gerrymandering

MI-08 is an iffy seat for a Democrat to win without a wave. But this cycle there is a wave. The R+4 district includes Democratic Ingraham County (Lansing), Republican Livingston County and then red parts of Oakland County. in the suburbs north of Detroit. Although Obama won the district in 2008, Romney took it in 2012 and Trump beat Hillary 50.6% to 43.9%. The incumbent, Mike Bishop, was majority leader of the Michigan state Senate but has been a hapless, anonymous backbencher in Congress, a Trump rubber-stamp and enabler.

When the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) convenes its 45th annual meeting of legislators and corporate lobbyists at the swank Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel on August 8, it will serve up a veritable banquet of union-busting, gerrymandering, pro-fossil fuel, and school privatization proposals for lawmakers to take back home.

I'm sure you remember all the excitement around the elections for the Virginia House of Delegates last year. The Republicans lost a whopping 15 seats and barely held onto the leadership-- and only because of a coin toss that went in their favor! The GOP entered those elections with 66 seats (out of 100) and had no idea what was headed their way. By the time the coin toss was over, they had 51 seats.

When extreme partisan gerrymandering is dealt with-- as it was in Pennsylvania this year-- it can make a tremendous difference. The partisan makeup on Pennsylvania's congressional delegation will likely go from 12 Republicans and 6 Democrats to 8 Republicans and 10 Democrats. How's that for a swing? The Republicans are screaming like stuck pigs.Michigan is another horribly gerrymandered state.

Sometime before June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down rulings on two cases with momentous impacts on who controls power in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. “These cases are likely to be the most important democracy cases in decades,” says Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Leaving alone state legislatures, the most corruptely gerrymandered states in the Union are North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, Illinois, Utah, West Virginia, Michigan and Arkansas. Pennsylvania would be in there if the state Supreme Court hadn't put a stop to it and redrawn the congressional districts. The state legislative districts are still a joke that should be addressed.Ohio, for example, is a 50/50 state that Obama won in 2012 and Trump won in 2016. There's a Democratic senator and a Republican senator.

The Wisconsin Republican Party has worked damn hard to gerrymander the state in such a way as to take a 50/50 purple state and produce a state Assembly with 64 Republicans and 35 Democrats and a state Senate with 18 Republicans and 14 Democrats.

Republicans worry they can't win when there are fair sensible boundariesCorrupt gerrymandrerers, Republican Senate President Joe Scarnati and state House Speaker Mike Turzai, are not taking the new ungerrymandered congressional map of Pennsylvania laying down.

Redistricting takes place at the beginning of every decade, after the census. But in 2002 Republicans won control of the Texas legislature for the first time in 130 years. They immediately set about redrawing the state's congressional districts-- absurdly in many cases-- to send more Republicans and fewer Democrats to Congress. AT the time, Democrats held 17 seats to the Republicans 15.

Nate Cohn's analysis of the new Pennsylvania congressional boundaries for the NY Times is very well-done.