Redmap nrrt

===redmap did systemic long term damage TP--> freedom cocks, suicide squad, unaccountable old white guys --> voter suppression, anti-abortion ...

promoted to primary ~ Moderationcapt 619see gerrymandering

obama will take on ?trms did several shows trying to raise red flag=<div>=</div><div>spitfire  extensive on gerry</div><div><a href="https://spitfirelist.com/news/john-roberts-gives-bad-faith-blessing-to-hyper-partisan-gerrymandering-and-paved-the-way-for-the-kochstitution/comment-page-1/">
</a></div><div><a href="https://spitfirelist.com/news/john-roberts-gives-bad-faith-blessing-to-hyper-partisan-gerrymandering-and-paved-the-way-for-the-kochstitution/comment-page-1/">https://spitfirelist.com/news/john-roberts-gives-bad-faith-blessing-to-hyper-partisan-gerrymandering-and-paved-the-way-for-the-kochstitution/comment-page-1/</a>
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</div><div><cite>...</cite>here was a recent article in Slate about a audio recording leaked

from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting

this year. The audio was of the closed-door “How to Survive

Redistricting” panel discussion, so this was a panel that’s particularly

important for understanding what the GOP has in mind for its 2021

hyper-gerrymandering schemes. The panel’s advice included helpful tips

like destroying evidence under the expectation that the district maps

they draw up are guaranteed to end up challenged in court. The evidence

they recommended attendees destroy included evidence they had attended

this panel discussion. It’s that kind of panel discussion.

<cite />
</div><div>
</div>the panel had four experts: North Carolina election lawyer Thomas

Farr, former Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (who co-chaired Project

REDMAP in 2010), Texas state Rep. Phil King, and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation <a href="https://spitfirelist.com/news/merger-of-crooked-vote-tallyers/#comment-23194">who happens to be one of the GOP’s biggest backers of voter suppression schemes</a>.

In particular, von Spakovsky has specialized in issuing fraudulent

warnings about illegal immigrants voting in US elections and using those

scare stories as justification for voter suppression laws. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/28/resignation-texas-is-reminder-how-trumps-vote-fraud-claims-come-up-empty/" rel="nofollow">Von

Spakovsky was also on Trump’s short-lived presidential commission aimed

at uncovering proof of this alleged rampant voter fraud</a>. In keep

with this theme of whipping up fears about immigrants, von Spakovksy has

been one of the chief advocates for using only population based on

citizenship, and not the total number of people in a state, for

redistricting purposes during the 2021 redistricting process...=new<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. [MAX X DRIVES SYS OUT OF BALANCE --> UNINTENDED CONSEQ AND SYS FAIL?]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. [no FEEDBACK] And after the U.S. Supreme Court [MOD] 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, [DISABLE CHECKS AND BALANCE] 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.”<div></div><div>new</div><div>
</div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/a-requiem-for-american-democracy-5-4-supreme-court-vote-rules-partisan-gerrymandering-is-beyond-the-reach-of-the-federal-courts/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">‘A requiem for American democracy’: 5-4 Supreme Court vote rules partisan gerrymandering is ‘beyond the reach of the federal courts’</a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/elizabeth-preza/" title="Posts by Elizabeth Preza" 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;">Elizabeth Preza</a> June 27, 2019</div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Supreme Court on Thursday in a 5-4 ideological split rejected limits to partisan gerrymandering, quashing an effort by advocates of political reform to rein in manipulative electoral district boundaries</div></div><div>=</div><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-family: " linux="Linux" libertine="Libertine" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" serif="serif" line-height="line-height">Controversy</h2>On July 3, 2018, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingham_County,Michigan" title="Ingham County, Michigan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ingham County</a> prosecutor Carol Siemon requested a grand jury investigation (which was never conducted) to probe the sale of multimillion-dollar property inherited by Schuette in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Islands" title="Virgin Islands" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Virgin Islands</a>, to determine if any laws were violated. Schuette's spokesperson stated that the accusation was a "baseless attack on an attorney general with a strong ethical record".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Schuette#cite_note-41" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[41]</a>Schuette was working to strike down a ballot initiative to eliminate partisan gerrymandering, which has gained enough signatures to be on the Michigan ballot in the November 2018 election.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Schuette#cite_note-nytimes.com-42" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[42]</a> The issue went on to the state supreme court, where "Five of the seven justices were nominated or appointed by Republicans, and two of those have received financial backing from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which also happens to be one of the main funders of the opposition campaign. Both justices have refused to recuse themselves from the case."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Schuette#cite_note-nytimes.com-42" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[42]</a> The court upheld the inclusion of the initiative on the ballot which was approved by voters.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Schuette#cite_note-43" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">[43]</a>off bs omgGov. Scott Waker Named National Finance Chairman for the National Republican Redistricting TrustMarch 21, 2019
Alexandria, VA – The National Republican Redistricting Trust (NRRT) announced today that former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will serve as the group’s National Finance Chairman. In this position, Governor Walker will help lead the effort to raise the resources needed as the NRRT prepares for the next round of redistricting in 2021.
The NRRT was formed in 2017 and serves as the central resource to coordinate and collaborate with Republicans on a 50-state redistricting effort, focusing on the party’s legal and data needs ahead of the 2020 redistricting process.
Adam Kincaid, Executive Director of the NRRT, said, “Governor Walker will be a tremendous asset to the NRRT as we prepare for the next round of redistricting. There is no legal strategy the Democrats won’t try in order to litigate their way into power.  To fight back we need Republicans like Governor Walker who believe in the future of our country and our party. When Democrats don’t win at the ballot box they are determined to sue until it’s blue.  Governor Walker’s support and work on behalf of the NRRT will help us fight back against the Democrats’ nationwide judicial power grab.”
Governor Walker said, “Republican reforms work.  We need to make sure Republican candidates have a chance to make that case to voters across the country. To do that, we need fair legislative districts. I am honored to help lead the NRRT as we fight for fair maps in the next round of redistricting. The far left is highly organized and well-funded.  Barack Obama and Eric Holder want to gerrymander Democrats into permanent control, so we are working to ensure that our side has the organization and resources to combat their efforts. Our reforms work, and if we have a fair chance to make our case, we win.”  
The purpose of the NRRT is to fight for fair, constitutional redistricting for all Americans. For more information about the NRRT, click here.
Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)RelatedScott Walker joins GOP redistricting group as finance chairMarch 21, 2019In "Eric Holder"National Republican Redistricting Trust Names Mary Ellis Finnerty as Finance DirectorFebruary 5, 2019In "Mary Ellis Finnerty"NRRT On Ohio Redistricting Lawsuit: Democrats' Strategy is to Sue Until It's BlueMarch 4, 2019In "Ohio"<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/gillespie-took-partisan-map-making-to-a-new-level-try-turning-that-into-a-bumper-sticker/2017/10/31/03dd5b32-ba93-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/gillespie-took-partisan-map-making-to-a-new-level-try-turning-that-into-a-bumper-sticker/2017/10/31/03dd5b32-ba93-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html</a>?utm_term=.cd0d2086a6a0no lnxRICHMOND — Republican Ed Gillespie has had to fend off some zingers — "Establishment Ed," "Enron Ed" — while running for governor of Virginia.But "architect of gerrymandering"?That one fell flat when Democrat Ralph Northam lobbed it at Gillespie this month during their final debate. The insult seemed obscure. And Gillespie brushed it off with an attempt at humor: "In my history books, it's Elbridge Gerry who came up with gerrymandering."Gillespie did, in fact, take partisan mapmaking to a new level, but just try turning that into a bumper sticker.While he is better known as the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, a Washington lobbyist and a counselor to President George W. Bush, Gillespie helped pull off a stunning political coup — one that gave Republicans unprecedented muscle to reshape the nation's congressional maps to their advantage.[Right after President Barack Obama's 2008 win, Gillespie helped dispirited Republicans claw back into power one statehouse at a time.Instead of asking donors for the big bucks needed to swing congressional races, they focused on legislative contests in certain states — those where Republicans needed to flip only a few seats to win control of the legislatures and the mapmaking that would occur after the 2010?Census.Named "REDMAP," the project helped the GOP win control of 22 state legislatures in 2010, paving the way for GOP gains in Congress in 2012, even as Obama won reelection.To some, it was a triumph, a bold and perfectly legal tactic deployed in plain sight of Democrats. To others, it was an affront to democracy, the root of the no-compromise politics that's left Washington gridlocked. Or some combination of both.Liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gushed over the "political genius" of the scheme, even as she lamented the fate of "blindsided Democrats" all across the country."Do you mind if I lock you in an airless vault before we leave here tonight and never let you out?" she joked in a 2015 interview with Chris Jankowski, the GOP strategist who led REDMAP with Gillespie.
 VIEW GRAPHIC Virginia general election guideJankowski, now chief consultant to the Republicans running for Virginia attorney general and lieutenant governor alongside Gillespie, laughed with Maddow and said it was a "team effort." Then he tipped his hat to one person by name: Gillespie.
[Republicans split over gerrymandering case headed to Supreme Court]
Their REDMAP project was efficient and effective."In early 2010, Gillespie and Jankowski took a PowerPoint presentation on the road," wrote David Daley, author of a book on REDMAP focused on the efforts of Gillespie, Jankowski and GOP strategist Karl Rove. "They met with Wall Street donors, oil magnates, hedge-funders, Washington lobbyists and trade associations — anyone open to an audacious, long-term play.""Gillespie is the rainmaker, really," Daley said in an interview with The Post. "Goes off on a year-long fundraising tour and shakes the trees and comes up with $30?million at least.?.?.?. 'You will save hundreds of millions if you fund this instead of everything else.'?"The plan was no secret. Rove laid it out in a 2010 Wall Street Journal commentary sub-headlined: "He who controls redistricting can control Congress."Gerrymandering is gaining new attention now, as the Supreme Court considers whether extreme partisan mapmaking is constitutional. Two lawsuits over Virginia's legislative maps are pending, one before a federal three-judge panel, the other before the state Supreme Court.
Former president Obama and his first attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., are leading Democrats' call for fairer maps. At an Oct.?19 rally for Northam in Richmond, Obama lamented how districts are drawn in a way that forces politicians to cater to extremes."Ralph wants to end the practice of gerrymandering so our districts are drawn in a nonpartisan way," Obama said. "We shouldn't have politicians choosing their voters; we should have voters choosing those who would serve them. That's one more difference between him and his opponent."Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, stumped in Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Richmond on Saturday and Sunday for the Democratic ticket.
[Obama’s post-presidency political focus: Redistricting]
"During the last round of national redistricting, Ed Gillespie was the chief architect of a plan to lock in political power for Republicans and lock out the voice of the voters in Virginia and states around the country," Holder wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. "Gerrymandering is a threat to our democracy. It creates districts in which the electoral outcome is predetermined for one party, effectively diminishing the voting power of citizens and providing incentives for politicians to cater to the fringes of their parties."The winner of the Nov.?7 governor's race will control, along with Virginia's currently GOP-led General Assembly, how the state's maps are drawn after the 2020?Census.Holder's group has donated $950,000 to the Democratic Party of Virginia this year. Republicans say the giving shows that the Democrats are merely trying to play catch-up, not pushing for nonpartisan maps.Even with renewed focus on gerrymandering, the issue still seems arcane to many voters.
"We, as voters, often don't understand the importance of redistricting and gerrymandering," Daley said. The book gets its title from a profane term for political sabotage. Its subtitle: "The true story behind the secret plan to steal America's democracy."
"It's a concept that put us all to sleep in civics class in high school," said Daley, former editor in chief at Salon. "But that's why the politicians have been able to exploit it — because it seems to us it's simply politics as usual, or it's boring, or it's inside baseball. It's none of those things. These district lines are the building blocks of our democracy. And when they get twisted in this way, it twists the very notion of republican democracy into something that is unrecognizable."

