposed, they would tout him around the district as so wonderful no one wants to reproach him."Garrett said of Jordan, "He's never introduced any legislation other than a monument to someone. He doesn't introduce legislation; he's just a bomb thrower. He didn't go to Washington to legislate."What Ohio's new congressional map will look like in 2022 remains to be seen.Collin Marozzi, an ACLU attorney who has been fighting gerrymandering in Ohio, told Osmun, "Gerrymandering allows Jim Jordan to be the most Jim Jordan he can be: the most bombastic, bomb throwing, partisan person in Congress. He hasn't passed a single piece of legislation in ten years. He has no real incentive to compromise because he only has to worry about a primary challenge."Following the 2020 U.S. Census, Ohio will be losing a seat in the U.S. House — and it will have 15 U.S. House districts instead of 16. Osmun observes, "One of the happy byproducts of Ohio losing a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 Census is that the districts will be redrawn under more bipartisan rules put in place in the years since the 2010 Census…. If the changes work as intended, the ride 'safe seats' provide legislators like Jim Jordan will be a bumpier one in the midterms."<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/jim-jordan/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">GOP's Jim Jordan busted for lying about Nancy Pelosi and Capitol ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/jim-jordan/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">'Shut your mouth': Hearing goes totally off the rails after Jim Jordan ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/watch-jim-jordan-loses-it-over-ivanka-trump-subpoena-and-then-gets-schooled-by-rashida-tlaib/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Watch: Jim Jordan loses it over Ivanka Trump subpoena — then gets ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/powerful-gop-rep-jim-jordan-accused-turning-blind-eye-sexual-n888386" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan accused of turning blind eye to ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/10/us/ohio-state-university-wrestling-jim-jordan/index.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Ex-OSU wrestler says Jim Jordan knew about alleged abuse | CNN ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/jordan-osu-wrestlers-strauss-invs/index.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Six former wrestlers say Rep. Jim Jordan knew about abusive OSU ... ›</a></li></ul></div>=<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/illinois-supreme-court/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/illinois-supreme-court/</a></div><div>kos no maps</div><div>
</div><div>Five years ago, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled 4-3 along party lines to <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/8/30/1551530/-Illinois-Supreme-Court-blocks-redistricting-reform-initiative-Here-s-why-that-s-good-for-democracy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">block a Republican-backed effort</a> to place a redistricting initiative on the ballot that would have, counterintuitively, undermined the cause of fair representation in the Prairie State. But little-noticed elections taking place next year could hand Republicans a majority on the court for the first time in decades that would allow them to greenlight a similar effort. Such a move would open the door to distorted maps under the guise of promoting fairness—and could even allow Republicans to seize control of the legislature despite the state's deep blue lean.Illinois <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/story/2020/11/5/1992656/-The-2020-elections-were-a-disaster-for-a-decade-of-redistricting-further-securing-GOP-minority-rule" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">is one of just a handful of states</a> where Democrats will have full control over the redistricting process following the 2020 census, just as they did a decade earlier. However, thanks in large part to a decades-long history of <a href="https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/August-2017/How-Redlining-Segregated-Chicago-and-America/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">racist redlining and white flight segregation in Chicago</a> that has left voters of color heavily concentrated in urban areas, Democrats <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/30/1551530/-Illinois-Supreme-Court-blocks-redistricting-reform-initiative-Here-s-why-that-s-good-for-democracy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">face a "geography penalty"</a> that would leave them at a disadvantage even if the state utilized ostensibly nonpartisan maps.There's no question that the districts Democrats drew 10 years ago were gerrymandered—lawmakers didn't try to hide their intent. But because of this geography bias, these gerrymanders did not in fact lock in a Democratic advantage in excess of the party's popular support.One simple way to test this is to compare the political performance of the median district with that of the state as a whole; in Illinois, <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ug0ImtnXxAot4tvIfzO9EuYKk5XJB9qtjRz8DfcY63M/edit#gid=1639480230" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the median in the state House</a> was three points to the right of the state overall in 2016, while for the Senate it was identical and for Congress, it was just one point to the left. (In neighboring Wisconsin, by contrast, the median districts in GOP-drawn maps were nine to 12 points redder than the state.)Partisan gerrymandering is by no means the only way to counteract a geography penalty. An independent commission could, in particular, be instructed to consider the fairness of partisan outcomes when drawing new maps. But if Republicans take control of the Illinois Supreme Court, they could let conservative activists deploy a ballot initiative that omits such a requirement and even exacerbates the GOP's geography advantage by prioritizing "compact" districts.Such an effort could even lock in minority rule in Illinois. Democrats, however, have the opportunity to prevent this scenario by reforming the way state Supreme Court justices are elected, ensuring greater fairness for both the court itself and, by extension, the redistricting process overall.Illinois is one of just four states, along with Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi, that elects Supreme Court justices by districts rather than statewide. Unlike with legislative districts, however, <a href="https://twitter.com/sbagen/status/1154553428770787334?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">federal courts do not require</a> judicial districts to have equal population—the thinking being that judges aren't representative officials.That doesn't mean they're fair, though, particularly since Illinois' districts haven't been redrawn for over half a century. As a result, they've become so badly disproportional that the largest of the single-member districts, the 2nd, is home to more people than the two smallest—the 4th and 5th—combined, as shown in the map below (<a href="https://images.dailykos.com/images/948353/original/IllinoisStateSupremeCourtdistrictsby2014-2020statewideelectionresultswithmap.png?1621453106" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">see here for a larger version</a>). Unsurprisingly, this distortion has benefited more rural areas in the southern part of the state at the expense of voters in the Democratic-leaning Chicago suburbs.[map]thanks to this district-level distortion, Republicans could take control of the Supreme Court in next year's elections, even though Illinois is a solidly blue state that voted 57-40 for Joe Biden last year. Four seats on the court are up in 2022, and both the 2nd and 3rd Districts could host competitive elections. (Incumbent justices—<a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/1/2014977/-Supreme-court-races-in-these-10-states-are-key-to-protecting-fair-elections-and-halting-gerrymanders" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">one Democrat and one Republican</a>—should be heavily favored in the 1st and 4th Districts, respectively.)This means that if a recently appointed Republican justice holds his seat in the 2nd, and if the GOP can flip a Democratic open seat in the 3rd, they'll transform the court's current 4-3 Democratic majority into a 4-3 Republican advantage. And that advantage would last for a full decade, because justice serve 10-year terms, and the only other Republican isn't up for reelection until 2030 and holds a solidly red seat anyway.Normally those elections are what's known as "retention" elections—that is, voters simply say whether they want to keep an incumbent in office, yea or nay. To keep their job, a judge must earn 60% of the vote, though that's always been a foregone conclusion.That was, until last year, when Democratic Justice Thomas Kilbride in the conservative-leaning (and underpopulated) 3rd District <a href="https://www.illinoispolicy.org/kilbride-is-first-illinois-supreme-court-justice-to-lose-retention-vote/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">failed to win the supermajority he needed </a>to earn another term. That made Kilbride <a href="https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20201104/news/201109676" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the first Supreme Court justice</a> since retention elections were adopted in 1964 to lose such an election.It also set up a traditional partisan election next year in his district, which <a href="https://images.dailykos.com/images/916133/original/IllinoisStateSupremeCourtdistrictsby2014-2020statewideelectionresultswithmap.png?1612987894" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">voted for Donald Trump 51-47</a>. Kilbride's replacement, Democratic Justice Robert Carter, isn't seeking a full term, creating an open seat that Republicans have a strong chance to pick up. Meanwhile, the neighboring 2nd District, which backed Joe Biden by 55-43, will also hold a partisan election because appointed Republican Justice Michael Burke is seeking his first full term. If next year resembles a traditional midterm that disfavors the party in control of the White House, Burke could win despite the district's lean.Together, these two districts will determine who controls the court, and if Republicans take a majority, they could authorize the very sort of ballot initiative the court rejected in 2016—one that could penalize Democrats and voters of color based solely on where they live, due to a legacy of racism of which they're the victims.Some top Republicans appear to already be taking notice of how high the stakes are. Politico recently reported that GOP Rep. Darin LaHood <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/illinois-playbook/2021/05/13/davis-lahood-missed-the-vote-lightfoot-hire-ed-counting-on-the-council-492838" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">could be interested in running</a> for the critical 3rd District next year, which would given his party a much more prominent candidate than judicial races typically attract. (In an ironic twist, Democrats themselves could wind up giving LaHood more motivation to run if they try to make his congressional district bluer or combine him with another Republican.)Should Republicans get their way and succeed in revamping the redistricting process, it's easy to illustrate just how damaging districts that prioritize compactness and other nonpartisan criteria while ignoring fairness could be. The map below (<a href="https://images.dailykos.com/images/948295/original/Illinois.png?1621446846" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">see here for a larger version</a>) is a hypothetical example of just such an approach.[map]while these seemingly "clean" lines might look pleasing to the naked eye, the patterns they hold are troubling. Daily Kos Elections has <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M85xu2_KdXf7F_ftcUJZwCLtK_QsADuVRA6p5l-HyUU/edit#gid=2058537850" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">calculated key demographic and election result statistics</a> for these districts, which show that during the prior decade, no fewer than four different Democratic candidates for statewide office won their races but lost a majority of districts under this map—an outcome directly at odds with the fundamental notion in a two-party system that the party that wins the most votes should also win the most seats.Sen. Dick Durbin's successful reelection in 2014 best showcases this distortion: Despite his wide 54-43 margin, he would have carried only eight districts while his Republican opponent would have won 10. In fact, Durbin would have lost the median district in this scenario 50-46, putting it almost 15 points to the right of his statewide win.With a headwind like that, Democratic candidates for the House would have been hard-pressed, and Republicans could have wound up controlling a majority of the delegation. The same thing would be eminently possible under a future map like this one (albeit with 17 districts, since Illinois is losing one seat due to reapportionment), and not just for Congress but for the legislature as well.But Democratic lawmakers can go a long way toward ensuring fairer congressional and legislative maps if they simply redraw the long-neglected judicial map—something they are entirely empowered to do. And there's no need to gerrymander the lines: A nonpartisan approach that simply equalizes populations across districts would improve matters greatly.The map below (<a href="https://images.dailykos.com/images/948350/original/IllinoisStateSupremeCourtNonpartisanMapandDataSummaryWholeCookCounty.png?1621452732" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">see here for a larger version</a>) features one such proposal. It converts the 3rd District from a hodgepodge of disparate communities that sprawls across the state into a more cohesive district concentrated in the Chicago suburbs. Not only would its population be far closer to the ideal, this revised district would have favored Biden <a href="https://images.dailykos.com/images/916134/original/IllinoisStateSupremeCourtNonpartisanMapandDataSummaryWholeCookCounty.png?1612987917" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">by a 54-44 margin</a> rather than backing Trump.[map]this new 3rd District would reduce the chance that Republicans could gain a majority on the bench, but even this map would still give the GOP a large advantage when looking at the median seat—just not as gargantuan as under the current disproportional map. For instance, in the 2014 Senate election, which Democrat Dick Durbin won 53-43, Republicans would nonetheless have won a majority of Supreme Court seats.Consequently, more extensive long-term solutions are needed that go beyond merely redrawing these court districts. The wisest move would be to end judicial elections entirely in favor of a more merit-based appointment method <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_the_states" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">like those that other states have created</a> to insulate judges from the pressures of partisan politics. That, however, would require a constitutional amendment that involves a three-fifths vote in both legislative chambers followed by a statewide referendum, whereas simply redrawing the districts to equalize their populations would go through the ordinary legislative process.By the same token, Illinois Democrats could also put in place an independent redistricting commission with a mandate to produce congressional and legislative maps that ensure fair outcomes from a partisan perspective, short-circuiting any conservative attempt to pass a reform-in-name-only at the ballot box. The political hurdles to implement such an overhaul would be immense, however. Drafting a new judicial map would be far easier—but the window to do so won't remain open for long.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/trump-sabotage/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">The evidence of Trump's final act of 'sabotage' - Alternet.org ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/trump-immigration/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">US Supreme Court rejects Texas-led lawsuit seeking to protect a ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/supreme-court-penality/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">The long, cruel shadow of a 45-year-old Supreme Court death ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-illinois-pension-law-court-ruling-20150508-story.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Illinois Supreme Court rules landmark pension law unconstitutional ... ›</a></li></ul></div></div><div>=</div>=whatever happened to BO and Holder on Gerry?17 of 30 states that do it gop 11/20<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/republicans-2020/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/republicans-2020/</a>==
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/republican-election-fraud/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/republican-election-fraud/</a>Hours after President Biden declared that "democracy has prevailed" during his inaugural address, longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove urged Republicans to pressure GOP election officials and legislators to create "a model election code" to reconsider the laws surrounding 2020's two voting options that lead to the presidential election's record turnout.
