Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Politics Nine Democrats Could Lose Seats in GOP State House Redistricting Plan
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 9:21 AM
Overall, Republicans hope to gain nine seats with this redrawing of the state's political map. That would give the GOP a whopping 73 of the 99 House seats in this bright red state.
In Nashville, Reps. Mike Stewart and Sherry Jones—two of the House's most liberal members—have been selected for special treatment. The Republicans pitched Stewart and Jones into the same district and created a new, open-seat district at the southern edge of the county. It's Democratic (55 percent black and Hispanic) so neither party gains anything. According to House Democratic Caucus chairman Mike Turner, the GOP is targeting Stewart and Jones strictly out of spite. Republicans hate them, it turns out. Who knew?
What the Republicans did is fairly ingenious. They have the pleasure of messing with Jones and Stewart while at the same time creating a new majority-minority district. That makes it hard for Democrats to complain too loudly.
The House's ad hoc committee on redistricting is meeting now and witnesses are testifying, but the plans are done and today's hearing is a dog-and-pony show for the sake of appearances. Later today, the plan will whisk through a House subcommittee on its way to passage by the full legislature in the opening couple of weeks of this year's session. There's no word yet on when Senate Republicans will start moving their plan, which remains secret. We also don't know yet when the legislature's plan for the state's congressional districts will be made public.
Comments (16)
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Well, this is what happens when we lose, and it is the inevitable and predictable result of Democrats sitting on their asses in the last election. Nobody's fault but our own. The Republicans won, and they get to draw the lines. I do hate that either Sherry Jones or Mike Stewart must go, but that's what happens in the hardball world of politics.
We Democrats will just have to man up and do they best we can with the map we have been given. It appears at first look that the GOP has not violated the Voting Rights Act or any court decisions stemming from it (I didn't expect that they would), so lawsuits will ultimately be unsuccessful and are a waste of resources. Instead of bitching about the map, the thing to do is accept it as a challenge, find good candidates, run hard at the out-of-control radical nitwits in the General Assembly, and spend the next decade doing what the GOP did over the last decade--gradually build back into a majority.
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I hate that either party is able to do this, but in truth, the Democrats did exactly the same thing when they were in control...
The Supreme Court has ruled that there is nothing inherently illegal or unconstitutional about redistricting for the purpose of achieving political advantage. That's the problem - not who's drawing the lines this time.
Gerrymandering was wrong when the Democrats did it, and it's wrong now. One need only look at a map of Rep. Blackburn's district (which was a cooperative effort between Democrats and Republicans) to see how wrong.
The standard for districting ought to be: geographically compact contiguous areas, conforming as closely as practical to county boundaries, in which the voting population, compared from district to district, is as close as possible to exactly equal, so that each person's vote has an equal chance of influencing public policy and the outcome of any election.
The lines ought to be drawn by a computer stuffed with geographic, demographic, and population numbers, and entirely ignorant of politics or political advantage.
Barring revolutionary change, we are unlikely to see this standard in our lifetimes.
Perry,
Non-Republicans could work their asses to the bone in the next election to remove the "radical nitwits" from our General Assembly and it will come to naught until and unless we have verifiable elections here in Tennessee. The TN Voter Confidence Act would have given us cheaper, faster and safer elections here. Methinks that's why the TN/RICOs worked so hard to repeal a law that all but two of them initially voted for (but only after extracting a compromise that the 2008 election would be conducted on the fraud-friendly DREs that the RICOs love so much). Then, when they took control of our legislature (a result that national political scientists still label the most unexplainable result of the 2008 elections), the RICOs suddenly and in lockstep decided that they were against safe elections. I don't wonder why.
Don't believe for a minute that our recent (s)elections reflect the consent of the governed here in TN, where Democrats still enjoy a 5 to 8% advantage in party affiliation among voters, according to several recent surveys. RICOs don't take control of states so resoundingly with that demographic, unless of course they have a little help from their friends who own the voting machine companies and who program their voting machines and count our votes in secret. Without any recourse short of, perhaps, another Battle of Athens, I am unsure what we will need to do to save our democracy here in the birthplace of Andrew Jackson ... and the blues.
Bernie Ellis
PS: You call the RICOs "radical nitwits". I call them overt racists, religious bigots, gun-toting drunks and a Hooters girl whose only lasting contribution to the public discourse last year was defacing public property. Six of one, half dozen of another, I suppose.
we can now see why the democrats have been voted out of office if these comments reflect the democrat party. Can you say "out of touch with reality?"
