"For one party to win a majority of House seats with a minority of votes is a relatively rare occurrence. It has now happened five times in the past hundred years. In 1914 and 1942, the Democrats were the beneficiaries. In 1952, 1996, and this year, it was the Republicans' turn to get lucky, and their luck is likely to hold for many election cycles to come. Gerrymandering routinely gets blamed for such mismatches, but that's only part of the story. Far more important than redistricting is just plain districting: because so many Democrats are city folk, large numbers of Democratic votes pile up redundantly in overwhelmingly one-sided districts."
Redistricting should be done with eye towards creating a map that accurately reflects the partisan makeup of that state. (Compare the map above with the one by Mark Newman after the jump.)
Former GOP leaders admit voter suppression - not voter fraud was their motivation behind voter id laws. It's Worth The Wait
Former Florida Republican party officials tell the Palm Beach Post that a new election law that "contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters."
"Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law's main purpose: GOP victory."
As the bar chart above shows, Democrats and minorities were more likely to have to wait a long time in order to exercise their right to vote. Limiting voting hours, voting locations and voting machines in urban districts is part and parcel of the Republican strategy to discourage Democratic voters. As The Atlantic reports, "No one in America should have to wait 7 hours to vote. What's happening at polling stations in Ohio and Florida isn't some fluke of nature or breakdown in equipment. It's all part of a partisan design.... Phil Hirschkorn, the last "early voter" in line for Saturday's truncated early voting in Palm Beach County finally got to cast a ballot at 2:30 a.m Sunday morning, which means that voter waited in line for more than seven hours."
Obama Victory Margin Grows
As the votes keep coming in, David Wasserman notes President Obama's national lead over Mitt Romney is now 50.9% to 47.4%.
First Read: "That's a bigger (and more decisive) margin that Bush's victory over John Kerry in 2004 (which was Bush 50.7% and Kerry 48.2%). What's more, the president's lead has grown to close to 3 points in Ohio, 4 points in Virginia and 6 points in Colorado. One doesn't win Colorado by six points without winning swing voters; there isn't a big-enough Democratic base to make that argument."
Markos Moulitsas notes that President Obama could have lost every state he won by less than 5.4 percentage points — Florida, Ohio, and Virginia — and he still would've won the electoral vote 272 to 266.
The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of Maryland's groundbreaking No Representation Without Population Act, which counts incarcerated people as residents of their legal home addresses for redistricting purposes. The 2010 law was a major civil rights victory that ended the distortions in fair representation caused by using incarcerated persons to pad the population counts of districts containing prisons.
The law upheld today is a state-based solution to the long-standing problem in the federal Census of counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison location, even though they cannot vote there and remain residents of their home communities for virtually all other legal purposes. The practice of prison-based gerrymandering particularly harms urban communities and communities of color that disproportionately contain the home residences of incarcerated persons. Other states have since passed similar laws, but the Maryland law was the only one to go to the Supreme Court.
"Today's Supreme Court decision in Fletcher v. Lamone affirmed the constitutional 'one person one vote' foundation of our decade-old campaign to end prison-based gerrymandering," said Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative and the nation's leading expert on how the Census Bureau's practice of counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison locations harms the democratic process.
As the amicus brief ... makes clear, the Act was the product of years of work by groups dedicated to advancing the interests of minorities.
Brenda Wright, Vice President for Legal Strategies at Dēmos, hailed today's ruling in Fletcher v. Lamone:
The Supreme Court's ruling is a huge victory for the national campaign to end prison-based gerrymandering. This decision sets an important precedent that will encourage other states to reform their redistricting laws and end the distortion in fair representation caused by treating incarcerated persons as residents of prisons.
Reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Social Policy Action Network
A new set of district maps for the Pennsylvania House and Senate was proposed on April 12, 2012, by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission. In response to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's ruling in February in Holt v. LRC, the Commission proposed new maps with fewer divisions of counties and municipalities. A thirty-day period is provided for members of the public to testify at a hearing on May 2 or to file written comments with respect to the proposed maps. JSPAN and the Philadelphia Jewish Voice are members of a coalition of non-profit agencies and individuals studying the newly proposed districts. We invite your comments and suggestions.
The Pennsylvania State House has passed the proposed congressional redistricting maps. Nearly half of the Democrats in the House voted for it. PoliticsPA has a rundown of who crossed party lines to vote for or against the maps. Keegan Gibson gives his opinion on why each rep who voted against their party's recommendations did so. It's interesting stuff.
Remember, everyone who voted yes was agreeing that the proposed 7th district (as shown to the right) was a good idea.
Let's not forget who came up with this bizarrely shaped district and who approved it.
For the purpose of electing representatives of the people of Pennsylvania to serve in the House of Representatives in the Congress of the United States, this Commonwealth shall be divided into 18 districts which shall have one Congressman each, as follows:
(1) The First District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(2) The Second District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(3) The Third District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(4) The Fourth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(5) The Fifth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(6) The Sixth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(7) The Seventh District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(8) The Eighth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(9) The Ninth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(10) The Tenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(11) The Eleventh District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(12) The Twelfth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(13) The Thirteenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(14) The Fourteenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(15) The Fifteenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(16) The Sixteenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(17) The Seventeenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
(18) The Eighteenth District is composed of a portion of this Commonwealth.