"Republicans should also encourage GOP secretaries of state and state lawmakers to develop a model election code," Rove wrote in a January 20 <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-republican-future-starts-now-11611183715?mod=hp_opin_pos_2" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">commentary</a> for the Wall Street Journal entitled, "The Republican Future Starts Now.""The job of proposing electoral reforms shouldn't be based on the unsupported claims of widespread fraud peddled by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell," Rove continued. "Instead, the goal should be to suggest measures that restore public confidence in our democracy. How do states with extensive mail-in and early voting like Florida and Texas get it right?"Rove's commentary comes as Republican-majority legislatures in battleground states such as Georgia, <a href="https://www.ydr.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/01/21/pa-secretary-state-kathy-boockvar-testifies-election-hearing-state-house/6660041002/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Pennsylvania</a> and <a href="https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/voting-rights-advocates-decry-gop-bills-in-arizona-state-legislature-saying-it-amounts-to-voter-suppression" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Arizona</a> have proposed bills or convened hearings to review the laws that allowed people to vote with mailed-out ballots or early in-person in 2020."Whenever Karl Rove writes a piece in the Wall Street Journal, the history of it suggests that Democrats should pay careful attention," said David Daley, author of <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631495755" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy</a>. "Because the Wall Street Journal is where Republicans can signal to their donor class their key projects."In March 2010, Rove penned a Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703862704575099670689398044" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">commentary</a> openly discussing the GOP's <a href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">REDMAP project</a>, which targeted 107 state legislative seats that "would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats." REDMAP <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">succeeded</a>, creating GOP majority legislatures and congressional delegations in the otherwise purple states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Alabama.The website of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which drafts model bills for social conservatives and economic libertarians, did not yet promote election reforms on its website. However, it linked to the Conservative Action project, which <a href="http://conservativeactionproject.com/cruz-hawley-brooks-and-colleagues-follow-the-constitution/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">posted a defense</a> of the GOP lawmakers who opposed certifying the Electoral College slates from Arizona and Pennsylvania. The expanded use of voting via mailed-out ballots and early voting must be examined, it said."The 2020 election was conducted in an unprecedented manner: largely by mail, and in a way that overwhelmed the capacities of many states. It is not at all unreasonable to review the manner in which votes were counted," said the Conservative Action Project <a href="http://conservativeactionproject.com/cruz-hawley-brooks-and-colleagues-follow-the-constitution/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">memo</a>, which was signed by more than 100 activists and organizations. "Indeed, if the goal is to restore faith in future elections, then a comprehensive review and analysis to determine what went wrong, what went right, and what is in need of reform should be a critical next step."...gerry judge elections?=<h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 1em; font-family: Helvetica; color: rgb(31, 31, 31); cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">H<a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-democrats-are-fighting-back-to-undo-republican-gerrymandering/" aria-label="How Democrats are fighting to undo a decade's worth of Republican gerrymandering" style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" outline="outline" px="px" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height">ow Democrats are fighting to undo a decade's worth of Republican gerrymandering</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; color: rgb(31, 31, 31); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/steven-rosenfeld" style="color: rgb(31, 31, 31); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Steven Rosenfeld</a> <a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/independent-media-institute" style="color: rgb(31, 31, 31); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Independent Media Institute</a>  </div> October 23, 2020<div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2648465750" style="margin-top: 10px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; font-size: 17px; font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); text-overflow: ellipsis; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; overflow: hidden; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">The presidential and U.S. Senate races have dominated the 2020 election season. But down the ballot, races for state legislature and governor will determine the political complexion in many purple states for the next decade—much longer than the next president will</div></div>hope?kosbackers of putting an initiative on Arkansas’ November ballot to <a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/13/1927299/-Voting-Rights-Roundup-Coronavirus-may-disrupt-elections-The-U-S-must-enact-universal-vote-by-mail#14" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">create an independent redistricting commission</a> have announced that they <a title="" href="https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2020/08/05/drive-for-nonpartisan-redistricting-amendment-to-file-more-signatures-today" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">have filed 50,000 more signatures</a> following a <a title="" href="https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2020/08/05/drive-for-nonpartisan-redistricting-amendment-to-file-more-signatures-today" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">30-day deadline extension by Arkansas’ Supreme Court</a> while it reviews supporters’ appeal of GOP Secretary of State John Thurston’s decision to <a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/17/1961597/-Voting-Rights-Roundup-Pennsylvania-GOP-aims-to-gerrymander-the-court-that-blocked-their-gerrymander#7" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reject all of their signatures as supposedly invalid</a>. Thurston contends that signature-gatherers for this initiative and a separate one to <a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/10/1959795/-Voting-Rights-Roundup-Conservative-judges-deal-twin-setbacks-to-democracy-in-two-Wisconsin-cases#2" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">adopt a form of instant-runoff voting</a> had not “passed” background checks, even though the groups certified that they had “acquired” them.<div class="story-intro story-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Redistricting reformers <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/10/1959795/-Voting-Rights-Roundup-Conservative-judges-deal-twin-setbacks-to-democracy-in-two-Wisconsin-cases#2" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">had already submitted nearly 100,000 signatures</a> before the initial deadline earlier this summer, and combined with this latest tranche of signatures, they should have a sufficient cushion to ensure that at least 89,000 are valid statewide and are of a number equivalent to 5% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election in at least 15 of Arkansas’ 75 counties—that is, if the state Supreme Court overturns Thurston’s decision to reject all of their signatures in the first place.</div><div class="row" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="col-sm-12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="story-body story-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A federal appeals court <a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/7/24/1963571/-Voting-Rights-Roundup-Trump-order-to-remove-noncitizens-from-key-census-data-sparks-lawsuits#14" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">had recently rejected</a> allowing supporters to gather signatures without being witnessed in person, which a lower court had enabled so that voters could sign the forms at home and mail them in. However, while the plaintiffs haven’t indicated whether they would appeal that ruling, the fact that they just submitted tens of thousands of additional signatures shows that their loss in federal court may not end up defeating the ballot effort.If this effort does qualify for the ballot and wins voter approval, it would prevent Arkansas Republicans from gerrymandering the congressional and legislative districts for the first time since at least the Reconstruction era, if not ever...</div></div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/reformers-submit-signatures-to-put-a-measure-to-end-gerrymandering-on-arkansas-ballot-this-fall/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/reformers-submit-signatures-to-put-a-measure-to-end-gerrymandering-on-arkansas-ballot-this-fall/</a><div>=</div><div>dirty tricks gerry</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-dirty-republican-plan-to-cut-the-census-short-is-potentially-illegal/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-dirty-republican-plan-to-cut-the-census-short-is-potentially-illegal/</a></div><div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/cmd-files-irs-complaint-against-fair-lines-america-foundation-misreporting-its-2018-income/">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/cmd-files-irs-complaint-against-fair-lines-america-foundation-misreporting-its-2018-income/</a></div><div>
</div><div> Thursday, July 2, 2020Contact: David Armiak, Research Director, david@prwatch.orgMADISON, WI – The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed a complaint on Thursday, July 2, 2020, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against the Fair Lines America Foundation for underreporting its income in 2018.Tax records <a href="https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/displayAll.do?dispatchMethod=displayAllInfo&Id=5432374&ein=830626707&country=US&deductibility=all&dispatchMethod=searchAll&isDescending=false&city=&ein1=&postDateFrom=&exemptTypeCode=al&submitName=&sortColumn=orgNa" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">show</a> that in 2018, Fair Lines America Foundation brought in less than $50,000 in revenue. However, research from CMD revealed that Fair Lines America Foundation received a $225,000 gift in 2018 through <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6591977-DonorsTrust-2018-990.html#document/p67/a570366" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">DonorsTrust</a>, the preferred donor conduit of Charles Koch’s right-wing political network, and $12,000 from the <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/263853831/201901689349301210/IRS990ScheduleI" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Legacy Foundation</a>.“It is unclear why Fair Lines America Foundation misreported its revenue in 2018, but it did and it should be held accountable for doing so,” said David Armiak, CMD’s research director.Fair Lines America Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is led by the Republican Party’s “chief authority on redistricting,” Adam Kincaid. Fair Lines America Foundation’s sister organization, the 501(c)4 Fair Lines America, works to block the creation of independent redistricting commissions in the states, conducts redistricting trainings, and weighs in on redistricting litigation.Kincaid also is the executive director for the <a href="https://www.thenrrt.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">National Republican Redistricting Trust</a>, “the central Republican resource to coordinate and collaborate on a 50-state redistricting effort; focusing on the GOP’s redistricting-related legal and data needs.”In May, CMD <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/05/14/alec-holds-tutorial-republicans-chief-authority-redistricting-amidst-pandemic/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">exposed</a> Fair Lines America’s six-part “Mapping America” webinar for American Legislative Exchange Council (AELC) legislative members and “key redistricting staff.”On June 1, 2020 Fair Lines America Foundation launched “<a href="https://thearp.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">The American Redistricting Project”</a> to serve as an <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/500426-gop-group-launches-redistricting-site" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: inherit; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">alternative</a> to the Brennan Center for Justice, which fights against gerrymandering and advocates for nonpartisan redistricting.A copy of the complaint is viewable <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6979767-CMD-IRS-Complaint-Against-Fair-Lines-America.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/stealing-americas-democracy-one-vote-at-a-time/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/stealing-americas-democracy-one-vote-at-a-time/</a>bill moyers...pvy setting can't see vid ]<div>