Small "d" I would better understand your point(s) if it were not for the glare of the midday sun reflecting off your tinfoil hat. You should either take the hat off (taking the risk that the Republican satellites will be able to finally infiltrate your brain) or start providing polarized sunglasses to everyone in the community.
I think even the dimmest state party chairman in U.S. history (Her Forrester) would even agree that the statewide numbers are not on his side. But Baghdad Bod never admitted defeat and never will he.
BTW, thank y'all for keeping the plank of wood in charge of your party. His cluelessness combined with the fruitbat nature of the progressive protesters are doing wonders here.
Moost,
The TN Voter Confidence Act (replacing unverifiable voting machines with paper ballots read by opscan machines and then hand-checked in a sample of precincts to verify the opscan) would have allowed TN elections to be conducted 40-50% cheaper, ten times faster and with paper ballots available for recounts if necessary, unlike the "vapor-based voting" that your party obviously prefers.
As for tin hats, over 40 states have now gone to some form of voting system similar to what we would have had in TN had the TVCA been implemented. Tell me, how do the TN/RICO legislators go from almost unanimous support for the TVCA (all but two) to almost unanimous opposition to it (all but one) in the space of three months in 2008-09? Some might call it flip-flopping, but even Shamu couldn't have accomplished that feat of hypocrisy.
In my county, reporters witnessed the vote count for one local candidate in 2010 going backward as more precinct results from your favorite voting machines were added at the local election commission. I'm beginning to think that the TN/RICO should replace the elephant as your party mascot with the "glitch that stole democracy." I've followed this issue closely on the state and national level for seven years now, and it's hard to find examples of "glitches" that have favored any party other than the RICO party. Riddle me that, bat-shit-for-brains.
Some self-serving elections thieves might call my concerns (shared by over 90% of the American public) just some lame-brained conspiracy theory. I call it a long-range business plan, which obviously is working.
I would say "shame on all y'all", but just like honest elections, I don't think you'd recognize shame if it was staring back at you from the other side of the mirror.
Small "d,"
No one can be a true advocate for honest elections unless their first priority is ensuring that the person showing up to vote is the person he/she claims to be. That is why photo ids are even more important than machines. Are you willing to support that reform?
I will bet you have at least 36 copies of Catcher in the Rye d. I remember paper ballots being the tool of choice for many Democratic machines who could not win otherwise. That was until the too-old-to-vote hit in Palm Beach County and a Republican managed to finally win a paper ballot. Suddenly the ballot that gave us Kennedy and Burning Mississippi became public enemy number 1 with Democratic governors and secretary of states. Tada, Tennessee fell under that and joined the legions of states converting to easier computerized systems
You know, with as screwed up as Tennessee has been under several decades of Big D rule it is a good thing to do things the opposite way. If they liked paper ballots, no photo id, negotiating with teacher's union as school failed, and gerrymandering the shit out the us hillbillies then Republicans now have the capital to reverse all that. Why? Because even the Big D leadership knows that they are the minority in this state, regardless of your belief in a conspiracy of almost Olympian stature.
The problem isn't election fraud by Republicans, its that Democrats no longer have access to the tools they used for years to stay in power. They cut their own throats with their insane hatred for GW.
You should really supplement with Vitamin E.
Sounds like small d wants promotion to Capital D. Yes, it's strangely true the current Districts provided to us for 75 years by the once controlling democrats are taking
a bit of a change. Funny that now the screams are "no matter which party does
it then that's wrong'! Of course the usual response from the losers is that it'
racial, very tiring and much over used, but still works to upset and keep the
minorities voting as usual! Local labor may lose their muse in Sherry Jones, but
that might make for good primary race! On with the show.
Sounds like small d wants promotion to Capital D. Yes, it's strangely true the current
Districts provided to us for 75 years by the once controlling democrats are taking
a bit of a change. Funny that now the screams are "no matter which party does
it then that's wrong'! Of course the usual response from the losers is that it'
racial, very tiring and much over used, but still works to upset and keep the
minorities voting as usual! Local labor may lose their muse in Sherry Jones, but
that might make for good primary race! On with the show.
Mark,
I am as concerned as anyone that only eligible voters be allowed to do so. However, I am more concerned about the multiple impediments to voting by eligible voters that are being orchestrated nationwide by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative advocacy group whose founder once said: "Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." (No shit.)