In response to questions about Gillespie's role in REDMAP, campaign spokesman David Abrams issued a statement: "Ed will closely assess proposals for reforms to Virginia's existing redistricting process. In his ten years in office, Lt.?Gov.?Northam has done nothing to eliminate partisan redistricting maps. In fact, he's voted to gerrymander his own district."
[Va. redistricting deal protects incumbents and punishes challengers, critics say]
Abrams is referring to Northam's vote in 2011 for a state Senate map that made his swing district more blue. It was drawn under a deal struck between leaders of the GOP-dominated House of Delegates and the state Senate, then under Democratic control. Republicans got to draw maps for the House, Democrats for the Senate.
"Ralph Northam has supported nonpartisan redistricting since his first campaign in 2007, and 2011 was an attempt at bipartisan compromise," said Christina Freundlich, a Northam spokeswoman. "Ed Gillespie literally called his project REDMAP. You can't get much more blunt about gerrymandering than that."In a May interview with The Washington Post, Gillespie pushed back against the notion that REDMAP undermined democracy."We were very successful," Gillespie said. "And there was no doubt in 2010 we put a focus on state legislatures that would have a significant impact in the redistricting process. I think it was a smart plan. No secret about it.?.?.?. I'm proud of the work that we did there, and I'm proud of the work that state legislatures are doing. You know, we have, I think, now 69 of the 99 state legislative chambers are in Republican hands, including the state House and the state Senate in Virginia."Jankowski declined to be interviewed.Both parties have long histories of gerrymandering — an ignominious tradition that goes back to Virginia's first governor.Patrick Henry drew the boundaries of Virginia's 5th Congressional District in an unsuccessful bid to keep James Madison out of the House, said Brian Cannon, executive director of the redistricting reform group OneVirginia2021.Modern gerrymanderers have tools that could not have been imagined by Henry in 1788 or Gerry, the Massachusetts governor Gillespie invoked in the debate, who gave partisan mapmaking its name with the salamander-shaped district he ordered up in 1812. And certain advances arrived just in time for REDMAP, which mashed up data on voting, education, income, magazine subscriptions and even consumer purchases to guide mapmaking, Cannon said."Technology got really good, so they were able, with their gains, to exploit it better than anybody ever had before," Cannon said. "They know you vote in Republican primaries but also know you subscribe to Guns and Ammo and buy Crest."Republicans first put the maps to the test in 2012. And they worked, despite Obama's reelection and Democratic victories in 69?percent of U.S. Senate elections that November. Despite the fact that Democrats won more than 1?million more votes than Republicans in House races around the country, the GOP scored a 33-seat majority in the 113th Congress.
The REDMAP group gave some of the credit to the quality of their candidates and other factors, but at the heart of it all were the maps tilted in their favor, strategists said.
"All components of a successful congressional race?.?.?. rest on the congressional district lines," the REDMAP website declared, "and this was an area where Republicans had an unquestioned advantage."