</div><div>vot<a href="https://vimeo.com/416041932" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">er Suppression in North Carolina | 'Slay the Dragon (2020)</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/moyersandcompany" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">BillMoyers.com</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Vime</a>o]in this clip, journalists Vann Newkirk, Ari Berman and others explain how, in 2013, the North Carolina legislature quickly and systematically began rolling back almost every provision that had been passed in the previous 20 years aimed at registering more voters in the state, and particularly African American voters. And it’s not just North Carolina. Across the country, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/new-voting-restrictions-america" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">25 states have passed restrictive voting laws since 2010</a>.Bill Moyers talked with journalist Dave Daley earlier this year about gerrymandering and the 2020 election.BILL MOYERS: You describe the United States as a country covered with, quote, “democracy deserts.” What’s a democracy desert?DAVID DALEY: We talked about supermarket deserts sometimes, you know, places in which it’s really hard to find fresh food. What we are seeing across this nation is an outbreak of democracy deserts as well. Places where it is very, very difficult to ensure that you will have free and fair access to the ballot box or that a majority of citizens are able to translate their votes into a majority of seats.What you see as you look around the country are blue states, largely coastal states, that are making it easier for people to vote. You see things like automatic voting registration taking hold or expanding days of early voting, [and] making it possible to register online. All of these things that make it simpler and easier for people to vote. None of which, by the way, are partisan. All of these reforms are deeply nonpartisan and the academic studies make it clear that they do not help voters of either party.What we are seeing is an outbreak of democracy deserts. Places where it is difficult to ensure that you will have free and fair access to the ballot box .And then you see all of these red states which are going the exact opposite direction. You see voter ID bills. You see toxic, extreme partisan gerrymandering. You see racial gerrymandering. You see purges of voter rolls, 16 to 18 million Americans knocked off of voting rolls in the last two years alone. You see precincts being closed, especially in minority neighborhoods. You see days of early voting being taken away and often those days of early voting are exactly the days that state legislatures know that minority voters are most likely to go to the polls.You see all of these new voter ID requirements and that they have specifically chosen the forms of voter ID that they believe young and minority voters are least likely to have. I was able to obtain the files, tens of thousands of documents of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/794044665/the-private-files-of-thomas-hofeller-gop-redistricting-operative-are-now-public" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Thomas Hofeller</a>, the master Republican gerrymandering operative of the last 40 or 50 years after he died. And as I went through his files, and looked at his draft maps that he drew in North Carolina, he had on his computer the addresses of every single college-age voter in North Carolina along with whether or not they had a driver’s license. Because he knew that if they didn’t have a driver’s license they wouldn’t be able to vote. And he drew his districts knowing this. He drew these districts completely aware of who would and would not be able to vote.</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div>authoritarian to use levers of pwr in election</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/voting-rights-roundup-delay-in-2020-census-data-release-could-heavily-disrupt-redistricting-process/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/voting-rights-roundup-delay-in-2020-census-data-release-could-heavily-disrupt-redistricting-process/</a></div><div>
</div><div></div>an 420<h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/expert-who-wrote-a-book-on-republican-redistricting-warns-the-us-will-see-a-real-festival-of-partisan-gerrymandering-in-2021/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">Expert who wrote the book on Republican redistricting warns: US will see a ‘real festival of partisan gerrymandering in 2021’</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/expert-who-wrote-a-book-on-republican-redistricting-warns-the-us-will-see-a-real-festival-of-partisan-gerrymandering-in-2021/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson/" title="Posts by Alex Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Alex Hende</a>rson</h3><div>=</div><div>an 420</div><div>v<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/voting-rights-roundup-va-dems-expand-voting-access-and-reform-redistricting-in-historic-session/" rel="bookmark" title="Voting Rights Roundup: VA Dems expand voting access and reform redistricting in historic session" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" display="display" inline="inline" important="important" color="color">oting Rights Roundup: VA Dems expand voting access and reform redistricting in historic session</a></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div>=</div><div>220</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/voting-rights-roundup-virginia-dems-advance-redistricting-reform/" rel="bookmark" title="Voting Rights Roundup: Virginia Dems advance redistricting reform" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; font-weight: 700; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Voting Rights Roundup: Virginia Dems advance redistricting reform</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/voting-rights-roundup-virginia-dems-advance-redistricting-reform/" rel="bookmark" title="Voting Rights Roundup: Virginia Dems advance redistricting reform" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; font-weight: 700; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">an</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/voting-rights-roundup-virginia-dems-advance-redistricting-reform/" rel="bookmark" title="Voting Rights Roundup: Virginia Dems advance redistricting reform" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/voting-rights-roundup-virginia-dems-advance-redistricting-reform/</a></div><div>=</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-democrats-are-fighting-back-against-gerrymandering-and-voter-suppression/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-democrats-are-fighting-back-against-gerrymandering-and-voter-suppression/</a>no lnx maps
How Democrats are fighting back against gerrymandering and voter suppression
Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 9, 2020The redistricting process in Texas after the 2000 census produced a captivating drama. Eleven state senators fled to New Mexico in order to deny Republicans a quorum.
The Democrats escaped from Austin, a 641-mile trip, after learning that Republican leaders were planning to force them into a vote on redrawing Congressional districts in the Republicans’ favor…
A similar redistricting impasse occurred in May in the Texas House, when at least 50 Democratic members escaped to Ardmore, Okla., 30 miles north of the Texas border, for four days, scuttling the majority’s plans. That time, the Texas Rangers gave chase, and federal domestic security officials were enlisted to track down a private plane that took some of the lawmakers to Oklahoma…
The Democrats in exile appear convinced that redistricting is being orchestrated by Republican leaders in Washington, particularly the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, a Texan, as part of a plan to increase their power base so Republicans will retain a firm hold on power far into the future.
The efforts of the so-called “Texas Eleven” were ultimately unsuccessful and Republicans passed their gerrymandered map of congressional districts. The convolution, especially around urban areas and the southern part of the state, are pretty obvious.
That gerrymander resulted in Republicans gaining four seats in the House of Representatives, so it was a wildly successful effort by former Representative Tom Delay and his cohorts. When we talk about the success of Republicans in gaining legislative majorities at both the state and national level, it is impossible to overstate the role that gerrymandering has played in that process.
In an effort to fight back against that happening again following the 2010 census, Eric Holder and Barack Obama have teamed up to create the organization All On the Line. Here is how Obama described their goals.
With maps that deliver on the promise of equal representation, our political leaders will be forced to actually prioritize the will and well-being of the American people on the most pressing issues of our time. Think about how different that would look than what we’ve seen recently:
* Political ideologues who’ve spent eight years obsessed with repealing the Affordable Care Act and undermining its overwhelmingly popular, life-saving protections for pre-existing conditions.
* Washington politicians who’ve refused to acknowledge even the basic science of climate change—let alone the ever-growing majority of Americans demanding action to address this urgent crisis—and handed over policymaking to big oil and big polluters.
* Elected officials in the pocket of the gun lobby who’ve blocked common-sense gun laws in the midst of a uniquely American epidemic. We’re talking about measures supported by 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent of voters that would prevent tragedies, and they often can’t even get a vote.
* We’ve even seen Republican lawmakers in heavily-gerrymandered states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina write legislation to strip power from Democratic governors immediately after voters turned out in big numbers to elect them.
Because redistricting happens at the state level, this is a grassroots effort specifically targeted at 10 “swing” states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Of course, the other method Republicans have used to maintain their power is voter suppression. On Wednesday, the DCCC and the DSCC announced that they are investing millions of dollars to fight those efforts in battleground states. For example:
The DCCC and DSCC are suing to overturn laws in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Florida that have erected barriers to voting for targeted Democratic constituencies including voters of color.

* In North Carolina, the committees successfully challenged Republicans’ decision to eliminate early voting on the final Saturday of the early voting period. Within days of filing the suit, the Republican controlled North Carolina legislature reversed course and reinstated the early voting day they previously eliminated.
 
* In Georgia, the committees are challenging the high rate of rejected ballots—a likely result of a lengthy, confusing ballot that scores low on readability. We have also targeted Georgia’s signature match process that currently allows election officials to throw out ballots for no lawful reason.
 
* In Texas, the committees are challenging the state’s effective ban on mobile polling locations by requiring them to remain open for eight hours each day and stay open for the same number of days as the main early voting location in the county.
* The committees, along with the DNC are also supporting continued litigation regarding Florida’s signature matching requirement for vote by mail and provisional voters.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats did their part a few months ago by passing the “For the People Act,” which included electoral reforms that would resolve these structural issues. But of course, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take up the bill in the Senate, suggesting that it was merely a Democratic power grab.
As has been pointed out occasionally during the Democratic primary, these kinds of structural reforms are necessary for any of the plans proposed by candidates to be considered. Unless and until they can be passed legislatively, it is up to efforts like these to get the job done.
Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.<div>
</div>no lnx
Daughter of Late Redistricting Guru Reveals More of His WorkBy The Associated PressJan. 6, 2020
RALEIGH, N.C. — Thousands of formerly confidential documents and emails that influenced the outcome of a partisan gerrymandering lawsuit have been made public. A judge has yet to decide whether others should stay confidential.
The documents and emails belonging to the late Thomas Hofeller were placed on a website over the weekend by his daughter, Stephanie Hofeller. Hofeller said she first discovered them while visiting her parents' home in Raleigh shortly after her father's death in August 2018.
Stephanie Hofeller was estranged both personally and politically from her father at the time of his death and was critical of his work. Last year, she contacted lawyers for the nonprofit organization Common Cause North Carolina to tell them about the documents.
The group, along with state Democrats, subpoenaed the files for use in a lawsuit that accused Republican lawmakers of illegal racial and partisan gerrymandering in the redrawing of state legislative districts.
A very small number of the documents were used by the lawyers; a state court put the rest under a confidentiality order. A Wake County judge ruled in November that more than 100,000 of the documents were no longer subject to the order because they were Thomas Hofeller's individual work.
Attorneys, including one representing Hofeller's business partner, are still fighting over which of the remaining files should stay secret. But Stephanie Hofeller, who was not subject to the order because she isn't a party in the lawsuit, signaled weeks ago that she would be making many of the documents she obtained public.
“They belong to everybody, as they are evidence that concern The People, their right to franchise and their access to shared resources,” she wrote in a statement on the website.Thomas Hofeller had a nearly 50-year career in redistricting and had worked extensively over the past decade on North Carolina maps that helped pad and retain Republican majorities in the General Assembly. Court rulings last year struck down dozens of North Carolina General Assembly districts.The documents Stephanie Hofeller retrieved from external hard drives contain redistricting work her father did in several other states and also revealed his role in the Trump administration's efforts to include a citizenship question on 2020 census forms. Courts also blocked the citizenship question for the census.The files released on the website include statistics, tables, maps and other paperwork related to redistricting in North Carolina and other states including Arizona, Missouri, New York, Texas and Virginia.They also show extensive data collected on behalf of Republican lawyers defending a 2013 state law that narrowed voting access with provisions such as requiring a photo ID.Asked whether the documents that appear on the website are the same as those held by Common Cause, a spokeswoman for the organization declined to comment Monday. A lawyer for Stephanie Hofeller, Tom Sparks, said he was confident that the files she uploaded are authentic.State judges already have cited Hofeller's previously released files as evidence that 2017 legislative districts pushed by North Carolina Republicans were designed to maximize GOP advantage by “drawing Democratic voters into districts where their votes would be diluted, and in many cases where their votes would not matter.”
