Comments | ontd_political: Your blimp won't save you now

schmiss in ontd_political

Your blimp won't save you now

Jun 05, 2011 19:04

Redistricting swipes Ron Paul

One nice thing about running for president from the House is that when things go wrong, you can usually return to a forgiving, uncompetitive, carefully gerrymandered seat in Congress.

Redistricting might make that tougher for Ron Paul this time around, according to the Texas Tribune:Tea Party godfather Ron Paul, a ( Read more... )

ron paul, dennis kucinich, census, texas, gerrymandering

Comments 14

entropius June 6 2011, 00:20:29 UTC

Gerrymandering is despicable, and completely avoidable. I myself live in a gerrymandered district -- the folks drawing the lines tried to split Tucson (an overall blue city) into a strongly blue district and a thinly red district. Turns out the district that was supposed to be thinly red was won by a moderate Democrat (Giffords).

The Federal Election Commission should hire a couple of computer scientists and mathematicians (or, better yet, solicit a program from the open-source community) to write a simple computer program that reads in census population-density data (and, optionally, information about natural boundaries: county lines, city limits, major roads, and so forth) and creates district maps from them, with the aim of creating districts that are not oddly shaped and have their boundaries along natural boundaries.

This would be a programming task that an advanced undergraduate could do.

hinoema June 6 2011, 04:50:28 UTC

Same here... Green Valley south of Continental *was* in Santa Cruz county until someone decided they needed all those old white bread voters as Pima county residents, so the border got moved to Amado.

IA on letting a computer do it.

brewsternorth June 6 2011, 15:37:34 UTC

Agreed on getting redistricting automated, or at least made independent of who's in power at the time the lines are drawn.

Mind you, implementing such a system (and making it OSS would be a good call!) would first require an acknowledgment that politics and policy should be about more than winning elections, which seems to be anathema to the US.

world_dancer June 6 2011, 16:29:20 UTC

Agreed. Gerrymandering is a way to keep people divided and prevent a realistic picture of what the people want. It almost seems to promote extremism.

I can understand some boundary oddities as far as using city limits to avoid breaking up cities more than necessary, but that never seems to be why it's done.

Thread 5

carolpent June 6 2011, 00:38:33 UTC

Gerrymandering is really, really shitty, but here's to hoping the GOP continues to dine on the delicious meal that is its own?

escherichiacola June 6 2011, 01:51:27 UTC

If we lose Kucinich I will rage quite life.

browneyedguuurl June 6 2011, 03:13:18 UTC

mte!

redstar826 June 6 2011, 02:30:24 UTC

Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter might run for president in part because he's losing his district.

Where did they get the info that he is losing his seat?? The Republicans control the redistricting process in Michigan. Michigan is losing 1 seat. You can pretty much guarantee that seat will be taken from a Democrat. It has not yet been announced what the new districts will be, although there has been a lot of talk that Gary Peters in the 9th district could be the one who is pushed out.

that said, McCotter(who unfortunately is my congressman) is a raging douchebag:

sillysallyfckup June 6 2011, 02:52:51 UTC

...

Wow. I was laughing when he said "Democrats will bring you the 1970s" (what, even)... By the time he got to "the rich" = "you" I was appalled. This guy's worldview is skewed.

txvoodoo June 6 2011, 03:46:16 UTC

Well, the last time around, gerrymanding gave my district to the GOP. And guess who was the one in charge of it? A state rep at the time - who ran for the office after it was made safe for him.