• New Jersey Democrats want to effectively write gerrymandering into state law
    31 replies, posted
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/nyregion/redistricting-new-jersey-democrats-republicans.html Legislative power brokers across the country have long designed district lines in back-room deals that entrenched their control for years, if not decades. But now, Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey are carrying out a power grab in an unusually public fashion: They are seeking to make Republicans a permanent minority by essentially writing gerrymandering into the State Constitution. The New Jersey plan comes amid a national reckoning over the consequences of gerrymandering and has been met by fierce opposition across the political landscape — and not just from Republicans and nonpartisan watchdog groups. The Democratic lawmakers’ proposal would amend the New Jersey Constitution, and New Jersey voters would need to approve it through a ballot measure. It overhauls the makeup of a redistricting committee to give more power to legislative leaders. It also establishes a “fairness test” requiring district maps to reflect how major political parties perform in statewide elections for governor, senator and president. Typically, a proposed constitutional amendment requires a three-fifths majority in the state legislature before it can get on the ballot. But since no Republican supports the redistricting plan, it seems unlikely that it would ever succeed in either chamber in Trenton. Instead, Democratic leaders are digging into the state’s laws and using a provision allowing an amendment that passes the state legislature with a simple majority in two consecutive calendar years to be placed on the ballot. Democrats have scheduled a vote on the redistricting plan for Monday, the final day the legislature is to meet this year. Then they are likely to bring it up again in early January, satisfying the two-year requirement in less than a month. Should the measure pass in both instances, the proposal could be put on the ballot in November.
This is not okay regardless of who does it.
More reasons the system is fucked
Are they fucking retarded?
fuck off, don't you think democrats have enough bad pr already
how about fuck no
I hope the Supreme Court punches their figurative dicks off.
this is how you get another chris christie.
what an awful fucking precedent this would set
Glad the democratic governor is against this. NJ has a reputation of corruption.
Fuck off with these affronts to our democracy. Only the corrupt and dishonest benefit from distorting the voting process.
Get fucked, I don't care what party you belong to, Gerrymandering is beyond corrupt
tbh, on one hand it's bad, on the other, Republicans are playing dirty constantly and they're winning constantly because of it. Dems are basically faced with the choice to stick by their guns and lose or play the same game the Republicans are.
Not in New Jersey. Democrats won fair and square and before the House make up was 6R 6 D, now it's 1R 11D.
I meant more big-picture. Not saying I endorse what they did at all, by the way.
Or rather than playing the same games simply outlaw those games altogether. Then the Republicans can go fuck themselves and the Democrats don't have to lower themselves to the same level.
I just voted in you doofuses. Don't screw this up.
democrats were the origin of gerrymandering. surely they remember a few weeks of history where repubs abused it too and got fisted by scotuss
This is the exact attitude the Republicans have used for years to crush the left unto a paste. We have to stop taking the high road every time when the enemy has proven they will always tunnel below us.
Dems won fairly bigly, barring some painful defeats in Florida, in 2018 fair and square. They've destroyed themselves being stuck with Trump.
It's new jersey so yes.
Outlawing gerrymandering nationwide will be a net positive for Democrats. The only reason Republicans have as many strongholds as they do is because of it. They need it far, far more than Democrats do, because they don't actually have majority support from the country.
I know that, but I still don't agree that we should stoop to their level. They could have used this same process in a move to end gerrymandering in NJ rather than perpetuating it.
How do you plan on outlawing it? Gerrymandering is an inevitability in any system of local representatives. The UK and France still have it as an issue as well.
You can have local representation without gerrymandering. Just award a number of representatives to each party based on their overall share of the vote, then have the divide those seats preferentially to those who won their counties or whatever.
Just one more fucking reason to get out of this state. I don't even know why they would need to do this, New Jersey has been a solidly blue state for ages. Christie's election was more of a fluke and a rebuttal to the previously terrible governor. But we elect terrible governors every single election so I don't see how that matters. New Jersey, continuing to be the armpit of America.
For the fifth consecutive year, New Jersey has the dubious distinction of ranking as the No. 1 state residents have left behind, according to a new survey. The Garden State placed first as the "most-moved-from" state in the United Van Lines 40th Annual National Movers Study, released Tuesday. In 2016, 63 percent more residents were moving out of New Jersey than people moving in, according to that survey, which tracks customers’ state-to-state migration patterns over the past year. https://www.northjersey.com/story/money/2017/01/04/nj-still-tops-list-states-losing-residents/96108416/ get out while you can
What? Are you suggesting you do a party list, where people who win a local election still have their seat taken away? I really don't know what you're getting at because that sounds contradictory. You can mix the two systems, MMP in Germany has local elections in a way that renders gerrymandering relatively pointless, but local representation as a result is pretty weak. Also due to the constitution, IIRC, any of these big changes can only be done by the states, not congress, which makes them quite difficult to implement. That's really what I was asking, what do we want to do, and how will we accomplish it?
Nothing's perfect, but if you wanna render gerrymandering pointless, you'll have to make it so a party can't attain more seats than their total amount of votes would allot them. Of course it gives people comparatively less local representation, but it's a way to retain some without making the election, you know, borderline illegitimate.
I just read title as: "garrysmod is now a state law" God help Florida I guess..
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