In a 2019 deposition before the partisan gerrymandering trial, Stephanie Hofeller said she was looking for family photos at her parents' house when she happened upon her father's work and told Common Cause about it.The uploaded documents contain photos, but also personal files and other sensitive material, including those related to Stephanie Hofeller. North Carolina GOP legislators had wanted a court to order the subpoenaed files destroyed, saying they were improperly obtained.Hofeller wrote in her online statement that she decided to offer it all in part to prove its authenticity: “So, when it comes to myself, I have the right to sacrifice a certain amount of my own privacy."<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/census-after-2020-californias-congressional-delegation-could-shrink-for-the-first-time-in-160-years/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/census-after-2020-californias-congressional-delegation-could-shrink-for-the-first-time-in-160-years/</a>c<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/census-after-2020-californias-congressional-delegation-could-shrink-for-the-first-time-in-160-years/" rel="bookmark" title="Census: After 2020, California’s Congressional delegation could shrink for the first time in 160 years" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: inline !important;">ensus: After 2020, California’s Congressional delegation could shrink for the first time in 160 years</a>no lnxCensus: After 2020, California’s Congressional delegation could shrink for the first time in 160 years
Written by Stephen Wolf / DailyKos January 2, 2020On Dec. 30, the Census Bureau released its newest population estimates for every state, detailing how many residents each state has gained or lost since the last census, in 2010. We’ve used these figures, along with estimates from previous years, to project how many seats in Congress each state is likely to gain or lose after next year’s census, when the Constitution mandates that all 435 House seats be reallocated according to each state’s share of the total U.S. population.
As shown in the map above (see here for a larger version), 17 states could see their number of districts change after the 2020 census, based on both the long-term 2010-2019 trend and the short-term 2018-2019 trend.
These projections also represent a shift, in some cases, from those that the firm Election Data Services issued a year ago, when the Census Bureau last updated its population estimates. These three changes are summarized below:
If California does indeed lose a seat, it would be the first time in 160 years that the Golden State’s representation in the House shrank.The 2020 census and subsequent reapportionment will thus set the stage for congressional redistricting. However, it’s difficult to predict with much accuracy what the partisan impact of these changes will be because we don’t yet know which party (if any) will control the redistricting process in many states. If redistricting had taken place after the 2019 elections, Republicans would have been able draw two to three times more congressional districts than Democrats. However, elections next year for governors, state legislatures, and redistricting reform measures will be crucial for setting the partisan landscape.
One thing we do know, however, is that much of the population growth in Sun Belt states such as Texas comes from black, Latino, and Asian-American residents, which could benefit Democrats in those states. However, many GOP-controlled states such as Texas have refused to allocate any supplemental funding to prevent undercounts of these populations.
Reapportionment will also determine how many Electoral College votes each state receives, since each state gets electoral votes equivalent to its number of House seats plus two for its Senate delegation. Adjusting the 2016 Electoral College outcome based on the above projections, Donald Trump would have gained three electoral votes, while Hillary Clinton would have lost three—not nearly enough to alter Trump’s 304-227 win.
Interestingly, the largely Midwestern and Northeastern states that are projected to lose seats almost all trended Republican in 2016, while the states forecast to gain seats—largely in the Sun Belt— almost all trended Democratic. These trends could benefit Democrats in the long term if they can start winning regularly in places such as Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, even if Republicans shift toward a greater reliance on carrying the Rust Belt.=this is marked up elsewhereredmap did systemic long term damage TP--> freedom cocks, suicide squad, unaccountable old white guys --> voter suppression, anti-abortion ...<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-decade-republicans-hijacked-our-democracy-via-the-gerrymander/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-decade-republicans-hijacked-our-democracy-via-the-gerrymander/</a>no lnx
The decade Republicans hijacked our democracy — via the gerrymander
Written by David Daley / Salon December 30, 2019
As this decade comes to a close, 59 million Americans live in a state where one or both chambers of the state legislature is controlled by the party that got fewer votes in the 2018 election.
In Wisconsin in 2018, voters elected a Democratic U.S. senator, defeated an incumbent Republican governor, picked Democrats for every statewide office, and favored Democratic candidates for the state assembly by more than 200,000 ballots. Republicans nevertheless controlled more than 63 percent of the seats.

We end the 2020s with voter purges in Ohio, Wisconsin and Georgia, with precinct closures weaponized to lower voter participation across the South, with Texas, Tennessee and Florida making it harder to register new voters. The ball drops on the 2010s with state legislatures in Florida, Michigan and Missouri willing to undo voting reforms approved by upwards of 60 percent of the people via initiative.
One of our final images of the U.S. House will be the floor debate over impeachment, with its dueling images of older, white men defending the president’s actions over Ukraine and younger members, largely women and people of color, insisting that no one, even a president, stand above the law.
White men make up a smaller slice of the American electorate with each election. Yet they maintain outsized power in Congress and state legislatures. A new decade dawns with a crisis of representation that threatens the integrity of representative democracy itself.
We’re in this mess, in many ways, because of gerrymandering. This was the decade that the gerrymander — perhaps the oldest political trick in the book — pushed American politics into a dangerous state of anti-majoritarianism, grounded in racial fear and identity politics, that may take at least another decade to overcome, assuming we ever do so.
It’s worth remembering how we got here. After all, the decade began with the likelihood that changing American demographics might push the nation in a very different direction.
As thousands celebrated America’s first black president in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night 2008, the smartest analysts on every network, left and right, watched Barack Obama defeat John McCain and wondered whether an increasingly diverse nation might render Republicans a minority party for decades.
Top Republican strategists had a different idea. The 2008 election might have been historic, they understood, but 2010 had the potential to be transformative. Every state legislative and congressional district in the nation would be redrawn after the 2010 census. State legislatures would draw most of the lines. If Obama and the Democrats suffered a difficult midterm election, as new presidents often do, Republicans could quickly change their fortunes, dominate redistricting, and draw themselves an enduring advantage, even in competitive states they’d lost in 2008, such as Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The GOP plan — known as REDMAP, or the Redistricting Majority Project — was headquartered at the Republican State Leadership Committee, led by former party chairman Ed Gillespie. It was announced on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal by no less than GOP mastermind Karl Rove. The RSLC’s key benefactors included Koch Industries, Walmart, Reynolds American and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The RSLC identified just over 100 state legislative races in crucial states, and drowned Democratic incumbents in waves of sophisticated negative advertisements in the final weeks of the 2010 race. (It helped that cocky Democrats snoozed on the importance of redistricting and barely put up any fight.) And when it came time to remap these states in 2011, using the most exacting voter data and sophisticated mapping technology ever deployed on redistricting, the political operations of new House Speaker John Boehner, Paul Ryan and many other establishment figures would play key roles.
It worked. In 2012, the first election held under these lines, Democratic U.S. House candidates won 1.4 million more votes than Republicans nationwide. Republicans held the chambers nevertheless, decisively, 234-201. In targeted swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, Democratic candidates would earn tens of thousands more votes, but the Republican-drawn districts packed and cracked those votes so precisely that the GOP would win 13 of the 18 seats from Pennsylvania and nine of 14 from Michigan. Democratic state legislative candidates would routinely win more votes in these states as well; Republicans would hold both chambers in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin regardless.
So yes, it worked. But it also contained the seeds of the party’s unraveling, placed a frustrated and impossible-to-please base in charge, and set the stage for an outsider to sweep up the pieces four years later.
But first, something else would happen in 2012: Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney, and shaken Republicans realized they’d lost the popular vote in five out of six presidential elections, GOP leaders commissioned a warts-and-all diagnosis of the party’s brand. It wasn’t pretty. One-time Republican voters now described the party as “scary,” “out of touch,” “narrow-minded,” even “stuffy old men.”
Its authors named the report the Growth and Opportunity Project but it soon became known by everyone as something catchier and more urgent: the Republican autopsy. Among the causes of death? Republicans had “lost their way with younger voters.” Many minorities “think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.”

It recommended that the party modernize itself, learn how to persuade and appeal to a wider variety of people, champion policies that make life better for working Americans rather than the rich, then head to communities Republicans had tended to avoid and make their case. “We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them, too,” the autopsy concluded.
When Donald Trump captured the GOP nomination in 2016, many Republicans bemoaned not following this advice from the autopsy and more, such as championing immigration reform and becoming genuinely welcoming and inclusive on social issues. But it was already too late. The autopsy itself had been dead on arrival, and long before Trump descended his gilded Manhattan escalator and joined the Republican race. It had already been smothered, unaware, by the very Republican establishment who commissioned the report.
REDMAP made it impossible.
The new districts drawn by Republicans made their districts older, whiter, and more conservative. These new districts — where the Republican primary was the only race that mattered — produced a different kind of congressman (and most of them were men), incentivized against compromise, insulated from the ballot box, interested in listening only to their base.
These members also didn’t much care for the Republican establishment in Washington. They would bring a much different tone and tenor to Congress. Boehner, now the House speaker, learned this right quick. In summer 2013, a first-term congressman from North Carolina’s 11th district wrote Boehner a letter, suggesting that the GOP look to defund Obamacare by threatening a government shutdown. Boehner knew it was folly. Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate. It was a strategy doomed to fail. Rove blasted it in the Wall Street Journal.
But Mark Meadows enlisted 79 other Republicans in this quest. His own district, previously a swing district that most recently produced a conservative Democrat, had been redrawn so that he captured it by more than 15 percentage points. It was 87 percent white.
In the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza and David Wasserman looked at the districts of the 80 signatories. They were, on average, 75 percent white and just 9 percent Latino, compared to an average district that’s 63 percent white and 17 percent Latino. In 2012, Obama won the national popular vote by 4 percentage points. In those districts, Romney won by an average of 23. The Republican members exceeded even that landslide margin: They won their seats by an average of 34 percentage points. As the nation changed, redistricting not only held back demographic change, but it turned back the clock and solidified conservative white power. As Lizza concluded, “these 80 members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.”
Boehner, given little choice, followed the “suicide caucus” over the cliff. Predictably, disaster ensued and he had to change course. And predictably, the “suicide caucus” saw no reason to compromise or change its own. This was just one of more than four dozen battles to repeal Obamacare in the House, none of which stood any greater likelihood of victory. Immigration reform, one of the only policy options the autopsy’s authors saw as crucial for the party’s future, stood no chance in this climate.
Neither did the GOP leadership. A year later, Meadows would turn on Boehner, filing a parliamentary motion to “vacate the chair” that would ultimately lead to the speaker’s resignation.
The House had been set on a dangerous new course. REDMAP, like some Frankenstein’s monster, would not only devour Boehner, but the new members empowered by these toxic, technology-driven gerrymanders would accelerate all of the worst polarizing trends in our politics. The Freedom Caucus, legislators created and empowered by REDMAP, would run the House. Ryan, Boehner’s  successor, would later step aside in frustration as well, proven ineffective despite GOP control of Congress and the White House. The autopsy wouldn’t be worth the paper it was printed on. The GOP establishment hoped that controlling redistricting would buy themselves time to set a new course. Instead, the party’s course, and our nation’s history, would beset by the new leaders that their gerrymandering rendered unbeatable and uncontrollable.