Not much information there. The Senate and House State Government Committees are scheduled to have a joint informational committee meeting on Dec. 12, to discuss redistricting. There's another informational meeting scheduled for Dec. 13th. The House State Government Committee is scheduled to have a voting meeting on Dec. 15th and one of the issues slated for that meeting is redistricting. Since this is Dec. 7th, a Thursday, and the 12th is a Monday there is very little time for a redistricting map to be released, let alone allow for public comment.
No one even seems to pretend that these district boundaries are drawn with no regard for party or the protection of incumbents. It's just impossible to take this seriously as anything other than a political exercise in the worst possible meaning of that phrase.
I do remember that there was an opportunity to make some changes in this process a few years ago and people trying to seize that opportunity were thwarted. And now those chickens have come home to roost.
(The Pennsylvania Legislature's House State Government Committee and Senate State Government Committee are holding a joint hearing on redistricting tomorrow at 11am at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. These committee are responsible for the Congressional redistricting plan which will be used starting with next year's elections. After opening remarks by the committee chairmen Sen. Chuck McIlhinney and Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, several groups have been asked to offer testimony regarding the upcoming redistricting.
I am honored to be speaking on the behalf of the Philadelphia Jewish Voice. Lora Lavin will be speaking on behalf of The League of Women Voters. The event is open the public and members of the audience will be given an opportunity to comment as well. -- Dr. Daniel E. Loeb - promoted by Publisher)
-- by Lora Lavin, Representative Government Specialist, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania
Left unchecked: politicians choose their voters instead of letting voters select their representatives.
Gerrymandering is the equivalent of rigging elections to get a predetermined outcome.
We believe some good old-fashioned competition can keep politicians honest.
The biggest political power-play of the decade is about to get underway in Pennsylvania. It is, perhaps, the most self-serving and least transparent process of state and local government. It's called redistricting. The outcome will determine the shape of representative democracy in Pennsylvania for the next decade.
Redistricting is the process of redrawing congressional, legislative, and local government representatives' district boundaries so that each district has approximately the same number of people. The goal is to ensure communities have an equal voice in Congress, state legislatures and city and township councils.
But the politicians don't see it that way. In Pennsylvania and most other states, district lines are drawn by the very lawmakers whose political careers will be affected by the changes. For them, redistricting is an opportunity to consolidate political power and ensure their reelection prospects. For example, Philadelphia's 172nd House District was transformed during the previous redistricting in order to guarantee the reelection of a powerful legislator. It was only after a political scandal that he was eventually defeated last year.
Modern technology makes this kind of extreme gerrymandering possible. Using expensive and sophisticated software, politicians can select their voters block by block and even house by house. The tools they use are "proprietary" meaning access is limited to those with the ability to pay lots of money. But now, a Philadelphia based software firm, Azavea, in partnership with a political science professor at George Mason University in Virginia, has developed DistrictBuilder. This relatively inexpensive open-source redistricting tool can be used by ordinary citizens to draw district maps and bring elections back into the hands of the people.
To see how Profs. Michael McDonald (George Mason Univ., Brooking Inst.) and Micah Altman (Harvard, Brookings Inst.) used DistrictBuilder to run Virginia's redistricting contest, visit the Public Mapping Project website demopublicmapping.org.
The Philadelphia Jewish Voice, in partnership with JSPAN, Common Cause/PA and the PA League of Women Voters want to use DistrictBuilder to sponsor a redistricting competition and demonstrate that a non-partisan, open redistricting process based on objective criteria can produce fair legislative and congressional district maps in Pennsylvania. The competition would be open to individuals. The winners would be selected through an objective scoring system based on anti-gerrymandering criteria of compactness, competitiveness, representativeness, equality and integrity.
The three sponsoring organizations can contribute $6,000 toward prizes and incidental competition costs. But to use the software we need to raise $35,000 before May 1. Can you help? To make a tax-deductible contribution click the button or contact treasurer@pjvoice.com. (Contributions directed to this project will be refunded if we do not meet our fundraising goal.)
For more information or become a co-sponsoring organizations, please contact Dan Loeb publisher@pjvoice.com.
The Philadelphia Jewish Voice is an online non-profit volunteer based community newspaper serving the Philadelphia Jewish Community since 2005. We are dedicated to addressing the important social, political and cultural issues facing our community in a spirit of honesty, integrity and diversity.
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GuideStar.
Gerrymandering a majority in the House
It's Worth The Wait
— by Anna Pycior and Peter Wagner
The law upheld today is a state-based solution to the long-standing problem in the federal Census of counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison location, even though they cannot vote there and remain residents of their home communities for virtually all other legal purposes. The practice of prison-based gerrymandering particularly harms urban communities and communities of color that disproportionately contain the home residences of incarcerated persons. Other states have since passed 
The Pennsylvania State House has passed the 