propubl: <div class="article" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the November election, a million more Americans <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">voted</a> for Democrats seeking election to the U.S. House of Representatives than Republicans. But that popular vote advantage did not result in control of the chamber. Instead, despite getting fewer votes, Republicans have maintained a commanding control of the House. Such a disparity has happened only three times in the last century.(<a href="http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/seats-vs-votes" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Here’s a chart comparing 2010 and 2012</a>.)</div><div class="sidebar-inject" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="callout-ad ad" id="google-callout"><div class="article">Analysts and others have identified redistricting as a key to the disparity. Republicans had a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html?ref=reapportionment&pagewanted=all" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">years-long strategy of winning state houses</a> in order to control each state's once-a-decade redistricting process. (Confused about redistricting? Check out our <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/video-the-redistricting-song" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">song</a>.)Republican strategist Karl Rove laid out the approach in a Wall Street Journal <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575099670689398044.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">column</a> in early 2010 headlined "He who controls redistricting can control Congress."The approach paid off. In 2010 state races, Republicans picked up 675 legislative seats, gaining complete control of 12 state legislatures. As a result, the GOP oversaw redrawing of lines for four times as many congressional districts as Democrats.How did they dominate redistricting? A ProPublica investigation has found that the GOP relied on opaque nonprofits funded by dark money, supposedly nonpartisan campaign outfits, and millions in corporate donations to achieve Republican-friendly maps throughout the country. Two tobacco giants, Altria and Reynolds, each <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527cmtedetail_contribs.php?cycle=2010&ein=050532524" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">pitched in</a>more than $1 million to the main Republican redistricting group, as did Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads; Walmart and the pharmaceutical industry also contributed. Other donors, who gave to the nonprofits Republicans created, may <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-public-welfare" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">never have to be disclosed</a>.While many observers have <a href="http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/news/2012/11/08/15001252-money-cant-buy-happiness-or-an-election?lite" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">noted</a> that mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson backed losing candidates, a close look at the Republicans' effort on redistricting suggests something else: The hundreds of millions spent this year on presidential TV ads may not have hit the mark, but the relatively modest sums funneled to redistricting paid off handsomely.Where Democrats were in control, they <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/redistricting_and_congressional_control_following_the_2012_election/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">drew gerrymandered maps</a> just like Republicans. They also had their own secretive redistricting <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/us/politics/08elect.html?r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">funding</a>. (Last year, we <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/how-democrats-fooled-californias-redistricting-commission" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">detailed</a>how Democrats in California worked to undermine the state's attempt at non-partisan redistricting.) But Democrats got outspent 3-to-1 and did not prioritize winning state legislatures. They also faced a Republican surge in 2010.Exactly how the Republican effort worked has been shrouded in mystery until now. But depositions and other documents in a little-noticed lawsuit in North Carolina offer an exceptionally detailed picture of Republicans' tactics.Documents show that national Republican operatives, funded by dark money groups, drew the crucial lines which packed as many Democrats as possible into three congressional districts. The result: the state's congressional delegation flipped from 7-6 Democratic to 9-4 in favor of Republicans. The combination of party operatives, cash and secrecy also existed in other states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.Redistricting is supposed to protect the fundamental principle of one-person-one-vote. As demographics change, lines are shifted to make sure everyone is equally represented and to give communities a voice. In order for Republicans to win in North Carolina, they undermined the votes of Democrats, especially African-Americans. (Party leaders in North Carolina say they were simply complying with federal voting laws.)The strategy began in the run-up to the 2010 elections. Republicans poured money into local races in North Carolina and elsewhere. It was an efficient approach. While congressional races routinely cost millions, a few thousand dollars can swing a campaign for a seat in the state legislatureThe Republican effort to influence redistricting overall was spearheaded by a group called the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has existed since 2002. For most of that time, it was primarily a vehicle for donors like health care and tobacco companies to influence state legislatures, key battlegrounds for regulations that affect corporate America. Its focus changed in 2010 when Ed Gillespie, former counselor to President George W. Bush, was named chairman. His main project: redistricting.Soon after Gillespie took over, the RSLC announced an effort to influence state races throughout the country, the Redistricting Majority Project, or <a href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?page_id=2" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">REDMAP</a>. Fundraising soared. The group raised $30 million in 2010, by far its best year. (Its Democratic counterpart raised roughly $10 million.)The RSLC is organized as a type of political group that can take in unlimited corporate donations. It must disclose its contributors. But that doesn't mean it's always possible to trace the origins of the money.Along with Walmart and tobacco companies, the RSLC's largest funders in 2010 were the Chamber of Commerce and <a href="http://americanjusticepartnership.com/about.php" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">American Justice Partnership</a>, which gave a combined $6.5 million. Those two groups raise money from corporations and others but don't have to disclose their donors.As the 2010 North Carolina legislative elections heated up, the RSLC jumped into local races. But the way they made contributions kept their involvement away from the attention of state voters. Rather than running campaign ads under its own name, the RSLC distributed money to a newly formed local nonprofit. The RSLC declined to comment.The RSLC gave $1.25 million to its vehicle of choice <a href="http://realjobsnc.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Real Jobs NC</a>. The group <a href="http://realjobsnc.com/about/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">calls itself</a> a "non-partisan organization that believes we need to return to a reliance on the free enterprise system that made our country great for real answers." It was started in 2010 and got a hefty $200,000 boost from dollar store magnate and Republican supporter Art Pope, although Pope denies his donation was related to redistricting or REDMAP.Real Jobs NC produced ads and mailers slamming more than 20 state Democrats."Steve Goss … nice guy," intoned the voiceover in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8t03K9nleo" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">one such ad</a> in North Carolina, attacking then-Democratic State Senator Goss. "Too bad he's voting with the Raleigh liberals over hometown conservatives."Goss lost, and Democrats lost control of North Carolina's General Assembly for the first time in a century. The pattern repeated itself across the country."Twenty legislative bodies which were previously split or under Democratic control are now under Republican control," said a triumphant RSLC REDMAP post-election<a href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?p=638" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">analysis</a>, highlighting its spending in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, among other states.The next step for Republicans was to draw district maps, which can be expensive. The maps require expertise, extensive data and sophisticated software. Skillful map drawers can make even the most partisan gerrymander look reasonable.To fund the work, the Republican State Leadership Committee used its previously dormant nonprofit arm, the State Government Leadership Foundation. Such dark money groups are <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-public-welfare" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">increasingly popular</a> because they are allowed to keep secret the identity of their donors. Federal tax law permits them to do this as long as they pledge that politics is not their primary focus.<a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537961-state-leadership-government-foundation-2011-990#document/p1" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Flush</a> with anonymous donors' cash, the Foundation <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537961-state-leadership-government-foundation-2011-990#document/p8" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">paid</a> $166,000 to <a href="http://rslc.com/_blog/RedMap/post/Presidents_Welcome/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">hire</a> the GOP's pre-eminent redistricting experts, according to tax documents. The team leader was<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-league-of/309084/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Tom Hofeller</a>, architect of Republican-friendly maps going back decades."Our team would be happy to assist in drawing proposed maps, interpreting data, or providing advice," wrote Chris Jankowski, the head of both the RSLC and State Government Leadership Foundation, in a <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537408-hofeller-sglf-rslc-letter" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"> </a> of introduction to North Carolina legislators. The letter was disclosed as part of the North Carolina lawsuit."We are engaged in a number of states and believe we are playing a meaningful role in helping draw fair and legal lines that will allow us to run competitive elections in 2012 and in future cycles," Jankowski added.The same letter emphasized that the Republican redistricting push was being funded through its dark money nonprofit: "The entirety of this effort will be paid for using non-federal dollars through our 501c(4) organization."Jankowski, representing both the RSLC and the Foundation, declined to comment.Because Hofeller's team was paid with dark money and the redistricting process is so secretive, it is hard to know the full extent of its activities. In Wisconsin, the team provided <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/539678-dep-of-andrew-speth-dkt-143-11cv562" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">technical assistance</a> to an aide to Rep. Paul Ryan as he drew new districts that <a href="http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=38333" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">favored Republicans</a>. In Missouri, Hofeller was the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2012/Feb/01/gop_redistricting_expert_says_mo__map_is_compact.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">sole witness</a> called by attorneys representing the Republican legislators who drew the maps there.In the case of North Carolina, Hofeller made his <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537517-naacp-431#document/p1" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">first trip</a> to Raleigh on Feb. 1, 2011, even <a href="http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn61.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">before</a> final state Census data had been released, the first of 10 trips that year.From then on, two parallel redistricting processes unfolded in the state.Through the spring and summer, legislators in charge of redistricting traveled the state holding public meetings at local colleges, soliciting comment and proposed maps from citizens — though the Republicans on the committee would not produce draft maps themselves."We are not here to answer questions. We are not here drawing maps," state Senate redistricting committee chairman Bob Rucho <a href="http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/redistricting-without-a-map/Content?oid=2426024" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">told the crowd</a> at a hearing in Durham. "What we are here for is to basically hear your thoughts and dreams about redistricting."But that input had little influence on the districts that were eventually drawn.Instead, the real maps were being produced behind the scenes by a team that based its operations at Republican Party <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?q=1506+Hillsborough+St.,+Raleigh,&ll=35.784112,-78.657432&spn=0.0094,0.013819&sll=35.784636,-78.658077&layer=c&cbp=13,24.8,,0,3.79&cbll=35.784338,-78.658211&gl=us&hnear=1506+Hillsborough+St,+Raleigh,+Wake,+North+Carolina+27605" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">headquarters</a> on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. Armed with advanced <a href="http://www.caliper.com/maptovu.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">mapping software</a>, Hofeller and others crafted districts that would virtually guarantee big gains for the party.Hofeller did not attend or read transcripts of any of the public meetings, according to his deposition. Hofeller did not respond to requests for comment.A mysterious state dark money nonprofit that <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537894-fair-and-legal-redistricting-incorporation-doc" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">sprung up</a> just in time for the process, called Fair and Legal Redistricting for North Carolina, <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537152-exhibit-8-raupe-transcript-6-18-12#document/p28" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">hired</a> a technician to operate the mapping workstation day-to-day, and <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537148-exhibit-4-deposition-rucho-transcript-5-4-12#document/p29" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">another Republican mapping expert</a>. The group did not respond to our requests for comment.State-based nonprofits have been a vehicle for Republicans to funnel anonymous money into their map-drawing operations in a number of states, including self-proclaimed nonpartisan groups in <a href="http://www.michiganredistrictingresourceinstitute.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Michigan</a> and <a href="http://minnesotaindependent.com/88645/undisclosed-money-flows-into-minnesotas-redistricting-process" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Minnesota</a>.Republican state legislators tasked with redistricting frequently visited and consulted with the mapping team, according to depositions. Even Art Pope, the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">most influential</a>conservative donor in the state, was appointed "<a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537149-exhibit-5-deposition-oldham-transcript-6-27-12#document/p126" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">co-counsel</a>" to the legislative leadership and allowed in the room to give direct instructions to the technician."We worked together at the workstation," <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537152-exhibit-8-raupe-transcript-6-18-12#document/p42" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">said</a> Joel Raupe, the technical expert paid by Fair and Legal Redistricting, in a deposition. "He sat next to me."Pope, who is a lawyer but does not actively practice, was made co-counsel to the state legislature, offering his services <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/540997-farr-response-to-newby-recusal-motion#document/p12" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">pro bono</a>. Now, because he was technically a legal adviser to the state, he says any information about his involvement in the redistricting is privileged.