All posts tagged: gerrymandering

Trump’s Enormous Gerrymandering Blunder – The Atlantic

Trump’s Enormous Gerrymandering Blunder – The Atlantic

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up for Inside the Trump Presidency, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump term. When President Trump last summer implored Republicans to launch a nationwide gerrymandering blitz to pad their narrow House majority, the fight he started did not seem fair. GOP lawmakers had both the will and the power to draw their party new seats, while Democrats were hamstrung by limits of their own making. The question was not whether Republicans could expand their edge in Congress, but by how much. This morning the landscape looks a lot different, after Virginia voters yesterday approved a lopsided new House map that could hand Democrats an additional four seats that Republicans currently hold. The Democratic redistricting victory is the party’s second in a statewide referendum. When combined with new lines that California voters endorsed in November, Democrats have now succeeded in drawing districts that will likely yield them nine more seats this fall, at least matching what Republicans have been able to achieve in states that they control. By some measures, Democrats have jumped …

Virginia Democrats Go All-In on Gerrymandering (With Some Regrets)

Virginia Democrats Go All-In on Gerrymandering (With Some Regrets)

Published by Daniella Wilson

Democrats in Virginia desperately want permission from voters to gerrymander the state beyond recognition. They also want Virginians to know how profoundly sorry they are to have to ask. “I believe that people should choose their representatives. Representatives shouldn’t choose their people,” State Senator Creigh Deeds declared on Friday, as he stood flanked by a dozen young Democrats at the University of Virginia. This is typically the main argument against gerrymandering, but for Deeds, it was just the windup to a pitch for his party to cast aside its highfalutin principles and start hurling spitballs back at Republicans. “We’ve been pushed,” he lamented, “into a situation not of our own choosing.” The situation to which Deeds so gravely alluded is the all-out redistricting war that Republicans started last summer in Texas. At President Trump’s behest, state lawmakers redrew congressional lines to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority. Democrats, initially aghast but quickly emboldened, responded by matching Republicans with an equally aggressive gerrymander in California, which voters approved overwhelmingly in November. The battleground expanded from there, …

Spanberger And Dems Lie About Gerrymandering Scheme

Spanberger And Dems Lie About Gerrymandering Scheme

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Ben Cline via RealClearPolitics, Once you burn your credibility, it’s hard to get back. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger deceived voters and concealed her true leftist agenda to win the Governor’s Mansion last year. Now she and her fellow Democrats are lying to Virginians about a new gerrymandered congressional district map they placed on the ballot as a constitutional amendment on April 21. It’s a naked attempt to make it impossible for Republicans to win election to Congress in most places in Virginia, and it’s why she was rewarded with the plum assignment of responding to President Trump’s State of the Union address this week. The Virginia Supreme Court has already had one chance to stop the gerrymandering by upholding a judge’s ruling that Democrats cut legal corners to get the measure on the ballot. The justices, however, inexplicably chose to wait until the vote happens. I filed another lawsuit to bring new challenges, along with my colleague, Rep. Morgan Griffith (VA-9), and the RNC and NRCC. We won in circuit court, blocking the …

The Rev. William Barber II: Fighting Autocrats Starts at the Grassroots

The Rev. William Barber II: Fighting Autocrats Starts at the Grassroots

Published by Sam Flores

“This Is Our Selma”—and a debate challenge to Speaker Mike Johnson. Turn out 1,500 more voters per county in North Carolina. That’s the threshold. The Reverend William Barber II has analyzed the numbers and believes that’s where districts flip. Gerrymandering typically assumes 45% turnout. At 50%, the map changes. Barber’s ‘s launching “This Is Our Selma” February 11-14 in Raleigh—a mobilization focused on organizing around voting rights, healthcare, and wage policy rather than resistance messaging. RELATED: Rev. William Barber takes up Mike Johnson’s challenge to debate immigration theology Barber, who led the 2013 Moral Monday protests, contends the strategy requires state-based county-level organizing rather than federal action alone. In every battleground state, voters earning low wages make up 36-42% of the electorate. Last cycle saw a notable shift: for the first time, voters earning under $50,000 favored Trump over Democrats by roughly 1%. The campaigns took different approaches. Trump visited rural Eastern North Carolina counties. Democrats focused on Charlotte and Greensboro. Barber says former candidate Pete Buttigieg confirmed that consultants discourage using the word “poor,” …