Did Boehner learn any lesson from his unholy creation? Well, earlier this month he and Ryan signed on as chairs of a Speakers Advisory Council generated to fundraise for the REDMAP creators’ 2020 redistricting strategy.
Here’s the thing: When you’re trying to ensure that the side with less support continues to hold power, when you’re trying to maintain control without talking to a changing nation, your tactics aren’t likely to end with redistricting. Indeed, efforts to make it harder for citizens to vote were among the very first actions by gerrymandered state legislatures, especially in Wisconsin and North Carolina, where a federal court found that those barriers were “surgically” crafted to target blacks. Gerrymandered legislatures can take such anti-democratic actions because the people’s representatives need not fear the judgement of the people. And after the U.S. Supreme Court undid essential protections within the Voting Rights Act, in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, states and other entities didn’t have to fear the courts, either, when they wanted to change the rules around voting. Across much of the nation, but especially in the South, as well as in states with one-party control and newly gerrymandered legislatures, came a flood of voter ID bills, cutbacks in absentee and early voting, voter roll purges, precinct closures and more.
Gerrymandered legislatures felt free to ignore the will of the people. Other legislatures followed along. In Florida, for example, where 64 percent of voters approved a 2018 state constitutional amendment ending felony disenfranchisement, lawmakers added an additional burden instead — complete repayment of any fines and fees connected to the sentence or prison term — that many critics compared to a poll tax. Legislators also undermined a legal victory allowing campus sites to be used for early voting with a sneaky provision that requires something always at a premium on colleges: Easy parking.
Texas would make it a felony for anyone to cast an ineligible ballot, even by accident. Arizona looked to dial back early voting and expand voter ID requirements. Tennessee passed legislation that would make it put those who run voter registration drives in jeopardy of massive fines if they submitted too many incomplete applications. Indiana made it harder to sue in state court to extend voting hours, often necessary when machines malfunction or when lines are long. Legislatures in Missouri, Utah, Michigan and Idaho worked to unwind popular 2018 initiatives won by citizens demanding reforms politicians had refused to make.
And so we end this decade with the water in Flint still undrinkable, thanks to gerrymandering.
In 2011, Michigan’s GOP-controlled legislature dramatically expanded the state’s power to take over financially struggling municipalities and place them under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager. Angry voters toppled the law in a November 2012 ballot initiative, concluding that it gave the state too much power to usurp local control and run roughshod over elected officials. One month later, lawmakers ignored the public and reinstated the program.
Then, in 2014, the emergency manager appointed to run Flint changed the city’s water supply to the Flint River and decided against installing corrosion inhibitors to properly treat the water, saving an estimated $140 a day. It sparked a lead contamination crisis and an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease that killed 12 people and sickened hundreds of children.
And so we end this decade with fetal heartbeat laws on the march in aggressively gerrymandered states like Ohio, Georgia and Alabama, that would enact abortion restrictions dramatically out of sync with the wishes of voters even in these red states.
And so we end this decade with a national consensus on gun control and putting an end to the horrifically numbing routine of mass shootings, but an anti-majoritarian and broken political system where large majorities are ever-stymied and unable, again and again, to translate the will of the people into action. The decade closes with consensus on climate change, but progress and agreements being rolled back.
We stand on the verge of the next redistricting cycle, which will begin in 2021, without the prospect of intervention from the federal courts, with the gerrymander wars headed south and the prospect of states using citizen population, rather than total population, to draw state legislative districts, all, again, with the goal of standing athwart demographic change and shouting “stop.”
These wars will be fought with Democrats, at last, fully awakened and focused on state legislatures. They’ll take place with dramatically more public awareness and media attention paid to the importance of structural voting issues that once made eyes glaze over. And they’ll be undertaken with solid majorities of Americans of all ideologies backing rules and reforms enshrine the best promises of our democracy.
But the damage that has done is severe and will be long-lasting. Forty years ago, when Raymond Donovan, the labor secretary under Ronald Reagan, was acquitted on fraud and larceny charges, he famously asked “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back.” We should all pose the same question about the way urgent issues went unaddressed during this bitter and polarized decade, stolen from us, in part, by the gerrymander.
It may require a generation to repair the damage to our civic fabric from this decade’s cynical and corrosive festival of partisan gerrymandering. It helped heightened and accelerated polarization, extremism and our dysfunctional politics. It’s incumbent on all of us to ensure it doesn’t get worse before it gets better. There may not be any battle in the next decade that’s more urgent.
David Daley, a former editor of Salon, is the author of the national bestseller “Ratfked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and the forthcoming “Unrigged: How Americans Fought Back, Slayed the Gerrymander and Reinvented Democracy.”<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/louisiana-republicans-fail-to-win-supermajority-to-override-democrats-vetoes-heading-into-redistricting/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/louisiana-republicans-fail-to-win-supermajority-to-override-democrats-vetoes-heading-into-redistricting/</a>n o lnx
Louisiana Republicans fail to win supermajority to override Democrats’ vetoes heading into redistricting
Written by Jeff Singer / Daily Kos November 18, 2019Louisiana Republicans unsuccessfully tried to win a two-thirds state House supermajority in Saturday’s runoffs that would allow them to override Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ vetoes. Instead, Team Red ended the night with 68 seats, which is two short of the 70 they needed.Democrat Mack Cormier unseated GOP incumbent Chris Leopold in a seat in the New Orleans area, which gives Democrats a total of 35 seats in the new legislature. The other two seats are held by independents Joe Marino and Roy Daryl Adams. Republicans won a supermajority last month in the state Senate, but Democrats will still be able to maintain Edwards’ vetoes as long as they can maintain party unity and win the support of at least one of the chamber’s two independents.There’s reasons to be optimistic that Marino and Adams will vote with Team Blue more than they’ll support the GOP majority: Marino says he voted for Edwards in 2015 and supported his criminal justice reforms, while Adams has an F-rating from the NRA because he supports banning bump stocks. Adams also was a Democrat until he filed to run for office this year, and he says he switched because he wanted to show voters he wouldn’t be beholden to any party. However, Marino does identify as a fiscal conservative while Adams says he opposes abortion, so they may still back the GOP on some issues.Members of both chambers of the Louisiana legislature serve four-year terms, so the legislature won’t be up again until after new congressional and legislative maps are due following the 2020 Census. However, both parties have very little room for error going into the redistricting cycle, and they’ll want to be ready for any special elections that might arise over the next few years.<div>
</div><div></div><div>yikes, does not bode well for 2020?</div><div>10/19</div><div><a href="https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/supreme-court-vacates-ruling-finding-michigan-unconstitutionally-gerrymandered-congressional-districts">https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/supreme-court-vacates-ruling-finding-michigan-unconstitutionally-gerrymandered-congressional-districts</a></div><div><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-variant-numeric="font-variant-numeric" normal="normal" font-variant-east-asian="font-variant-east-asian" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" white-space="white-space" pre-wrap="pre-wrap">=</div>~ hoefeller?(stacy abrams pod save million$?)
<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-news-joins-scott-walkers-disinformation-campaign-smear-eric-holders-effort-make">https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-news-joins-scott-walkers-disinformation-campaign-smear-eric-holders-effort-make</a>A  Fox & Friends segment about redistricting efforts led by former Attorney General Eric Holder falsely characterized his efforts as an attempt to rig elections. Holder is involved with several Democratic groups -- the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), the National Redistricting Foundation (NFR), and the National Redistricting Action Fund (NRAF) -- that are seeking to eliminate the impact of partisan gerrymandering on state and federal elections.<div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;">During its October 8 broadcast, Fox & Friends invited former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on air to smear Holder and his group’s efforts. Walker <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/21/scott-walker-gop-redistricting-1230489" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">is the face</a> of a group called the National Republican Redistricting Trust that has <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-holder/scott-walkers-gerrymandering-attacks-eric-holder-are-all-projection" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">fought to preserve</a> partisan gerrymanders that favor Republicans. Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth introduced the segment by hyping a Wall Street Journal editorial that <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-holders-redistricting-coup-11567638869" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">called</a> Holder’s initiatives a “redistricting coup” and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3834001" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">claiming</a> that the former attorney general is leading efforts to “turn districts blue in time for the elections,” citing a recent legal victory one of Holder’s groups had in North Carolina. Walker then provided a litany of false or misleading information about what has been going on in that state.First, some background: North Carolina has an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-carolina-gerrymandering/527592/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">ugly history</a> of Republican legislators drawing maps for elections along racial lines to diminish the power of Black voters. In 2017, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/north-carolina-gerrymander/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">struck down</a> two Republican-drawn congressional maps in the state, upholding a lower court decision that found them to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. However, that ruling did not solve all of the unfairness plaguing elections in North Carolina, where electoral maps were still largely drawn to advantage Republicans. Recently released documents indicate that following the 2017 Supreme Court ruling, North Carolina Republicans continued their racial gerrymandering efforts <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/hofeller-republican-gerrymandering-north-carolina.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">while lying to the district court</a> overseeing the map-drawing process. The effects of unfair district maps in North Carolina are obvious: In the 2018 federal elections, Democrats <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/08/how-gerrymandering-kept-democrats-winning-even-more-seats-tuesday/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">won 50% of the vote statewide</a> but only 23% of the state’s congressional races, taking just three of North Carolina’s 13 U.S. House seats. In the state legislature, Republicans <a href="https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2018/11/gerrymandering-election-nc-1118" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">lost the statewide popular vote</a> but still ended up controlling 29 of 50 Senate seats and 66 of 120 House seats.In response, Holder’s National Redistricting Foundation sued in state court, challenging the state legislative maps as an unlawful partisan gerrymander. In September, NRF <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/holder-affiliated-group-launches-new-challenge-to-partisan-gerrymandering-in-north-carolina/2019/09/26/c7574b5a-e0a1-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">won its lawsuit</a> and has followed up by filing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/holder-group-files-gerrymandering-suit-in-n-c/bc21c7d0-b56c-44c1-bcf7-bfbe5b41ae0e/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">a second lawsuit</a> challenging North Carolina’s federal congressional maps along similar lines. While appearing on Fox & Friends, Walker complained about the NRF lawsuits as part of a “sue until it’s blue mentality,” saying, “So even a state like North Carolina where Republicans are in charge of the Assembly and the Senate, the two houses there, they’ve gone to court.” But the whole point of those lawsuits is that the current makeup of the state legislature represents an ill-gotten advantage for Republicans precisely because they achieved their majorities using unfair district maps. Under Walker’s tortured logic, the fact that Republicans were able to achieve majorities in the state legislature by using obviously unfair maps is reason enough to keep those same partisan maps to decide future elections. (Walker <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/legacy/scott-walker-admits-it-former-wisconsin-governor-argues-votes-metropolitan-areas-shouldnt" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">has deployed similar mind-bending logic before</a> when <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottWalker/status/1144350611506438144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1144350611506438144&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Flegacy%2Fscott-walker-admits-it-former-wisconsin-governor-argues-votes-metropolitan-areas-shouldnt" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">defending</a> unfair election outcomes in his home state of Wisconsin.)