(The New Yorker had a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">sweeping profile</a> of Pope last year, detailing how he has used his fortune to dominate North Carolina politics.)North Carolina's Republican incumbents in Congress pushed for a so-called "<a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537525-naacp-447#document/p1/a84871" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">10-3 map</a>," the majority they hoped to win in the state's delegation.Hofeller, the mapping expert, delivered. His maps kept most of the districts from being competitive — or even remotely winnable — for Democratic candidates.A key part of the redistricting strategy was to push minority voters into three districts. Republicans <a href="http://propublica.org/documents/item/539914-joint-statement-by-senator-bob-rucho-and" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">insisted</a> their maps were "fair and legal," necessary to conform to <a href="http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/intro/intro_b.php" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">laws</a>protecting minority voting rights, although according to a well-known voting rights attorney, the opposite is true.But federal voting rights law "doesn't require a jurisdiction to pack blacks in districts," said Laughlin McDonald, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project. "If you tried to pack minority voters into a district, that would arguably be a violation."In two of those districts, African-American incumbents been already been winning by large margins for years. Republicans' maps added yet more African-Americans to the districts, what's known in redistricting parlance as "<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/redistricting-a-devils-dictionary" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">packing</a>." As Hofeller wrote in an email about one of the districts, the plan was to "incorporate all the significant concentrations of minority voters in the northeast into the first district."A third district was 120-mile long, and sea monkey-shaped, connecting pockets of African-Americans from three different, distant cities. Republicans justified it on the basis of a common media market.The maps were designed to "segregate African-American voters in three districts and concede those districts to the Democrats," says Bob Hall of <a href="http://www.democracy-nc.org/about-us/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Democracy North Carolina</a>, a nonpartisan public interest group that joined the lawsuit against the new maps.In 2012, Democrats won the three districts by more than 70 percent of the vote. Another effect: the surrounding districts were much more Republican.Rucho and other Republican legislators had presented the maps as <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/539914-joint-statement-by-senator-bob-rucho-and#document/p8" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">advantageous</a> to Democrats. Indeed, registered Democrats actually outnumbered registered Republicans in seven additional districts beyond those that were clearly slated to be Democratic.<a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537529-naacp-460" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Emails</a> show Republicans decided to make that fact a major talking point.But the stat was misleading, as the Republicans' own data indicates. An internal analysis of one of Hofeller's later drafts (code name "Blue Horizon 3") obtained by ProPublica shows that those seven allegedly "competitive" districts would have been landslide wins for John McCain in 2008, and for Republican Senator Richard Burr in 2010.The carefully drawn maps <a href="http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/House/2012/NC" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">worked</a>. In this year's elections, Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in North Carolina won 50.6 percent of the total vote. But the state's House delegation now has nine Republicans and just four Democrats. One of the Democrats won by just a few hundred voters, despite the fact that his newly drawn district skewed heavily Republican and that his own home had been drawn out of it. North Carolina's <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_21/Race-Ratings-GOP-Looks-for-Major-Gains-North-Carolina-208044-1.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">delegation</a> before the election had seven Democrats and six RepublicansIn addition to his pay from national Republican groups, invoices show Hofeller <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/537518-naacp-432" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">billed</a> North Carolina taxpayers $77,000 for his services.The Republican maps are still under threat by suits filed by Democrats and the NAACP. The lawsuits are headed to the state Supreme Court. But a flood of contributions tied to the RSLC have lowered the risk of the maps' being overturned.While judicial elections in North Carolina are nominally nonpartisan, it was <a href="http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2012/jul/29/political-balance-stake-nc-supreme-court-race-ar-2473469/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">common knowledge</a> that Republicans held a 4-3 majority on the court. One of those Republican incumbents was facing a tough challenge in 2012, potentially throwing the whole redistricting result in jeopardy.Justice Paul Newby was running for re-election against appellate judge Sam Ervin IV, grandson of the famous North Carolina senator who investigated Watergate. With a few weeks left until the November election, Newby was trailing Ervin.But then, in the final stretch, Newby was the beneficiary of a flood of late spending that can be traced back to the Republican State Leadership Committee.Once again the contributions were funneled through homegrown groups. With only a few weeks to go, the RSLC gave more than $1.1 million to a group called Justice for All NC. Campaign finance filings show Justice for All NC in turn gave nearly $1.5 million to a super PAC running pro-Newby ads, the NC Judicial Coalition.Most of the money spent by the super PAC went to pay for <a href="http://www.wcnc.com/decision2012/TV-ad-in-NC-Supreme-Court-Race-brought-to-you-by-murky-super-PAC-175488831.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">hundreds</a> of airings of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sumn4Hc9OvM" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">jingle ad</a> featuring lines like, "Paul Newby / Justice tough but fair / Paul Newby / Criminals best beware" set to infectious banjo music.The spending didn't end there: and Pope's fingerprints were also on the race. Two dark money groups affiliated with Pope — the state-based <a href="http://www.civitasaction.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Civitas Action</a> and <a href="http://americansforprosperity.org/about/directors/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Americans for Prosperity</a> — spent another $300,000 on radio ads and mailers supporting Newby. Pope's company also gave to the RSLC in the run-up to this fall's elections.Pope says he gave money to Americans for Prosperity for years before the judicial race even came up, and that he was not involved in the decision to run pro-Newby ads."I'm Republican, I support Republican groups," Pope said. "But just because you support something doesn't mean you're responsible for all they do."It was an unusually large amount of outside spending for a judicial race. The outside pro-Newby groups had <a href="http://www.telegram.com/article/20121101/APN/311019774" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">spent more</a> on the race than the two campaigns combined.In the end, Newby eked out a 52-48 victory, preserving the court's Republican majority.When the groups contesting the maps called for Newby to recuse himself from redistricting litigation, lawyers for Republican legislators <a href="http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/540997-farr-response-to-newby-recusal-motion#document/p6" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">argued</a> that because the campaign ads were paid for by "independent" groups, they did not jeopardize Newby's impartiality.On Monday, the state Supreme Court rejected the motion for Newby to recuse himself."I've got no control over who contributes to an ad. I have no control over who endorses me," Newby — who did not respond to a request for comment — <a href="http://www.wcnc.com/decision2012/SuperPACs-spend-millions-for-Republican-in-NC-Supreme-Court-176496161.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">told</a> a local TV station on the eve of the election. "You've got to put your blinders on like lady justice."</div></div></div><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless">https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless</a>pAINT IT REDHow the GOP Made Your Vote UselessRepublicans have adroitly exploited redistricting, taking control not just of Washington but crucial governorships as well. Can the Democrats find a way to take back some turf?DAVID DALEY10.07.17 12:01 AM ET
Ed Gillespie masterminded the devastating 2010 GOP strategy to retake Washington by winning crucial state and local elections that brought the power to redistrict the U.S. House.His plan, aptly dubbed REDMAP, worked so well that Republicans captured almost 700 state legislature seats in an epic rebuke of Barack Obama and Democrats nationwide. The true spoils of that victory came the following year. New GOP majorities in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania reinvented the gerrymander as a blunt-force partisan weapon.It took Democrats many years to realize how long-lasting the consequences of 2010 would be. Now—just as the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in Gill v Whitford, a landmark case that could create the first-ever constitutional standard to define when a partisan gerrymander goes too far—Democrats have realized that the future of their party will be determined down-ballot. Gillespie, the godfather of the GOP gerrymander and the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, is their most crucial target.A Gillespie win, combined with well-cemented Republican majorities in the state assembly and senate, would lock in GOP control when new legislative districts for statewide and congressional races are drawn in 2021.
A victory by Democratic lieutenant governor Ralph Northam, meanwhile, would give Democrats a seat at the table when the new lines are drawn—something the party lacked in those blue and purple states nationwide in 2011, thanks to REDMAP.
As a result, in 2012, the first election held under these new maps, Democratic House candidates won 1.4 million more votes, but Republicans retained a 234-201 majority. Republicans commanded huge edges in states where Democrats won a majority of votes, like North Carolina (9-4), Pennsylvania (13-5) and Michigan (9-5), and drew lines that handed themselves 75 percent of Ohio’s 16 seats with just over 50 percent of the vote. Not a single congressional seat has swung blue in any of those swing states this decade.Earlier this month, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee—the brainchild of Obama, who has named redistricting as his top post-presidential priority, and led by former attorney general Eric Holder—announced its first major contribution. They poured $500,000 into Northam’s campaign, boosting him to a $3 million cash-on-hand advantage over Gillespie, a well-connected operative, as this crucial race enters its final weeks.That’s a big deal—but also a testament to how many pages Democrats have stolen from Gillespie’s playbook. The NDRC exists because Democrats needed to play catch-up after Gillespie’s Republican State Leadership Committee invested $30 million downballot in 2010, catching snoozing Democrats by surprise and capturing key state legislative chambers on the eve of redistricting. Republicans won the right to unilaterally draw 193 of 435 U.S. House seats; Democrats controlled just 44.Now the arms race has been engaged. Democrats will spend mega-millions in Virginia before Election Day. The billionaire Democratic investor Tom Steyer has already committed millions to an aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign aimed at delivering immigrants, college students, and supporters of abortion rights to the polls. Unions, environmental groups, and the Democratic Governors Association are also in for well over seven figures each. On the GOP side, the Republican Governors Association has announced that it is all-in for Gillespie, as are various spending committees aligned with the Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association.
Democrats, awakened from their slumber, appear attuned to the importance of winning locally— rather than just focusing resources on the White House every four years. They’ve flipped eight state legislative seats blue already, even in surprising places like Oklahoma and Florida, sometimes reversing double-digit GOP advantages last fall. It was not clear that Democrats understood this as recently as June, when $30 million flowed into one special congressional race in Georgia’s sixth. Jon Ossoff lost, and every squandered dollar went up in flames.
What’s not clear is whether Democrats realize just how uphill the party’s struggle will be in 2018. Many Democrats remain focused on taking back the U.S. House, despite the fact that the surgically crafted REDMAP lines have drastically reduced the number of swing seats and given the Republicans a baked-in structural advantage likely to withstand even a blue wave. Democrats, according to the most knowledgeable estimates, will likely need to win the total U.S. House vote by double digits in order to have even a 50/50 chance of taking a majority of seats. That’s a steep path in these polarized times.Democrats need a long-term strategy to win back state legislatures, and a short-term strategy aimed at electing governors who can veto tilted maps. Any comeback must begin in Virginia, then pivot to governor’s races in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. This will not be easy. Republicans have a deeper bench (another gerrymandered advantage) and may begin as the favorites everywhere.If Democrats lose? They won’t have say over most state legislative or congressional maps until 2031. Republicans have done such a masterful job at drawing local legislative lines in these states, for example, that the GOP commands a 66-33 state house majority in Ohio, a 121-81 advantage in Pennsylvania, and has kept control of the Michigan house in 2012, 2014 and 2016—all years when Democrats won more votes. Given enduring, computer-driven majorities in these all-important states, Democrats need to win these key governor’s races or face GOP majorities in Congress for another decade. After all, the technology that made these unbeatable lines possible in 2011 has only gotten more precise and powerful.
While the NDRC’s Virginia investment suggests Democrats have learned their lesson, Republicans have hardly lost focus. The Republican Governors Association has outraised the Democratic Governors Association this year, $36 million to $21 million. Just this week, Republicans also announced they’d budget $35 million toward the National Republican Redistricting Trust, to counter the Obama/Holder group. That’s three times what the NDRC has announced raising in 2017.
Democrats find themselves adrift because they focused on the sexy race for the White House and neglected essential, but duller, down-ballot battles. If they compound this error by prioritizing the U.S. House, and don’t focus on winning those six governors’ races, they will face a generation in the wilderness. The time is now: There will be no hope for Democrats to reshape the battle lines for the 2020s after Election Night 2018.
David Daley is the author of Ratfked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and the former editor in chief of Salon.franki lappe adam e<a href="https://www.alternet.org/activism/democracy-reform-tour-democracy-pennsylvania">https://www.alternet.org/activism/democracy-reform-tour-democracy-pennsylvania</a><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/supreme-court-just-blocked-order-north-carolina-redraw-gerrymandered-congressional">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/supreme-court-just-blocked-order-north-carolina-redraw-gerrymandered-congressional</a></div><div>
</div><div>North Carolinians may vote in the 2018 midterm elections under a congressional map that has been gerrymandered by Republicans. The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked a lower court ruling ordering the U.S. House of Representatives district lines be redrawn by January 24.</div>Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor both objected to the order.Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-election/supreme-court-blocks-redrawing-of-north-carolina-congressional-maps-idUSKBN1F73C1" style="text-decoration-line: none;">explains the initial ruling</a> that ordered the district lines be redrawn:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The three-judge panel ruled that the Republican-drawn districts violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law by intentionally hobbling the electoral strength of non-Republican voters. Two of the three judges also said the plan ran afoul of the Constitution’s First Amendment by discriminating based on political belief and association."</blockquote>The Supreme Court is reviewing cases of alleged gerrymandering in Wisconsin and Maryland. The implications of these cases on other states, including North Carolina, remain to be seen....<div></div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/study-finds-democrats-wont-take-back-house-2018-giant-wave">https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/study-finds-democrats-wont-take-back-house-2018-giant-wave</a>paste fail
Fairvote<div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"></div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/republican-plan-one-party-state">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/republican-plan-one-party-state</a>In September 2015, two months after Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy, I asked in these pages if he could accurately be described as a fascist. I decided against the designation. The true fascist states, I concluded—Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Chile—“suffered weakness in their institutions that are just about unimaginable in the United States. For instance, it is hard to imagine a President Trump turning America into a one-party state.”
I was looking in the wrong place. Donald Trump’s insults to democracy compound daily. But he’s far too incompetent to accomplish the big prize—a single-party state, I mean. The Republican Party that elevated and abetted him, however: They’re on that path with a vengeance.