The photo ID kerfuffle is smoke-and-mirrors. Several good reports issued recently put the lie to your concern or to the priority you give it. One report on Ohio indicates that only four (yes four) votes were cast by ineligible voters in that state (all of whom were caught) in 2002-04, out of over 9 million votes cast. The same study found only nine (yes nine) suspected fraudulent votes that might have been prevented by photo ID requirements have been cast (or attempted to be cast) nationwide since 2000 -- a time period during which over 400 million votes were cast in general elections alone.
Another report (from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU) indicates that NO cases of illegal immigrants attempting to vote (much less having their votes counted inappropriately) have ever been adjudicated successfully, perhaps because the risks to those illegals of being identified by trying to participate in our elections is much greater and harsher than their single vote is worth.
The Brennan Center also reported that, nationwide, 25% of eligible Black voters are estimated to lack valid photo IDs, as are 16% of eligible Hispanic voters, compared with only 8% of eligible White voters. In another report, the Brennan Center indicated that over one-third of voting-age women lack ready access to proof of citizenship with documentation that includes their current legal name. (Proof of citizenship is one requirement that accompanies several of the photo ID laws.) These studies can be found in the recent NAACP report, "Defending Democracy: Confronting Barriers to Voting Rights in America", which is available online.
I could go on and on, but I'll stop with this point. In 2004, only eight states required verifiable voting systems similar to what would have been required by the TN Voter Confidence Act, had it been implemented. Today (perhaps because the evidence for massive election fraud in 2004 that was perpetuated through the use of unverifiable voting systems was widespread and very convincing), over 40 states have such laws. Only one state has reversed itself on this issue -- and that would be Tennessee. That leads me to conclude the following:
When verifiable elections are outlawed, only outlaws will control elections.
(My apologies to the gun fellators in the audience for paraphrasing their favorite bumper-sticker.)
Bernie
Bernie,
I would prefer going back to paper ballots since there is an absolutely perfect way to determine their accuracy.
Photo ids serve a more important role that stopping unregistered voters. Photo ids are an excellent way to prevent organized efforts to illegally vote legally registered voters.
Take Nashville for example. Within the two years from election to election, thousands of people move from Davidson County to other Tennessee counties {Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Sumner etc} or out of state, often without changing their voter registrations. An organized group can easily obtain many of these names. Without requiring a photo id, there is no way to ensure that the person claiming to be 'Bernie Ellis.' is actually Bernie Ellis. And it is not exactly easy to identify examples of this because these are legal registrations.
Photo ids reduce the ease of doing this. Photo ids, for example, would have prevented the election fraud in Memphis during the Ophelia Ford special election where the illegal votes were cast by people using the names of voters who had moved away or died.
No, they wouldn't, Mark. As someone else has mentioned repeatedly, the Ford fraud was accomplished with the collusion of election workers. If your election workers are already corrupt, photo IDs won't make them any less corrupt.
Mark,
I am glad that we now agree that paper ballots are essential to voter confidence. It is so sad that TN has the distinction of having the only legislature which has voted against verifiable elections so soon after they voted for them.
As for photo IDs and the need for them, your argument is a new one for me. However, since voters have always been required to present some form of identification before voting here and most present their voter registration card or their driver's license, I am not sure that a photo ID requirement does anything but complicate the process and institute unnecessary costs for voters who don't have those IDs already. I am perfectly satisfied to continue to accept voter registration cards since they include a signature that can be matched with the signature voters provide when they initiate the voting process. Unless you believe that someone somewhere can reproduce those cards or fake signatures so well that they would pass muster at the polls. I sincerely doubt that.
Thanks again for supporting paper ballots. I would be happy to get all expensive, potentially hackable devices out of our election process (including the opscans that would initially read the paper ballots) and go to a hand-counted process involving high school honors students. The costs of our elections would drop dramatically (after all, how many pizzas and cold drinks can those young, volunteer vote-counters consume?), the safety of our elections would increase from no safety to much more safety and the civic engagement that this process would provide would likely increase participation by young people when they are old enough to vote, a group whose voting participation is now abysmal.
Bernie
Min,
It is true that there was corruption among the election workers. But that does not change the central point. The only reason that the fraud was detected was because it was a special election with an unusually low turnout. That made it easy to check the legitimacy of the names that voted.
In other words, if there were not a pool of names that were perfect for this sort of fraud, the officials would not have been able to let it go on. Think how hard it would be to check every vote cast in a large county, much less the state.