[vid]Then Walker got conspiratorial. He said that Holder’s team “now controls who’s on the Supreme Court in North Carolina.” Walker seemed to be referencing the fact that in North Carolina, Supreme Court positions are <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/North_Carolina_Supreme_Court_elections,2020" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">determined by partisan elections</a> (which are decided <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/North_Carolina_Supreme_Court_elections,2018" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">by a statewide vote</a>, and therefore can’t be gerrymandered to give candidates supported by Holder or anyone else an unfair map advantage). A wide range of interest groups can participate in these state Supreme Court races through outside spending, but again, that doesn’t give Holder’s groups any special ability to determine Supreme Court election outcomes. </div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Walker’s bad-faith attacks on Holder continued throughout the segment. In once instance, after Hegseth extensively quoted <a href="https://redistrictingfoundation.org/news/2019/9/27/national-redistricting-foundation-supports-new-lawsuit-in-north-carolina-individual-voters-sue-in-north-carolina-state-court-over-partisan-gerrymandering-of-congressional-map" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">a statement</a> from Holder at NRF, Walker falsely claimed, “The irony is if you look at the forming files of the IRS they actually say, not that they’re fighting for fair maps, they talk about giving Democrats an advantage in this.” In reality, NRF, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/National_Democratic_Redistricting_Committee" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit</a>, states on IRS forms that the <a href="https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2017/820/757/2017-820757693-0f5386f1-9.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">organization</a> “seeks to oppose racial and partisan gerrymandering.”Towards the end of the segment, Hegseth made the allegation that Holder’s efforts are an attempt to rig elections, claiming that if he is successful, “Election Day becomes sort of a rigged process if the districts are determined beforehand in a partisan way.” Walker responded, “And that’s what Holder wants, he’s not talking about redistricting places like Maryland.”Setting aside the bizarreness of Hegseth and Walker appearing to agree that partisan gerrymandering is wrong on principle -- given that it is employed <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/who-gerrymanders-more-democrats-or-republicans/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">far more often</a> by <a href="http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1-busting-the-both-sides-do-it-myth/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Republican-controlled legislatures</a> -- Walker was lying again. Maryland is a prominent example of an exception to the rule as a state where Democrats have engaged in gerrymandering for unfair partisan gain. But Holder has spoken out about Maryland, comparing unfairness in that state to the unfair maps in North Carolina. On July 4, Holder <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eric-holder-if-the-supreme-court-wont-protect-our-democracy-voters-will/2019/07/03/735de22e-9cdc-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">published</a> an opinion piece in The Washington Post criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/opinion-analysis-no-role-for-courts-in-partisan-gerrymandering/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">recent ruling</a> that it has no jurisdiction over legal challenges to partisan gerrymandering. In his piece, Holder said, “As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her powerful and prescient dissent, the partisan gerrymanders in Maryland and North Carolina ‘debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.’”Walker’s appearance on Fox & Friends is the latest example of the dishonest tactics he employs in his <a href="https://www.concordmonitor.com/Sununu-right-to-veto-redistricting-bill-27852699" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">media tour</a> for the National Republican Redistricting Trust. Walker’s go-to argument is that Holder’s groups favor partisan gerrymandering that benefits Democrats, while his own group just wants fair maps. But the real-world actions of the groups <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-holder/scott-walkers-gerrymandering-attacks-eric-holder-are-all-projection" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">indicate just how brazenly dishonest Walker is</a>. For example, in Pennsylvania, Holder backed efforts to have electoral maps drawn in an independent nonpartisan fashion. Walker’s group, however, was also involved in litigation in Pennsylvania, and attempted to preserve a partisan gerrymander that benefitted Republicans. (As governor of Wisconsin, Walker himself <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/127319438.html/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">participated</a> in drawing unfair maps in that state to benefit his party.)In essence, Walker is guilty of the very partisan gerrymandering misdeeds he often accuses Holder of participating in -- but in media appearances, he flips reality and his own record to claim the opposite. The only consistency in Walker’s arguments is that he will say anything to give the Republican Party an unfair advantage.</div></div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/files-expose-republican-strategists-massive-racial-gerrymandering-scheme-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/files-expose-republican-strategists-massive-racial-gerrymandering-scheme-report/</a><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/gerrymandering-gop-west-virginia-florida-alabama/">https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/gerrymandering-gop-west-virginia-florida-alabama/</a>
np lnx maps docs
The REACH OF late Republican gerrymandering mastermind Thomas Hofeller may be longer than previously known, according to a review of thousands of documents and emails culled from his hard drives, obtained by The Intercept. While Hofeller was known for drawing maps to give Republicans an advantage and to limit the impact of voters of color in North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, and Virginia, the new documents reveal he also participated in the 2010 redistricting cycle in Alabama, Florida, and West Virginia.And, in those three states, it appears Hofeller and other Republican mapmakers experimented with using race as the primary factor in drawing districts in these states — a tactic ruled unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same under the law. Among the trove of over 70,000 documents are draft maps with voter data broken down by race, spreadsheets that include the home addresses of members of Congress, travel plans, and legislation marked up by Hofeller himself.
Hofeller’s files reveal the sophisticated racial data that drove GOP mapmaking in several states, potentially opening new avenues for litigation.These new documents shed additional light on the coordinated national strategy behind maps that locked in a GOP advantage in Congress and in state legislatures nationwide. They reveal the sophisticated racial data that drove GOP mapmaking in several states, potentially opening new avenues for litigation challenging these plans as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders — including one Alabama case that will be heard in a U.S. district court in seven weeks — or as violations of state constitutional protections of free and fair elections. And they show that Hofeller intentionally failed to disclose his involvement in Florida redistricting in an affidavit filed with a court.
Taken together, these revelations provide a powerful wake-up call ahead of the next round of redistricting, which will begin in 2021, about how determined and effective strategists, armed with voluminous voter data, can tilt the political playing field for a decade.
AlabamaIn Alabama, meanwhile, files from backups of Hofeller’s hard drives reveal that he was involved in the 2010 redistricting cycle from the very beginning, long before the first district was drawn.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Alabama state legislative maps as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in 2015, finding that Republican legislators — in a signature Hofeller move — intentionally packed minority voters into as few districts as possible, creating a handful of overwhelmingly black districts and strengthening Republican prospects elsewhere. Hofeller’s involvement, however, was unknown.
Meanwhile, a potential racial gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts is still being litigated: A federal district court will hear arguments in Chestnut v. Jones beginning November 4.
Hofeller edited and advised on a document called the “Reapportionment Committee Guidelines for Legislative, State Board of Education, and Congressional Redistricting State of Alabama,” the legislature’s starting point for the 2011 redistricting.
According to Hofeller’s email, he met with and shared these edits with the chair of the Alabama state House redistricting commission, Rep. Jim McClendon. McClendon wrote and received these emails at his personal account and not an official legislative address. A document saved as “Guidelines with Tom’s further comments” includes his line-by-line edits and changes. Additional emails referencing these guidelines copied Hofeller’s partner, Dale Oldham, and another copied then-RNC general counsel and national committee member John Ryder.
A folder with the name “Alabama” includes a five-year estimate of citizen voting-age population, along with a document titled “Minority Districts in 2012 Alabama Legislative Redistricting.” Hofeller’s files also include a spreadsheet with information on Alabama citizenship estimates, broken down by race, as well as a link to census information saved in a Microsoft Word document with the name “Alabama 18 and older race link.”
The upcoming litigation, brought by eight Alabama voters, asserts that Republicans packed black voters into one congressional district, the 7th, and then effectively scattered the state’s remaining black voters in such small concentrations as to dilute their voting power. Hofeller’s involvement with McClendon, the racial data he collected — and his history of drawing maps in Virginia and North Carolina later found to be racial gerrymanders with precisely this pattern — could be relevant to ongoing questions and litigation about racially motivated gerrymandering.Guidelines With Tom's Further Comments11 pagesThe relevant documents are available here:
Guidelines with Tom’s further commentsAlabama 18 and Older Race LinkMeet442011AGInside Hofeller’s folder labeled “Alabama”:
Minority Districts in 2012 Alabama Legislative RedistrictingAL STATE CVAP 5-YEAR ESTIMATES 2010-12ACS Proportions 2010-2012Alabama House Districts (104)
FloridaIn Florida, the documents raise questions about whether Hofeller intentionally failed to disclose his involvement with GOP redistricting operatives in a 2013 affidavit in which he attested he had no contact with GOP legislators or staff who drew that state’s maps.
Hofeller died in August 2018. But his willingness to avoid disclosing highly relevant information in this affidavit could affect the discovery process in other states where litigation is still pending, and where Hofeller may have been involved. And it creates the opportunity for legal teams in previous cases to petition courts to reopen discovery if the full extent of Hofeller’s participation was discoverable but not revealed.
That litigation, brought by the state’s League of Women Voters, alleged that Republican strategists drew partisan maps behind closed doors, then smuggled them into the public process, in violation of two state constitutional amendments mandating nonpartisan redistricting.
Hofeller’s affidavit, dated March 8, 2013, swears that, “To the best of my recollection, I have not been in contact, or exchanged data or maps, with any Florida legislators or members of their staffs, concerning Florida redistricting since the release of the Census Bureau’s 2010 Decennial Redistricting File in early 2011.”According to an email chain between Hofeller and two top Florida GOP strategists, Hofeller flew to Tallahassee for meetings on October 10 and 11, 2011. The emails include Hofeller and Sunshine State operatives Frank Terraferma and Rich Heffley, and were sent to Hofeller at an address named “Tom Hofeller – redistricting.” Terraferma sent this email from his official Republican Party of Florida account, as the three strategists finalized travel details. Hofeller may not have been communicating directly with legislators, but he was meeting with the party officials who were actually drawing the maps and helping funnel them into the legislative process.
Hofeller may not have been communicating directly with legislators, but he was meeting with the party officials who were actually drawing the maps.Evidence produced during the Florida trial showed that, in the same month, the two Republican consultants traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with veteran GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, and days later, shared nearly completed state Senate maps. And during the last week of October, the consultants finalized the congressional maps, and then completed work on the state Senate maps by mid-November. Emails that came to light during the trial showed the operatives’ determination to use racial data to pack as many minority voters as they could into as few districts as possible.
And, in a newly surfaced email in May 2012, Terraferma sent Heffley, Hofeller, and others an email saying, “We got pre-cleared today BTW,” and linking to a Miami Herald article approving pre-clearance of redistricting maps. At the time, pre-clearance was required under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where there was a history of voter discrimination. “This is very good news,” Hofeller wrote, forwarding the message on to other redistricting specialists at the RNC.
Hofeller’s files, meanwhile, include mapping software programmed with the addresses of Florida incumbents — as well as a spreadsheet from July 2011 named “Florida Minority Senate Data.” While the rows are not labeled, they appear to show minority voting strength across a dozen state Senate districts.
The final maps adopted by the legislature included several districts identical to ones drawn by Terraferma (that surfaced during the Florida trial), but submitted under the name of a former Republican Party intern, who later denied any knowledge of the maps. (Terraferma and Heffley did not respond to a request for comment but during testimony asserted they drew these maps as a “hobby.”) In 2014, a Florida circuit judge invalidated many of these districts, ruling that overwhelming circumstantial evidence demonstrated that GOP operatives had conducted a secret, shadow redistricting process in violation of the state constitution.