David Daley, the former editor of Salon, nails part of the case with excruciating clarity in a book released last year, Ratfked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, now out in paperback with an epilogue for the era of Trump. In 2008, a Republican operative named Chris Jankowski had an idea. Others, including Republicans, in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential victory, concluded demography might soon afford Democrats a realignment to rival Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s. Jankowski instead saw an Icarus flying too close to the sun. The important election, he realized, would come two years later, for seats in state legislatures across the United States. He began making a presentation to corporate and conservative donors: Fund my new “Republican State Leadership Committee” (a title he had intentionally chosen to be nondescript, as befitted a stealth guerilla campaign), and I will give you the world.

He called his plan “Project REDMAP.” It would work like this. Through assiduous research, his group would pinpoint a handful of vulnerable Democratic seats in states where control of state legislatures was close—Pennsylvania, for example, where Democrats controlled the lower chamber by a single vote—identifying the tipping points that could flip those bodies for the Republicans. They would then control the drawing of U.S. Congressional maps after the 2010 census. At the time there were an estimated 25 true “swing” Congressional districts. By deploying state-of-the-art software to devise maps to capture the greatest number of U.S. House seats with the fewest number of votes, the party could move every one of them safely into Republican hands for at least the next 10 years. All, he promised, for the low, low price of $30 million—about a tenth of what people are estimating the candidates will spend in the upcoming 2018 Illinois governor’s race alone. Karl Rove ducked in on one of the pitch meetings: “People call us a vast right-wing conspiracy, but we’re really a half-assed right-wing conspiracy. Now it’s time to get serious.”

The United States Chamber of Commerce was convinced; they chipped in $4 million. A group aligned with the American Legislative Exchange Council gave $2.5 million. Rounding out the list of top donors: Walmart, Anthem Health Insurance, two tobacco companies, AT&T, and an Indian tribe that an internal Republican memo suggests served as a money-laundering conduit for gambling interests in the state of Alabama.

REDMAP’s targets were politicians such as David Levdansky, the dedicated and principled chairman of the Pennsylvania House’s Finance Committee. Via focus groups, they’d divined a made-up issue by which to smear him: a $10 million appropriation out of the state’s $600 million capital budget to build a new wing at a college library to house Arlen Specter’s papers. Like the troops pounding Omaha Beach after D-Day, new, breathtakingly deceptive full-color flyers flooded the mailboxes of the Keystone State’s 39th district in the last three weeks of the campaign. One depicted Levdansky as the mastermind of a “$600 million” Arlen Specter “Taj Mahal”; another as a maniac gun-grabber because, back when he had been a township supervisor, he had supported a police chief’s recommendation to ban the carrying of concealed weapons in the police station.

Levdansky lost by 151 votes. As a result, the Republicans now control both chambers of the legislature, and the governorship. And along with states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina, they followed a plan laid out by Republican redistricting guru Tom Hofeller to steal Americans’ democratic birthright via gerrymander—and to do it in secret. Advice included: Never communicate by email, the better to cover your tracks. (“Emails are the tool of the devil.” “Make sure your computer is in a PRIVATE location.” Thus the Ohio Republican Party’s command post, in a hotel across from the statehouse, was labeled “the Bunker.”) In Wisconsin, Republican legislators were only allowed to look at maps for their own districts, and then only after signing nondisclosure agreements, and they were advised, “Public comments on this map may be different from what you hear in this room. Ignore the public comments.” Democrats were only allowed to look at them when it was time to approve the maps in the legislature. The corporate law firm that ran the show claimed the deliberations that produced them were protected from public scrutiny by attorney-client privilege.

The basics of Hofeller’s advice, in short, was to follow the law to the letter and pulverize its spirit. “NEVER travel without counsel,” he advised. A judge might call this “mens rea”: a guilty mind, proof of an intent to deceive. We know how it worked in practice because some conspirators honored Hofeller’s advice about email in the breach. In one of Ratfked’s most astonishing revelations, after Florida voters overwhelmingly approved two “Fair District” constitutional amendments banning partisan attempts to gerrymander, Republican consultants still drew maps to disenfranchise Democrats—only they introduced them through fake email accounts to make it look as if they were submitted by disinterested members of the general public. Unwitting young party activists, the sort who might wish to court favor with their elders, were then instructed to recite, verbatim, testimony written for them in support of the maps. (One such script: “Senate District 20 is an excellently drawn State Senate district. . . . Very smart work from the committee on this district. I approve!”) In Wisconsin, the hard drives belonging to two key operatives “failed”; even more suspiciously, both operatives produced identical 24-word explanations for their computers’ convenient memory lapse in court depositions.

The upshot of the national campaign? In Pennsylvania, after the 2012 election, Republicans ended up controlling 13 of 18 U.S. House seats. In a democracy, a party should occupy 72 percent of a given state’s House seats if it wins something like 72 percent of votes in an election. But in Pennsylvania, it only won about 49 percent. The diabolical computers, however, were programmed to pack the Democrats’ 51 percent of the votes into the smallest number of districts statistically possible. (What’s that old computer programmers’ saying? Garbage in, garbage out.) And Ohio, American electoral history’s most famous swing state, swings no more: “The mapmaker did such a good job that it’s hard to imagine anyone in Ohio politics who thinks it can be reversed for perhaps two decades to come.” All told, Daley concludes, Democrats might not take back Congress in 2018 even if they receive a vote bonanza that, in an actual democracy, would constitute a landslide.

Then there were the consequences in the 2016 cycle. In states like North Carolina and Wisconsin, legislatures that REDMAP turned Republican immediately responded with radical voter suppression bills. In the Badger State, the one signed by Governor Scott Walker helped ensure the lowest voter turnout in two decades. In Milwaukee, home to more than two-thirds of the state’s African Americans, some 52,000 fewer blacks cast a ballot than in 2012. Hillary Clinton received 43,000 fewer votes in Milwaukee than Barack Obama did in 2012. Donald Trump won the state by 27,000 votes.

Right-wing political organizing often centers upon strategizing around an awkward fact: A majority of Americans don’t want what they’re selling. That goes back as far as the antebellum period, when Southern slaveholders knew they could not control enough votes in Congress to preserve the peculiar institution without creating new slave states in the West. (Some also wanted to expand farther south, annexing Cuba and parts of Mexico and Central America.) Or, in the next century, consider the insurgents who conspired to defeat the moderates who made up the vast majority of the Republican base in order to nominate Barry Goldwater. A decade earlier, calling themselves “the Syndicate,” they had conspired to take over the Young Republican National Federation via a “rotten borough” strategy, setting up dummy conventions in places where there were few Republicans, to elect delegates to take over national conventions.

A cadre of 28 Syndicate veterans, including a lobbyist for Standard Oil of Indiana, met secretly in a Chicago hotel room to parcel out the tasks to pack the precinct and county meetings that began two years before the presidential year. It was “nothing less than a long-term political guerrilla operation,” their leader, Clifton White, wrote in a memoir; but one as easy, he also noted, as “pushing on an open door.”

Much easier, that is to say, than actually winning the loyalty of voters. This was how Goldwater was able to win the Republican nomination with 67.5 percent of the delegates despite a Harris Poll that showed the public disagreed with him on eight out of 10 issues. And the general election? To win that, a memo advised Republicans to “shake off the fiction of the idea that they are engaged in a national plebiscite.” It was the theory, in other words, that George W. Bush and Donald Trump later carried out in practice: no shame in claiming a mandate for radical-right governance, even if you don’t win the most votes.

