INDIVISIBLE Lambertville NJ / New Hope PA

Category: Gerrymandering

  • History Lesson: REDMAP and how the Democratic Majority Lost Seats to a Republican Minority

    To understand gerrymandering is to understand REDMAP, the concerted effort by the Republican State Leadership Committee of the United States to increase Republican control of Congress, as well as state legislators by controlling electoral boundaries. Special focus was given to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and North Carolina – historically blue states that Republicans have swung red with appropriate redistricting. REDMAP launched in 2010 with previously unavailable mapping software, at an estimated cost of $30 million. 

    Source: Wikipedia

    Additional Reading: This is how the GOP rigged Congress: The secret plan that handcuffed Obama’s presidency, but backfired in Donald Trump

  • Celebrate or Take Heart

    Contributed by Amara Willey. 

    It has been clear from the outset that we are playing a long game in the realm of healthy democracy. With the current president in the news every day with new and distasteful messages, it may be difficult to maintain optimism about our Republic and the fail-safes the founding fathers created to protect it. If nothing else, however, the last two years have motivated people to become more politically active and involved in the process, which is vital to the functioning of a healthy democracy in the first place.

    NJ-7 Congressional candidate, Tom Malinowski, reassures us that we aren’t in the realm of dictatorship despite current worries about where the country is going. Malinowski came to the United States from Communist Poland when he was 6 years old and had the “human rights beat” in the State Department under President Obama. From that perspective, he said that even as a young boy, this country felt completely different from Poland.

    At a recent coffee, Malinowski shared what he saw as the likely outcome if Democrats take the House and Republicans keep the Senate. As the majority party in the House, Democrats would have the opportunity to:

    • Set the policy agenda for the House,
    • Negotiate with Senate Republicans to get bills passed, and
    • Work to pass laws already approved by the Senate that the Speaker of the House has been keeping off the floor.

    If the president chooses not to sign or to veto legislation passed by Congress, that will send a clear message to voters, Malinowski says.

    Despite many complaints about the electoral college, our country’s emphasis on states’ rights can actually help us through the next decade. The good news for checks and balances is the number of gubernatorial races that are likely to go Blue. Having Democratic governors sets the stage for the Election in 2020, not just as an indicator of backlash and in terms of testing messages that sway voters, but also as a force to drive policy agendas at the state level. When a national election is close, state government can have an impact on the outcome.

    Taking a longer view, state officials will begin the process of redistricting once the census is completed in 2020. This will set the stage through 2030 for fair voting. If state-level Democrats do well in this election and in 2020, much of the GOP gerrymandering that happened ten years ago can be reversed.

    We’ve been working for two long years towards a saner government, and we hope the outcome of this election demonstrates that. We aren’t done, however. Whatever happens on Nov. 6, we can take a couple of days to celebrate or mourn, however we like, and then we need to get back out there doing what we’ve been doing for the last two years.

  • Putting an End to Pennsylvania’s Extreme Gerrymandering

    Putting an End to Pennsylvania’s Extreme Gerrymandering

    “Goofy Kicking Donald” was but one of the jokes elicited by the erratically drawn Republican map of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts. (Please see the image.) Widely considered one of the nation’s most blatant cases of gerrymandering – whereby electoral districts are distorted to unfairly favor a given political party – it helped Republicans secure 13 of the state’s 18 districts. To put this in context, our state voted Democratic in presidential elections from 1992 until the disaster of 2016.

    Now, a successful challenge led by the League of Women Voters to correct this imbalance has prompted a legal and political battle, making frequent headlines in the national news.

    Specifically, the League’s June, 2017 suit prompted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rule on February 7th that the Republicans’ map violated the state’s Constitution and must be redrawn. Harrisburg was given an ultimatum to either come up with a more equitable map or face a Court-ordered redesign conducted by an outside expert. Harrisburg’s lame response led the Court to adopt a new map, created by Stanford University Professor Nathaniel Persily, a top election law scholar, previously selected by courts for redistricting work in five other states, including North Carolina. (No outsider, Prof. Persily taught at U Penn Law from 2000 to 2007.)

    When it comes to the new district for Bucks County, we gained a section of Montgomery County west of Sellersville that typically votes Democratic. According to Nate Cohn’s “The Upshot” in the February 22nd edition of the New York Times, this slight change flips us from “leaned Trump” to “leaned Clinton”, based on the 2016 presidential results. Cohn concludes that Republican Brian Fitzpatrick’s prospects in the 2018 congressional election exemplify “The sort of race that could be decided by the subtle shift ordered Monday.”

    In retaliation, the Republicans in Harrisburg filed both a motion to Stay the imposition of the new map with the US Supreme Court, and a suit to overturn it on US Constitutional grounds, with the Federal District Court. The legal action now centers on the request for Stay (filed by the State Speaker of the House and President of the Senate) and the suit (with several Republican Congressmen as plaintiffs).

    Both cite the election clause in the US Constitution stating that the “Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof….” and contend that the Court’s action in imposing its plan violates that Clause. The suit quotes voting specialists (including Cohn) that the new PA Court-ordered plan is partisan in its result.

    Democrats maintain that the various Republican maps violate the PA state constitution’s requirement for fair elections. Since the State’s Supreme Court gave our Republican-dominated legislature the opportunity to correct this imbalance, and it failed to do so, the Court was within its rights to call upon a widely recognized independent expert to put it right.

    In sum, we are caught in a Catch-22. If the Constitution prevails over our state’s doctrine, then the shape of our voting districts – and thus, to a great extent, the electoral outcome — will be set by a legislature seeking to secure its dominance well into perpetuity. Truly responsive government, with elected officials who care about our everyday issues, as well as combating climate change, economic inequality, and discrimination, is founded on fair and open elections.

    CALL TO ACTION: Support Fair Districts PA: Fair Districts promotes legislation to place an independent citizens’ commission in charge of redistricting.