FL Hofeller Affidavit 3 8 2013 Redacted4 pagesThe relevant documents are available here:
FL Hofeller Affidavit 3 8 2013FLORIDA MINORITY SENATE DATAFLORIDA INCUMBENTS
West VirginiaHofeller also possessed maps of the Charleston, West Virginia, metro area color-coded by race. One map shows the percentage of voting-age black citizens block by block. There has never been any previous indication that Hofeller was involved in drawing West Virginia maps.
“This would be beyond the pale,” said Rick Martin, president of the NAACP’s Charleston branch. “This is all a strategy designed to weaken and in many instances negate the vote of African Americans and also poor people.”WV Charleston Area1 pageThe relevant documents are available here:
CLOSE IN CHARLESTON AREACLOSE IN CHARLESTON BLOCKSWV – CHARLESTON AREAGreater Charleston Area – AA Pop<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-have-rigged-the-maps-and-manipulated-elections-why-wont-democrats-talk-about-it/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/republicans-have-rigged-the-maps-and-manipulated-elections-why-wont-democrats-talk-about-it/</a>no lnx
Republicans have rigged the maps and manipulated elections — why won’t Democrats talk about it?Written by David Daley, Adam Eichen / Salon September 19, 2019As Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and the other leading Democratic presidential contenders prepared to debate in Houston last week, Crystal Mason readied for an important hearing of her own less than 200 miles away.
In 2016, Mason unknowingly committed a crime by casting a provisional ballot. In Texas, citizens with felony convictions are disenfranchised pending completion of their sentences. Mason, on supervised release at the time, did not know that. While her ballot was rejected, the district attorney nevertheless pursued a criminal case — and won a staggering five-year sentence, a chilling precedent for provisional ballot users. All Mason can do now is appeal the ruling.
Mason’s story — along with a botched voter purge in Texas this spring, a strict voter ID law that accepts a gun license at the polls but not a student ID, and aggressive precinct closures in minority communities — should have encouraged moderators to ask the Democratic candidates about their democracy reform agendas. This conversation could have led to a broader discussion about voter suppression, gerrymandering and the scourge of big money in politics.
Once again, there was not a single question on the subject. Democrats debated the intricacies of their health care proposals and how they’d address gun violence and immigration — none of which are actually likely to become law without first addressing the structural issues that stand in the way of passing legislation extraordinarily popular with most Americans.
There have now been three Democratic debates. They have taken place in Florida, Michigan and Texas, each of which exemplify the story of American democracy over the past decade: Republicans took power in 2010, then rigged maps and election rules to prevent Democrats from regaining power, even when they won more votes. And there still hasn’t been a single extended conversation about it.

Failing to ask about democracy not only keeps the public in the dark about the root cause of Democratic impotency over the past decade, but also gaslights the countless Americans who have stood up as part of a nonpartisan movement to democratize our political institutions.In Michigan, for example, Republicans gerrymandered the state so well that the party held nine of 14 congressional seats after 2012, 2014 and 2016, even in years when Democratic candidates won 200,000 more votes. Democrats have also dominated the statewide vote for the state house since 2012, but have not been able to translate a majority of votes into a majority of seats during this entire decade.In response, the nonpartisan Michigan-based group called Voters Not Politicians successfully led a statewide ballot initiative to end gerrymandering by removing the power to draw state and congressional district maps from politicians. A simultaneous grassroots effort to expand the franchise culminated in another victorious ballot initiative that included automatic and same-day voter registration.In response, GOP officials filed a lawsuit to prevent the voter-approved independent redistricting commission from going into effect and made it more difficult to run ballot initiative campaigns in the future.Last year in Florida, the Second Chances campaign won a ballot initiative for a state constitutional amendment that brought  together liberals and conservatives with the goal of re-enfranchising those convicted of felonies who have completed the terms of their sentence, excluding murder and sexual abuse perpetators. (Ex-felons meeting those criteria in Florida — approximately 1.4 million of them at this moment — had lost voting rights permanently unless granted clemency due to a Jim Crow-era constitutional provision.)Republican officials, immediately following this victory, approved a new law restricting enfranchisement to those who paid fines, fees and restitution — a modern-day poll tax. The state legislature, in recent years, has additionally sought to make voter registration drives harder, limit early voting on college campuses and curtail language accessibility. Right now, there is a campaign to make ballot initiatives almost impossible to win.In Texas, partisan gerrymandering likely cost Democrats five Congressional seats in 2016, according to election expert Stephen Wolf. Equally disturbing, the state GOP has passed strict voter registration hurdles and implemented discriminatory voter ID laws, all of which primarily targeted minorities and communities of color.The anti-democracy efforts in Michigan, Florida and Texas — supported by millions of dollars in dark money and independent expenditures — merely scratch the surface of partisan gamesmanship. In states nationwide, as voting rights are rolled back, the next wave of gerrymanders are being planned, and campaign finance regulations assailed.Our democracy is up for grabs. We can resign ourselves to minority rule or work towards full enfranchisement and equal representation. Democracy suffers every time we fail to elevate this story. The news media, as the only profession with special constitutional protections, holds an important responsibility here. Thus far, these news organizations have not lived up to it.
The next debate will take place next month in Ohio, another state plagued with gerrymandering, voter purges and other anti-democracy endeavors. As Crystal Mason understands far too well, we fail to discuss these topics at our own peril.
David Daley, a former editor of Salon, is the author of the national bestseller “Ratfked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and the forthcoming “Unrigged: How Americans Fought Back, Slayed the Gerrymander and Reinvented Democracy.”MORE FROM DAVID DALEY
Adam Eichen is an American author and activist focused on highlighting the emerging democracy movement in the United States. With Frances Moore Lappé, he co-authored “Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want“(Beacon Press, 2017).OMFG
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/secret-files-reveal-how-north-carolina-gop-operative-helped-systematically-stopped-black-people-and-students-from-voting">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/secret-files-reveal-how-north-carolina-gop-operative-helped-systematically-stopped-black-people-and-students-from-voting</a>no lnx
Secret files reveal how North Carolina GOP operative helped systematically stopped black people and students from voting
Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 11, 2019Secret files found on a longtime Republican operative’s computer after his death revealed that he compiled racial data to help his party draw new political maps and impose voter ID laws.
Thomas Hofeller, who is considered the master of modern gerrymandering, left behind at least 70,000 files that were found by his estranged daughter after his death in August 2018. Some of those files have already been used to successfully challenge North Carolina’s gerrymander and the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the census, which Hofeller argued would help “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”
More files, obtained by former Salon editor David Daley at The New Yorker, show that Hofeller and his race research played a key role in Republican gerrymandering efforts in North Carolina and other states, as well as other efforts intended to make it harder for African-Americans and college students to vote.
Though North Carolina Republicans have argued that their maps discriminate based on partisanship and not race, Hofeller’s files show that he compiled maps with overlays of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that racial data was a key part of the gerrymander, which is at the center of a years-long legal battle.
The files contradict claims Republicans have long used to defend their maps in court. Republicans had long denied that a congressional-district line that cuts right down the middle of the largest historically black college in the United States, North Carolina A&T State University, was intentionally drawn to dilute the black vote, even though it effectively guaranteed two Republican districts. But Hofeller’s files show that the effort clearly focused on the race of students.
Hofeller created “giant databases that detailed the racial makeup, voting patterns, and residence halls of more than a thousand North Carolina A&T students,” Daley reported. “He also collected similar data that tracked the race, voting patterns, and addresses of tens of thousands of other North Carolina college students. Some spreadsheets have more than fifty different fields with precise racial, gender, and geographic details on thousands of college voters.”
A spreadsheet found on Hofeller’s computer shows that the operative sorted students by the residence halls they lived in along with racial data and voting status information.
Hofeller also had dozens of “intensely detailed studies” of the racial makeup of North Carolina college students that was cross-referenced with driver’s license files to determine whether these students likely had a proper ID to vote, according to the report.
Emails on his computer also show that Hofeller billed North Carolina Republicans tens of thousands of dollars for his work. Federal Election Commission filings also show that the national Republican Party paid Hofeller more than $2 million for his work.
Other files show that Hofeller, a key player in the Trump administration’s push to add a citizenship question to the census, compiled data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, Arizona and other states going back to 2011. In memos, Hofeller argued that drawing maps based on the number of citizens rather than the population would “clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and help “non-Hispanic whites.”
Hofeller also submitted memos to the Trump administration urging them to justify the census question with the dubious argument that it was necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The New Yorker report shows that he also worked for a Massachusetts Republican who wanted to use the Voting Rights Act to turn Boston into a single district, so Republicans could contend for suburban Massachusetts congressional seats. Though Hofeller’s efforts were unsuccessful in Massachusetts, the files show he also compiled data on states like Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama.
Emails found on Hofeller’s computer also show that he advised top Republicans in Florida on gerrymandering effort, despite a state constitutional amendment that bars partisan gerrymandering. Florida officials have denied that Hofeller played any official role in the effort but a state judge later ruled that the Republicans “conducted a stealth redistricting operation that snuck partisan maps into the public process and made a ‘mockery’ of the state’s constitutional amendments,” The New Yorker reported.
The files show that Hofeller also traveled around the country to educate Republicans about redistricting and urged them to push for prison gerrymandering, which allows inmates to be counted as residents of the area where the prison is located, often helping Republican lawmakers.
Hofeller’s emails also show that he grew concerned that his maps would be undone by the anti-Trump wave that followed his election.
“Meanwhile the GOP continues to bury its collective heads in the sand or in other higher places. Trump is only a product to this stupidity,” he wrote to a Republican consultant in 2016. “Do not worry about us in North Carolina in terms of redistricting. Even in the coming political bloodbath we should still maintain majority control of the General Assembly. The Governor cannot veto a redistricting map, so the Democrats hope is that the Obamista judiciary will come to their rescue.”
Last week, a North Carolina court struck down the state’s legislative maps that Hofeller helped create, ruling that they violated the Constitution. The new map had been drawn after the Supreme Court struck down North Carolina’s previous map as a racial gerrymander.
The court ruled that Hofeller’s maps “deliberately minimized the effectiveness of the votes of citizens with whom they disagree,” arguing that the map amounted to “viewpoint discrimination” against Democrats and an effort to “retaliate against voters” for voting for Democrats.
The court said that the files on Hofeller’s computer showed evidence of “predominant focus on maximizing Republican partisan advantage in creating the 2017 Plans.”
“The evidence establishes that Dr. Hofeller drew the 2017 Plans very precisely to create as many ‘safe’ Republican districts as possible, so that Republicans would maintain their supermajorities, or at least majorities even in a strong election year for Democrats,” the court said. “Hofeller drew the maps with an intent to preserve Republicans’ control of the House and Senate.”
The court gave state lawmakers two weeks to draw nonpartisan maps. Republicans have sued to try to get a court to seal or destroy the files, arguing that they should remain confidential because they were obtained from his daughter and not from him.
The files could be a treasure trove for voting rights groups as they seek to challenge years of Republican efforts to gerrymander districts in order to gain an unfair advantage, as well as to impose voter ID laws to make it harder for certain populations to vote.
“We’ve already seen that these files have been instrumental in exposing lies around the effort to add a citizenship question to the census and around subverting a court’s order to redraw gerrymandered lines,” Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director of Common Cause, told The New York Times. “The Hofeller files are important because they’re the only thing that will allow the American people to know the truth behind the efforts to rig redistricting and elections.”