Among libertarians, meanwhile, Milton Friedman infamously observed that since “only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change,” the intellectual’s task is to keep policies “alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.” Edmund Meese, then of the Heritage Foundation, made a secret 2005 presentation to the House Republican Study Committee to bring what then-Rep. Mike Pence called “conservative free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast” to exploit the panic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. (The proposals included cutting funding for the Public Broadcasting Service, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.) PayPal founder and Donald Trump campaign surrogate Peter Thiel argued in 2009 that developments like “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women . . . have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

Operation REDMAP midwifed diabolical plans to end the Democratic Party on the national level once and for all. On the level of the presidency, post–Operation REDMAP, there came state legislative proposals such as the one introduced in Pennsylvania in 2011 to apportion the state’s electoral college votes by Congressional district. (It failed, and, via the traditional means, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes went to Barack Obama, because he beat Mitt Romney by 51.95 to 46.57 percent. If it had succeeded, Obama would have only won six of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, despite his decisive margin of victory.)

Then there is the lively movement to gerrymander the Senate. Republicans never put the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment quite in those terms. Before the amendment was added to the Constitution in 1913, members of the U.S. Senate were elected by state legislatures, not by citizens’ votes. You first began hearing calls to return the election of senators to the backrooms of state capitols during the Tea Party election of 2010. In 2013, prominent conservatives including Justice Antonin Scalia, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Ted Cruz joined the call. So did the very important right-wing radio host Mark Levin, who pours out his anti-democracy preachments to some 7.75 million listeners a week. His 2003 book The Liberty Amendments argued that the 17th “serves not the public’s interest but the interests of governing masterminds and their disciples.”

Then this July, after the Republicans’ crusade to toss tens of millions of their fellow Americans off health insurance failed the Senate, Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, evangelical hero, and father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new White House press secretary, took to Twitter: “Time to repeal the 17th Amendment. Founders had it right—Senators chosen by state legislatures. . . . Direct election of Senate is major cause of #swamp.”

“Draining the swamp,” apparently, now means turning America into a single-party state. Thanks to Project REDMAP, Republicans control both chambers of 32 state legislatures. If they came to control six more, they could indeed repeal the 17th Amendment—and would automatically control 72 senate seats, adding automatic control of the Senate to REDMAP’s automatic control of the House of Representatives.

Can it happen? At its annual convention in Denver in July, ALEC’s Federalism and International Relations Task Force held a debate on whether to recommend a model bill to state legislatures to repeal the 17th, thereby starting the process of single-party rule. It would be interesting to know how that debate went. But we’ll never know. ALEC meetings are secret. Sinclair Lewis supposedly said when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. But maybe we won’t know how it came. It will happen in secret debates at conferences closed to the press, and in “bunkers” across the street from state capitols, guarded by two-factor encryption and attorney-client privilege, abetted by computer programs with the power to turn citizens into subjects.Rick Perlstein

<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-december-19-2016/">https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-december-19-2016/</a>ratfucked interview

<a href="http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/four-key-tips-understanding-election-2016">http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/four-key-tips-understanding-election-2016</a>

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challenge WI:

<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-align: left;">gerrymander red map:</div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-align: left;">

<a href="http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/wisconsin-redistricting-lawsuit-could-reverberate-nationally">http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/wisconsin-redistricting-lawsuit-could-reverberate-nationally</a>

After a century as a trailblazer for progressive democracy reforms, Wisconsin has become what one local union leader ruefully calls “a kind of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/magazine/scott-walker-and-the-fate-of-the-union.html" style="line-height: 32px; text-decoration: none;">laboratory for oligarchs</a> to implement their political and economic agenda.”

This assessment, delivered by David Poklinkoski, president of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2304, captures Wisconsin Democrats’ dim view of the brazenly partisan redistricting plan masterminded by GOP Governor Scott Walker.

But the redistricting plan, so central in empowering Walker and his legislative allies to roll back social reforms in Wisconsin, is now the target of a federal lawsuit. First heard by federal judges in May, the suit is now before an appeals court that is expected to rule this summer. That ruling could reverberate in other states around the country with heavily GOP-tilted electoral maps. While a few Democratic-controlled state governments have district maps that favor their party, the 2010 Republican electoral sweep set off a nationally-coordinated and harshly partisan round of redistricting in states where both the governor and legislative majorities were Republican.

Now, Republican-imposed plans in a number of other states—including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Texas—stand to be affected by Wisconsin’s redistricting ruling, which will be handed down by the U.S. Seventh Court of Appeals. Such redistricting experts as Michael Li, chief counsel on the issue for the Brennan Center for Justice, predict the case could eventually land before the Supreme Court. The death of conservative Justice Antonin has altered the ideological balance on the now evenly divided court, and Li says Justice Anthony Kennedy has shown a strong interest in the case.

“The Wisconsin lawsuit is the most significant gerrymandering challenge in 30 years,” says Li. “This lawsuit could be a rare opportunity to contest unfair redistricting. It comes at a time when both the Supreme Court and the public are aware of the dysfunctionality of our legislative bodies.”

In Wisconsin, the redistricting plan imposed in 2011 was conceived in tight secrecy behind a private law firm’s closed doors as part of a large-scale national Republican strategy to block Democrats from power through the careful manipulation of state legislative district lines. The plan exaggerates actual GOP electoral strength and marginalizes Democratic voters, critics say. Indeed, it takes partisan gerrymandering to new heights, transforming what would otherwise be majority votes for Democrats into overwhelming Republican victories.

The Republican-rigged electoral map has been crucial in enabling Walker and the state’s GOP-controlled legislature to gut labor laws, weaken environmental protections, bestow new tax breaks on corporations, attack women’s reproductive rights, and reduce funding for the University of Wisconsin and public education in general.

Known as<a href="http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/Whitford%20Complaint.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">Whitford v. Nichol</a>, the suit was brought by 12 Democratic plaintiffs who argue that the plan unfairly discounts the values of votes cast by Democrats. The Wisconsin Attorney General’s office <a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/05/24/federal-redistricting-trial-begins-in-wisconsin.htm" style="text-decoration: none;">has defended the map</a> on the grounds that it is not a “gerrymander,” typically defined as a set of district lines with illogical and strangely-shaped borders, and drawn for ideological advantage.

But the state’s district map exemplifies the extremes to which Republicans have taken the political practice of gerrymandering districts for maximum political advantage. The result has been an indirect form of voter disenfranchisement.The plaintiffs charged that the redistricting violated their right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. Further, as they asserted in their brief: “Extreme partisan gerrymandering is also contrary to core democratic values because it enables a political party to win more legislative districts—and thus more legislative power—than is warranted by that party’s popular support.”

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<h1 id="title" class="a-size-large a-spacing-none" style=" box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-weight: 700; margin-bottom: 0px !important; line-height: 1.3 !important;">Ratfked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy <span class="a-size-medium a-color-secondary a-text-normal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; line-height: 1.255 !important; font-weight: 400 !important; font-style: normal !important; text-transform: none !important; text-decoration: none !important;">Hardcover <span class="a-size-medium a-color-secondary a-text-normal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; line-height: 1.255 !important; font-weight: 400 !important; font-style: normal !important; text-transform: none !important; text-decoration: none !important;">– June 14, 2016</h1>

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<div id="byline" class="a-section a-spacing-micro bylineHidden feature" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by <a class="a-link-normal" href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=David+Daley&search-alias=books&field-author=David+Daley&sort=relevancerank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">David Daley</a> </div>

<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628">https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628</a>

<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">With Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives, including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks―known to political insiders as “ratfking”―to a whole new, unprecedented level. Flooding state races with a gold rush of dark money made possible by <em style="font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Citizens United<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">, the Republicans reshaped state legislatures, where the power to redistrict is held. Reconstructing this never- told-before story, <span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">David Daley <span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">examines the far-reaching effects of this so-called REDMAP program, which has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a firewall in the House, insulating the party and its wealthy donors from popular democracy. <em style="font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ratfked<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;"> <span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important;">pulls back the curtain on one of the greatest heists in American political history. 5 maps

==

http://www.alternet.org/books/ratfcked-how-chris-jankowski-turned-electoral-map-bright-red-until-2020

Wearing a resplendent red tie, the color of the Republican Party, Barack Obama delivered his victory speech on November 4, 2008. The nation’s first African American first family joined him, celebrating together the historic evening. Watch Obama’s Grant Park speech eight years later, and it’s not only his youth and the jubilant throngs that make the moment so electrifying. It’s that sense of post-partisan possibilities that matched Obama’s carefully chosen metaphor. “If there is anyone out there,” Obama told the nation, “who still wonders if the dream of our Founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

As it turned out, Obama captured Republican stronghold after stronghold that early November evening. Down South, he picked off North Carolina and Virginia. In the Midwest, he grabbed Indiana. He won the two states where Democratic dreams had died hard in 2000 and 2004—Florida and Ohio—then added Colorado and Nevada for good measure, conjuring liberals’ visions of a future western majority. As polls closed late in Oregon, Alaska and Minnesota, and Republican incumbents went down, pundits, professors and politicians marveled at the new Democratic supermajority in the Senate and spoke of emerging—even unbreakable—coalitions. On television and on the front pages of newspapers, they openly questioned how the GOP would survive to the next election.

“The question now becomes what is the future of the Republican party nationally,” wondered one political science professor in the New York Times. The mood turned grim on Fox News, where Bill O’Reilly bemoaned, “Barack Obama is a star. . . . The Republicans have, who? Sarah Palin?” Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham bluntly called the Republican beatdown well deserved. “We’ve seen a lack of competence at every level of government, frankly, under Republican rule,” she opined.

“It’s a party adrift. It’s a party lost,” added longtime Republican communications adviser Torie Clarke on ABC News. Over on CNN, Wolf Blitzer and John King peered deeper into the blue map and found suburban Pennsylvania counties, like Bucks, Montgomery and Chester—previously reliable for George W. Bush—now tipping toward Obama by double digits. “If you are the Republicans looking at this map this morning,” observed King, “you are very troubled.”

One of those concerned conservatives, Rich Lowry, the editor of William F. Buckley’s National Review, didn’t like what he saw either in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Virginia. “It’s a bad thing for the Republicans when you drill down into these states,” he said. “It’s like, where did all the Republicans go? Did they all move to Utah?”

The 2008 election looked like a transformative moment, a wave election that announced an ascendant new movement. Even the brightest conservative thinkers thought it signaled danger for the GOP. And it might have. What no one knew—not even despairing Republicans eyeing Fox News through a fuzzy third-cocktail haze—was that the truly transformative election was two years away. It would not be celebrated live around the world from a Grant Park awash in klieg lights, but in VFW halls and Holiday Inn ballrooms and strip-mall party headquarters as hundreds of new Republican state legislators claimed victories—in those very states Lowry feared were lost forever.

This is the story of the audacious Republican plan which not only penned in the Obama presidency but managed, in spite of jubilant 2008 Democratic expectations, to create supermajorities for conservative policies in otherwise blue and purple states. This is the story of the actual redrawing of the American political map and of our democracy itself. It’s the story of how Republicans turned a looming demographic disaster into legislative majorities so unbreakable, so impregnable, that none of the outcomes are in doubt until after the 2020 census. It is the story of new mapping technologies so exact that they’ve re-sorted and resegregated Americans, while creating congressional districts where the only competition comes from someone more extreme.

It’s legal, it’s breathtaking, and much of it happened in plain sight. The Democratic majority was ratfucked.

In politics, a “ratfuck” is a dirty deed done dirt cheap. You can trace the term back as far as Edmund Wilson’s The Twenties. It was used decades later in All the President’s Men, the story of how Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal and brought about the resignation of Richard Nixon. They quoted Donald Segretti, an operative tied to Nixon’s reelection campaign, as using the colorful term to describe political sabotage and the early shenanigans of seamy strategists linked to the burglars who bungled the Watergate break-in. The operatives who quite legally changed the complexion of Congress worked in a far more sophisticated fashion.

This twenty-first-century version begins in 2009, when Chris Jankowski awoke on July 22 at his Richmond home still feeling kicked in the gut by the election results. He sat down with the morning New York Times, and buried inside a story about state legislatures and census projections he read something that snapped him back to action. After reading past a downcast first sentence whose truth he knew far too well—“Republicans in search of good news these days have had to rely on bad news for the White House”—Jankowski found this, by Times correspondent Adam Nagourney:

"2010 is not just any election year: it is crucial given that this class of governors will be in charge as their states draw Congressional and state legislative districts as part of the reapportionment process after the next census. And given historical trends in midterm elections and the lopsided majority Democrats enjoy in Congress, the possibility that Republicans could make gains in House races next year could give the party a psychological boost at the halfway point of Mr. Obama’s term."

Jankowski immediately recognized the opportunity. As provided in the Constitution, every state redraws all of its district lines every ten years, that is, after the census. That means elections in “zero years” matter more than others. Jankowski realized it would be possible to target states where the legislature is in charge of redistricting, flip as many chambers as possible, take control of the process, and redraw the lines. Boom. Just like that—if Republicans could pull it off—the GOP would go from demographically challenged to the catbird seat for a decade. At least.

As one of the leading tacticians behind the Republican State Leadership Committee, Jankowski has few peers as a strategist, even if Karl Rove and Frank Luntz then vacuumed up all the TV airtime. State government has always been his passion. He had spent years trying to arm-twist GOP strategists and donors to spend more time and money on down-ballot races: state houses, state attorneys general, local judges. Those might not be the sexy elections to invest in—no wealthy player feels like a kingmaker or a Koch brother by writing a check to the Republican running for state representative in Pennsylvania’s 130th—but he proved time and again that they often provided the best value. Donations that would be a mere drop in the bucket to a presidential or Senate candidate might make all the difference at the local level. And policy outcomes, he would readily discern, could actually be influenced in state capitals—unlike in gridlocked Washington, DC.

It’s hard to believe, but the lightbulb moment that would reshape American politics came almost immediately over a breakfast with the supposedly liberal New York Times: Republicans should mount an aggressive campaign to flip state legislatures ahead of post-census redistricting, then press the advantage to both redraw congressional and state legislative lines in their favor and aggressively advance the conservative agenda. Presidents almost always lose seats in a midterm election. Democratic turnout always falls in non-presidential years. Smart money spent on the right races had the potential to make more of a difference than ever.

Republican operatives would use the oldest trick in the book—the gerrymander—but in a brilliant and totally modern way.

“I read it and I thought we could do this,” Jankowski told me. “I know those state legislators. I know who’s going to be the speaker in Pennsylvania if we get the majority. We should do this. This will make our guys happy. I can go to these guys in the legislature and say, hey, we’ve been struggling for years to try and help you guys compete. I think we can get millions—and you don’t have to do anything other than what you were going to do anyway.”

Jankowski was right, and the race was on. In short order, the RSLC would call the plan REDMAP—for Redistricting Majority Project—a name which also described its very elegant goal. These strategists would turn the electoral map bright red. Jankowski took the lead as executive director.

By the time election 2010 heated up, two big things had already changed since the swooning that marked Obama’s victorious evening in Grant Park. First, that January, the Supreme Court issued its Citizens United verdict, tossing out the ban on independent political expenditures by corporations as an unconstitutional breach of free speech. In a 5-to-4 decision, rendered on January 21, 2010, the court’s five conservatives ruled that corporations and unions had a permanent green light to spend essentially as much money as they wished. Super PACs and other tax-exempt nonprofit political groups could now raise and spend unlimited amounts, much of it “dark money” impossible to trace back to the donor.

President Obama found the ruling so antithetical to democracy that he took the rare step of criticizing it, harshly, during his State of the Union speech six days later, which was attended, awkwardly, by six of the nine justices. But Citizens United was just the continuation of Obama’s political nightmare. A Republican, Scott Brown, improbably captured the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, erasing the Democratic supermajority in the Senate. Obama’s push for universal health care descended into a debate over “death panels,” creating a summer of ugly town hall meetings for Democrats nationwide, and thereby speeding the rise of the Tea Party.

Jankowski didn’t see all of this coming that July morning, however. He just saw a way to get his side back into the game. Instantly, his post-election malaise began to fade.

“We were depressed as hell but we weren’t going to quit,” he confides.

In All the President’s Men, Woodward and Bernstein investigated several longtime Nixon aides and kept hearing the term “ratfucking” used to describe sabotage by operatives in Nixon’s inner circle, going all the way back to their days as students and young Republicans at the University of Southern California. As Woodward and Bernstein wrote: “‘Ratfucking?’ The word struck a raw nerve with a Justice Department attorney. ‘You can go right to the top on that one.’”

Twenty years later, in the early 1990s, the phrase would reemerge, when the new Republican National Committee legal counsel was tasked with fixing the Republicans’ redistricting problem. The solution Ben Ginsberg hit upon was to use the Voting Rights Act’s provisions governing majority-minority districts to create African American seats in Southern states. Work closely with minority groups to encourage candidates to run. Then pack as many Democratic voters as possible inside the lines, bleaching the surrounding districts whiter and more Republican, thus resegregating congressional representation while increasing the number of African Americans in Congress. The strategy became known as the unholy alliance, because it benefited black leaders and Republicans at the expense of the Democratic Party. Ginsberg had another name for it when a reporter asked him to describe it: Project Ratfuck.

The REDMAP ratfuck was done in such plain sight that Karl Rove himself announced it on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. “Some of the most important contests this fall will be way down the ballot in communities like Portsmouth, Ohio, and West Lafayette, Ind., and neighborhoods like Brushy Creek in Round Rock, Texas, and Murrysville Township in Westmoreland County, Pa.,” Rove wrote in early March 2010, naming some of the specific towns where Republicans would come gunning for Democratic incumbents. “These are state legislative races that will determine who redraws congressional district lines after this year’s census, a process that could determine which party controls upwards of 20 seats and whether many other seats will be competitive.”

Control redistricting, Rove understood, and you could control Congress. A midterm rebuke of President Obama, coming in a census year like 2010, would have far-reaching implications stretching across the next decade, if not longer. Win big in 2010 and Republicans could redraw the maps and lock in electoral and financial advantages for the next ten years. Push just 20 districts from competitive to safely Republican, and the GOP could save $100 million or more over the next decade.

“There are 18 state legislative chambers that have four or fewer seats separating the two parties that are important for redistricting. Seven of these are controlled by Republicans and the other 11 are controlled by Democrats, including the lower houses in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana and Pennsylvania,” Rove continued. “Republican strategists are focused on 107 seats in 16 states. Winning these seats would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats.”

The assertion is so bold, yet so sensical, that one does not know whether to stand back and admire the audaciousness, indict the Democrats for gross negligence and lack of imagination, or simply howl over the undemocraticness of it all.

Excerpted from Ratfked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy  by David Daley.