The files show only a fraction of the work Hofeller did, which stretches back to the 1980s. Files obtained by The New Yorker show that Hofeller continued to work to help Republicans even after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“I still have time to bedevil the Democrats with more redistricting plans before I exit,” he wrote to a friend. “Look my name up on the Internet and you can follow the damage.”<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/major-victory-against-gop-gerrymandering-state-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-legislative-maps/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/major-victory-against-gop-gerrymandering-state-court-strikes-down-north-carolinas-legislative-maps/</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/one-mans-revolutionary-plan-to-save-our-democracy/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/one-mans-revolutionary-plan-to-save-our-democracy/</a>rank choice voting<div>=</div><div>djt caves on census, but get data from big gov't dB to gerry</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/voting-rights-expert-responds-to-trumps-citizenship-announcement-goal-is-to-shift-power-to-white-gop-areas/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/voting-rights-expert-responds-to-trumps-citizenship-announcement-goal-is-to-shift-power-to-white-gop-areas/</a></div><div>
</div><div>A voting rights expert is weighing in on what <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Trump" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">President Donald Trump</a> just announced, and says Americans were right to be wary of the administration’s goals in adding a citizenship question to the U.S. Census.</div><div class="p1_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While Trump was <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2019/07/total-defeat-expert-says-trump-is-waving-white-flag-on-citizenship-question/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">forced to back down from adding the question</a> to the Census – thanks to the U.S Supreme Court and other federal court rulings – he says he will direct every government department to hand over all data they have to determine how many people in the U.S. are citizens, non-citizens, and undocumented immigrants.<div class="p2_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="8080761699" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" data-adsbygoogle-status="done" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; height: 75px;"><ins id="aswift_0_expand" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-table; border: none; height: 75px; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 630px; background-color: transparent;"><ins id="aswift_0_anchor" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; border: none; height: 75px; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 630px; background-color: transparent; overflow: hidden;" /></ins></ins></div>Ari Berman, who writes at Mother Jones and is the author of the book, “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” says that Trump’s remarks today reveal what the goal has been in adding the citizenship question all along.<div class="p3_12" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Berman points to Trump’s comments about the Census and “voter eligible population,” saying the goal “all along was to draw districts to shift power to white GOP areas.”...<div style=""></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/everybody-hates-john-roberts/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/everybody-hates-john-roberts/</a>no lnx Everybody hates John RobertsTHE WASHINGTON MONTHLY30 JUN 2019 AT 14:08 ETIf a successful compromise is one that leaves both sides disappointed, then John Roberts had a banner day on Thursday. Liberals inclined to view the Supreme Court chief justice as a loyal Republican operative saw bitter confirmation in his decision that federal courts have no power to stop partisan gerrymanders. But conservative die-hards who questioned Roberts’s commitment to the movement will shake their heads at his decision to block the Trump administration, at least temporarily, from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. That’s not to say that the partisan impact of the two rulings will be symmetrical. Roberts, who once famously insisted that his job is “to call balls and strikes,” tends to afford Republican pitchers a wider strike zone. But the pair of rulings gave each side plenty to fume about.If you don’t believe me, just read Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in Department of Commerce v. New York, the census case. The question was whether the U.S. Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, would be allowed to add a question to the 2020 census asking whether respondents are U.S. citizens or not. While Roberts agreed with the other four conservatives that the answer ordinarily would be yes, he joined the liberal bloc in ruling that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s stated rationale for adding the question—that it was necessary to allow the Department of Justice to protect minority voters—was transparently false. The real reason was that the Census Bureau’s own research showed that a citizenship question would suppress response rates among undocumented immigrants, thereby leading to an undercount in Democratic-leaning areas and further enhancing Republican power after the 2021 round of redistricting.The proof of this was overwhelming. As Roberts put it in an understated summary:That evidence showed that the Secretary was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office; instructed his staff to make it happen; waited while Commerce officials explored whether another agency would request census-based citizenship data; subsequently contacted the Attorney General himself to ask if DOJ would make the request; and adopted the Voting Rights Act rationale late in the process.In short, Roberts concluded, the voting-rights rationale was a pretext. Judges should give government officials the benefit of the doubt, he wrote, but “[a]ccepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of” judicial review.You might think that would be an uncontroversial notion. But all four of Roberts’s conservative colleagues would have allowed the government to go forward with the question. Thomas’s dissent, which was joined by Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, was dripping in indignant contempt, all but accusing the majority of discriminating against the Trump administration: “The Court therefore upholds the decision of the District Court—which, in turn, was transparently based on the application of an administration-specific standard.” Later, in a passage that, other than syntactically, would not seem out of place in a Sean Hannity monologue, Thomas added: “I do not deny that a judge predisposed to distrust the Secretary or the administration could arrange those facts on a corkboard and—with a jar of pins and a spool of string—create an eye-catching conspiracy web.”From the pitch of his outrage, you could almost forget that Thomas and the conservatives claimed victory in the day’s more consequential ruling, on partisan gerrymandering.There’s nothing inherently conservative about gerrymandering—indeed, Thursday’s case, Rucho v. Common Cause, involved both a Republican gerrymander in North Carolina and a Democratic one in Maryland—but the decision is a boon to Republicans for the simple reason that they currently benefit far more from it. There are, in other words, more North Carolinas than Marylands. When Republicans swept into power in statehouses around the country in 2010, just in time for redistricting, they were armed both with both sophisticated new technology and an unprecedently rigorous plan for deploying it. The result is that in many states, Democrats are effectively locked out of taking back the legislature. In Wisconsin, for example, Democrats won 53 percent of the popular vote last year—and only 36 percent of legislative seats.In his majority opinion in Rucho, Roberts didn’t deny that partisan gerrymandering is bad for democracy. Rather, he argued, there’s simply no manageable way for federal courts to police it. Since districting decisions made by elected officials will inevitably take political considerations into account, everyone knows some element of partisanship must be allowed. Therefore, Roberts reasoned, striking down a partisan gerrymander would require the Court to answer an unanswerable question: “How much is too much?” As distasteful as gerrymandering is, he concluded, it’s up to the political process (and perhaps state courts), not federal judges, to address the problem.This line of reasoning drove liberals up the wall. The problem with egregious partisan gerrymandering is precisely that it makes it all but impossible for the disadvantaged side to win back power. To say that it’s up to the North Carolina legislature to undo its gerrymander is to say that the state’s Republicans should voluntarily cede their advantage. The practical upshot of Thursday’s ruling will be to help Republicans (and Democrats, in states like Maryland) hang onto power without actually winning over a majority of voters.In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan excoriated the conservative majority for failing to recognize that lower federal courts have already been converging on a manageable test for identifying excessive partisan gerrymanders, one that looks at whether the purpose and effect of districting is to “substantially” entrench the dominant party in power by diluting the other party’s votes. “But in throwing up its hands,” she wrote, “the majority misses something under its nose: What it says can’t be done has been done.” Liberal commentators have gone farther. Prominent election law scholar Rick Hasen wrote in the New York Times that “the opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts is disingenuous” because the Supreme Court regularly imposes vague-sounding standards like “reasonable” or “substantial” to draw boundaries in other areas of the law.But while Roberts’s liberal critics have landed some punches, it’s a stretch to treat the gerrymandering ruling as a clear case of bad-faith partisan judging. Drawing the constitutional line between “partisan” and “too partisan” is no easy task. Consider Kagan’s response to Roberts’s question, “How much is too much?” Pointing to the truly extreme level of partisan precision in the North Carolina case, she treated the concern as trivial. “How about the following for a first-cut answer,” she wrote: “This much is too much.” It’s a cute line, but it’s not really an adequate answer. If the Court is to weigh in on these cases, it’s fair to expect it to establish a rule that goes beyond ad hoc judgments.We may ultimately get a clearer answer to the question of whether Roberts’s ruling was really disingenuous. To show that the democratic process is up to the challenge of curtailing gerrymandering, he cites a litany of reforms, including nonpartisan redistricting commissions, which voters in Michigan and Colorado approved last fall. As it happens, the Court affirmed the constitutionality of such commissions in 2015, in a 5-4 decision with the now-retired Anthony Kennedy joining the liberals. Do you know who wrote the dissent? John Roberts. With Kennedy now replaced by Kavanaugh, it’s a safe bet that there are enough votes to overturn that precedent. But if Roberts chooses that path, it will be yet another blow to the flagging legitimacy of the institution he leads. And that much might really be too much.<div style="">=</div><div style="">census related to gerry</div><div style="">---</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/huge-victory-for-the-republican-party-legal-experts-weigh-in-on-supreme-courts-landmark-gerrymandering-decision/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">Huge victory for the Republican Party’: Legal experts weigh in on Supreme Court’s landmark gerrymandering decision</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson/" title="Posts by Alex Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Alex Henderson</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on gerrymandering, deciding that federal courts cannot block lawmakers in individual states from partisan gerrymandering in political districts. And legal experts have been weighing…</div></div><div style="">=</div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/supreme-court-sends-census-citizenship-case-back-to-lower-court-after-bombshell-evidence-reveals-gops-true-motives/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/supreme-court-sends-census-citizenship-case-back-to-lower-court-after-bombshell-evidence-reveals-gops-true-motives/</a>no lnxSupreme Court sends census citizenship case back to lower court after bombshell evidence reveals GOP’s true motives...=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/north-carolina-republicans-fight-to-keep-racial-gerrymandering-evidence-out-of-court/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/north-carolina-republicans-fight-to-keep-racial-gerrymandering-evidence-out-of-court/</a>pounder bs links to <div class="gallery_slide_title" style="" benton="Benton" sans="Sans" medium="Medium" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em" line-height="line-height" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold" padding-right="padding-right" background-color="background-color">Redistricting: $616,169</div><div class="gallery_slide_description" style="overflow: hidden; position: relative;" benton="Benton" sans="Sans" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The group Voters Not Politicians has been <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/michigan_supreme_court_hears_a.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-bottom: 0.125em; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(9, 74, 215);">fighting in court</a> to get a proposal to re-draw political districts on the ballot. The fate of the ballot proposal is now in the hands of the Michigan Supreme Court.If approved by voters, the ballot initiative would create an independent commission to determine Michigan's political districts.Voters Not Politicians has $616,169 on hand with three months to go to the election. In the second quarter of the year, the group raised $701,018 and spent $373,122. Its biggest expense, unsurprisingly, was on legal fees: $123,619 from April to July.Its biggest donor during that time was Action Now Initiative, a Texas advocacy group started by billionaires John and Laura Arnold. After Action Now Initiative's $250,000 donation, the second-largest donation was $100,000 from the Michigan UAW Community Action Program Council.The opposition group to the redistricting proposal, Citizens Protecting Michigan's Constitution, has $75,959 in the bank after raising $20,000 and spending $99,759  in the past three months.<a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/michigan_supreme_court_hears_a.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-bottom: 0.125em; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(9, 74, 215);">More: Fate of independent redistricting ballot proposal in hands of Michigan Supreme Court</a><a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/gerrymandering_lawsuit_filings.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; padding-bottom: 0.125em; cursor: pointer; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(9, 74, 215);">More: Emails show Republicans engaged in political gerrymandering, lawsuit claims </a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>