==

In the spring of 2010, the conservative political strategist Ed Gillespie flew from Washington, D.C., to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend a day laying the groundwork for REDMAP, a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures. Gillespie hoped to help his party get control of statehouses where congressional redistricting was pending, thereby leveraging victories in cheap local races into a means of shifting the balance of power in Washington. It was an ingenious plan, and Gillespie is a skilled tactician—he once ran the Republican National Committee—but REDMAP seemed like a long shot in North Carolina. Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and remained popular. The Republicans hadn’t controlled both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly for more than a century. (“Not since General Sherman,” a state politico joked to me.) That day in Raleigh, though, Gillespie had lunch with an ideal ally: James Arthur (Art) Pope, the chairman and C.E.O. of Variety Wholesalers, a discount-store conglomerate. The Raleigh News and Observer had called Pope, a conservative multimillionaire, the Knight of the Right. The REDMAP project offered Pope a new way to spend his money.

Read more <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1aDUp5Ati" style="">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1aDUp5Ati</a>

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</div><div style="overflow: hidden; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">=</div><div style="overflow: hidden; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">3/18</div><div style="overflow: hidden; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="38" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQgmKAAwAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFggnMAA" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">REDMAP: The RSLC Redistricting Majority Project</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b0" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IKDAA" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IKTAA" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3dnWcK2XFTIJ:www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:3dnWcK2XFTIJ:www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/%2B%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAgqMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwgrMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwgrMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">As the 2010 Census approached, the RSLC began planning for the subsequent election cycle, formulating a strategy to keep or win Republican control of state legislatures with the largest impact on congressional redistricting as a result of reapportionment. That effort, the REDistricting MAjorityProject (REDMAP), focused ...</a><div class="osl" style="margin-top: 0px;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwgrMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">‎</a><a class="fl" href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?page_id=2" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/%3Fpage_id%3D2&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ0gIILSgAMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">About</a> · ‎<a class="fl" href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?m=201007" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/%3Fm%3D201007&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ0gIILigBMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">July 2010</a> · ‎<a class="fl" href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?m=201009" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/%3Fm%3D201009&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ0gIILygCMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">September 2010</a> · ‎<a class="fl" href="http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/?m=201010" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.redistrictingmajorityproject.com/%3Fm%3D201010&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ0gIIMCgDMAA" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">October 2010</a></div></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-iDr41xdxuq0I" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCDEwAA"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="57" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQg5KAEwAQ"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFgg6MAE" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">'Gerrymandering On Steroids': How Republicans Stacked The Nation's ...</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b1" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IOzAB" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IPDAB" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:adrgamSvb-cJ:www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:adrgamSvb-cJ:www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap%2B%26cd%3D2%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAg9MAE" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwg-MAE" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwg-MAE" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jul 19, 2016 - The plan, which its architects dubbed REDMAP for Redistricting Majority Project, hinged on the fact that states redraw their electoral maps every 10 years according to new Census data.REDMAP targeted states where just a few statehouse seats could shift the balance to Republicancontrol in the crucial ...</a></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-incY9yPy5H14" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCEAwAQ"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="72" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQhIKAIwAg"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFghJMAI" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">“Ratfcked”: The Influence of Redistricting | The New Yorker</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/.../ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b2" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0ISjAC" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8ISzAC" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DL5LPC3RDcJ:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:DL5LPC3RDcJ:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhMMAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DL5LPC3RDcJ:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:DL5LPC3RDcJ:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhMMAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jun 27, 2016 - Much of “Ratfked” is devoted to a Republican scheme optimistically called REDMAP, for Redistricting Majority Project. REDMAP was created in early 2010, at a point when the country's electoral map was largely blue. In twenty-seven states, Democrats held the majority of seats in both houses of the ...</a></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-izhe9sn1Z3CA" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCE4wAg"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="86" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQhWKAMwAw"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFghXMAM" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">This is how the GOP rigged Congress: The secret plan that handcuffed ...</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.salon.com/.../this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_tha...</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b3" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IWDAD" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IWTAD" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QXMoWAiYF3wJ:https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:QXMoWAiYF3wJ:https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhaMAM" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QXMoWAiYF3wJ:https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:QXMoWAiYF3wJ:https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhaMAM" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jun 13, 2016 - The two key tacticians behind REDMAP (for Redistricting Majority Project), Chris Jankowski and Ed Gillespie, recognized that if they crafted a plan to flip state legislative chambers in enough key states--especially purplish states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin--that ...</a></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-iwwpKnn5lrjc" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCFwwAw"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="100" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQhkKAQwBA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFghlMAQ" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">REDMAP - Wikipedia</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b4" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IZjAE" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IZzAE" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dbfnRv9qAGIJ:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:dbfnRv9qAGIJ:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhoMAQ" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dbfnRv9qAGIJ:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:dbfnRv9qAGIJ:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhoMAQ" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">REDMAP is a project of the Republican State Leadership Committee of the United States to increaseRepublican control of Congressional seats as well as state legislators, largely through determination of electoral district boundaries. The project has reportedly made effective use of partisan gerrymandering, by relying on ...</a></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="105" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQhpKAUwBQ"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/gerrymandering-technology-redmap-2020/543888/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/gerrymandering-technology-redmap-2020/543888/&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFghqMAU" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">We're a Lot Better at Gerrymandering Than We Used to Be - The Atlantic</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/.../gerrymandering...redmap.../5438...</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b5" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IazAF" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IbDAF" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1gbaG0R1WuQJ:https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/gerrymandering-technology-redmap-2020/543888/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:1gbaG0R1WuQJ:https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/gerrymandering-technology-redmap-2020/543888/%2B%26cd%3D6%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhtMAU" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1gbaG0R1WuQJ:https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/gerrymandering-technology-redmap-2020/543888/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:1gbaG0R1WuQJ:https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/gerrymandering-technology-redmap-2020/543888/%2B%26cd%3D6%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhtMAU" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Oct 28, 2017 - Republicans certainly maintain the advantage in that game right now. They began the escalation over seven years ago, with the creation of the groundbreaking REDMAP initiative. As David Daley's Ratfked illustrates, the first goal of the Republican State Leadership Committee's REDMAP project was to ...</a></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="111" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQhvKAYwBg"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFghwMAY" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">How the GOP Made Your Vote Useless - The Daily Beast</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote...</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b6" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IcTAG" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IcjAG" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tv1EyKVOlzEJ:https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:Tv1EyKVOlzEJ:https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless%2B%26cd%3D7%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhzMAY" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tv1EyKVOlzEJ:https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:Tv1EyKVOlzEJ:https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gop-gerrymandering-made-your-democratic-vote-useless%2B%26cd%3D7%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAhzMAY" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Oct 7, 2017 - Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast. Ed Gillespie masterminded the devastating 2010 GOP strategy to retake Washington by winning crucial state and local elections that brought the power to redistrict the U.S. House. His plan, aptly dubbed REDMAP, worked so well thatRepublicans captured ...</a></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-ivvCMcCWsz6g" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCHUwBg"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="122" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQh6KAcwBw"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913.html&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFgh7MAc" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">GOP REDMAP Memo Admits Gerrymandering To Thank For ...</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.huffingtonpost.com/.../gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913....</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b7" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IfDAH" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IfTAH" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:o_4iHYjR1UMJ:https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913.html+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:o_4iHYjR1UMJ:https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913.html%2B%26cd%3D8%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAh-MAc" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:o_4iHYjR1UMJ:https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913.html+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:o_4iHYjR1UMJ:https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gop-redmap-memo-gerrymandering_n_2498913.html%2B%26cd%3D8%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAh-MAc" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jan 17, 2013 - The report — drafted as a summary of the importance of the RSLC's RedistrictingMajority Project (REDMAP) — serves as a breakdown of the broader GOP plan to take control of state legislatures, giving Republicans free rein to mount an aggressive gerrymandering campaign that allowed the party to keep ...</a></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-ilqGbm_Jt_FA" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCIABMAc"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="136" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQiIASgIMAg"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFgiJATAI" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Author explains why Democrats will struggle to win the House until ...</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.vox.com/.../gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-k...</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b8" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IigEwCA" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IiwEwCA" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PtnNcbiwo_EJ:https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:PtnNcbiwo_EJ:https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama%2B%26cd%3D9%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAiMATAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PtnNcbiwo_EJ:https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:PtnNcbiwo_EJ:https://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/10/5/13097066/gerrymandering-redistricting-republican-party-david-daley-karl-rove-barack-obama%2B%26cd%3D9%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQIAiMATAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Oct 5, 2016 - The Republican Party, on the heels of a sweeping loss to Barack Obama in 2008, hatched a scheme it called REDMAP, short for Redistricting Majority Project. It was “the most audacious political heist of modern times,” writes David Daley, author of Ratfked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal ...</a></div><div jsl="$t t--ddbPTeIsNI$t-nEjf2CObCkc;$x 0;" class="r-ipIwTbM4pBCI" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ2Z0BCI4BMAg"><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="148" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFQiUASgJMAk"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><h3 class="r" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQFgiVATAJ" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">The power that gerrymandering has brought to Republicans - The ...</a></h3><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 18px;"><div class="f hJND5c TbwUpd" style="height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="iUh30" style="font-style: normal;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/...gerrymandering...republicans/.../045264ae-2903-...</cite><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&oq=redmap+project+gop+redistricting&aqs=chrome..69i57.7383j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b9" aria-label="Result details" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQ7B0IlgEwCQ" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQqR8IlwEwCQ" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwiYATAJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" />
</li></ol></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwiYATAJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jun 17, 2016 - Chris Jankowski, a tactician for the Republican State Leadership Committee, and his allies came up with an audacious plan to target campaign money toward gaining control of state governments, where reapportionment would take place. The operation, called REDMAP (RedistrictingMajority Project), was ...</a></div></div></div></div></div><div style="overflow: hidden; background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwiYATAJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a></div><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html+redmap+project+gop+redistricting&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNqNbxyZraAhXK5YMKHZqICyYQHwiYATAJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">

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